Quicksand in Arches, interesting comments

Wild. Thanks for linking.

I packrafted the Dirty Devil one time and, after that, I kind of figured I knew about everything there was to know about quicksand. At one memorable spot we were stopping for a snack break and one of my friends just walked to dry land. I landed a couple feet away and got slightly mired, but not too bad. Then our other friend landed a few feet farther down and it took him 10-15 minutes to extricate himself, we couldn't even really help without getting stuck ourselves. Come to think of it, some of those spots might have been problematic if we hadn't had those super-buoyant rafts to use as leverage for getting unstuck.

Also, growing up in the 1970s, I feel like I received a lot of exposure to quicksand:

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Years ago I came across a woman stuck in quicksand in Coyote Gulch and had to help her out. She had one leg in about knee deep. To get close enough I got a couple decent sized cottonwood branches to spread out my weight (well, I got one, and once I said what I was doing her friend got into action and found another for me). Definitely couldn't just pull her out, had to do a bit of digging.

It was interesting as it was just one small spot... 5 or 10 feet away the sand was solid as could be, but I could definitely not just walk up to the spot to help her without sinking in myself.

Took a photo of the spot a day later... doesn't look like much.

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In your pic up next to the wall on a bend pools water under the sand......
 
Scary! I have explored so many canyon washes over the years and up to now I guess I have been very lucky not to come across any quick sand.
 
wrote this in a trip report in 2012:
The upper part of Courthouse Wash was mostly easy walking with the exception of some bushwhacking around beaver dams and some of the craziest quicksand I’ve ever experienced (immediately drops you thigh deep). I found camp once the canyon opened up below Sevenmile Canyon
 
Janice said:
And TV - Gilligan's Island! Because of that show, for many years I thought quicksand was fake or fatal. Until our Paria trip in 2014 when my son - and then I - encountered quicksand but were able to get out pretty quickly. This real story is intense.
Click to expand...

I think these guys also did a lot of quicksand rescues in the 1970s !

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It is sage expert advice from @Bob , there are indicators of where the quicksand is most likely.
I have walked across a section where my weight did not break the surface tension and had someone walk right behind me or beside me and go down. Of course I walk like an elf... :p

Over Thanksgiving the wash we were in was hyper saturated. Some of it was frozen and you could feel it jiggle under you, but not break. We hit a spot where my friend chose a ledge and I said, naw I will take the couple of steps and get to the ledge. I went knee deep immediately. Fortunately churning my legs this time worked and I reached the ledge and my friend helped pull me the rest of the way out.

We went another bend down the canyon and ran into this:
IMG_0063.jpg

It may not seem that ominous, but it looked the same as where I had gone knee deep.
I am standing on a rock, but right next to the rock I took a little branch to test on the next step, just a little push, and the branch and my wrist went in.
We turned around just a bend or so from the goal. In summer, this wash is just a dry walk.
 
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