Regions
Monday, November 7th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
On Tuesday, I actually got up at dawn, long before the sun crested the rim of the basin and warmed the campsite.
I really felt like I was just getting started here, and hated to leave. But I was running out of food and water. I’d brought 15 gallons of water and only had about 3 gallons left – I still can’t explain why. And after breakfast, my food supply was down to cheese, jerky, half a cabbage, a couple days worth of granola, a can of beans, and miscellaneous snacks.
My new rotomolded cooler, one of the highest-rated on the market, still had ice after almost a week. But I’d started with three 5-pound blocks of block ice, occupying about 60% of the interior volume, and had kept it in shade for all but a couple hours on the first day, in temps that never got above 70 and probably averaged less than 55. I was hoping for slower melting – it would presumably be much faster in hot weather, when my old cheap coolers would last up to 4 days.
Long-time readers may have noticed I took fewer pictures than usual. I carry a spare battery and SD card, but was trying to conserve both space and energy by avoiding things I already had good photos of from previous trips. And this is not the most colorful time of year anyway! Still, I ended up with space on the original card, and time to spare on the original battery, after 6 days of shooting.
I apologize to my desert friends that I didn’t see on this trip. You were often in my thoughts, especially as I visited places or experienced things that might interest you! Unfortunately, the only plan I was able to make in advance was my flight to Indiana to visit family. I wasn’t sure until the last minute when I would actually head out to the desert, and then car trouble stranded me in Flagstaff, so even if I had made plans to visit desert friends, I would’ve had to change or cancel enroute.
But to be honest, the main reason I didn’t plan to visit friends in the desert is that I needed to reconnect with my land, and I didn’t know what that would be like. I didn’t want to plan an itinerary because I wanted to be able to follow my heart once I got there. I hadn’t gone camping or backpacking in years, most of my old familiar gear had been replaced, and I was frankly a little apprehensive about the whole experience.
And of course once I got out there, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone – except by climbing to the peak I described on Day 6.
The drive out of the mountains and over to Kingman for lunch was uneventful and unenlightening. One bright spot was not having to stop in Needles – seems like I’ve always been forced to stop there in the past.
The drive went to Hell when I turned south toward Phoenix. I’ve always had problems with Arizona drivers, and that highway, which alternates between 2 and 4 lanes, was a race course for big rigs, monster trucks, and strangely, Tesla Model 3’s. The speed limit was 65, Arizonans wanted to go at least 85, and everyone stuck behind me became enraged.
Ironically, the landscape is beautiful, but I could rarely enjoy it. Excepting the one-hour stop in Kingman, what I’d expected to be, at most, a 7-hour drive turned into 9 hours of stress. Then I had to sort through my gear and pack for the flight, but thanks to Ambien I did get a good night’s sleep!
Thanks for reading. I hope you and your families are all enjoying peace and good health, and I hope we can meet up soon, ideally in our beloved desert mountains!
Wednesday, December 21st, 2022: 2022 Trips, Arcadia, Hikes, Pinalenos, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands, Southeast Arizona.
I’m on a little road trip to this Arizona mountain range, for better access to trails that are just too far for a day’s drive. But it’s winter, we’ve had our first couple of regional snowstorms, and as usual I was targeting high-elevation trails. The crest of this range lies above 9,000′, topping out over 10,700′. I expected at least a foot of snow on the crest, but with little previous opportunity to test my winter boots and gaiters, I wasn’t sure how the snow would affect my hikes.
On the evening before my first hike, driving into the town that lies at the foot of the north wall of the mountains, I could see that the snowline was well below 7,000′ – on the shaded north side of the range. One of the hikes I was most interested in approached 10,000′ on that north slope.
The hike I really wanted to start with is on the south side, an hour’s drive from town. But in the morning, unforseen difficulties delayed me more than an hour, so I ended up stuck with a closer north slope hike, where I could expect the most snow.
That morning, I reconsidered my options on the north side. I couldn’t find any online trip reports for my first choice – the only info I could find was a reliable source saying the trail was long abandoned and likely impassable. Without snow, I’d be interested in trying it anyway – it climbed a canyon which was reported to be spectacular, very rocky with many waterfalls. But I couldn’t see myself routefinding, bushwhacking, and fighting my way past hundreds of obstacles in deep snow.
Of the remaining options, I ended up aiming for the “National Recreation Trail”, the most famous trail in the range, which starts in the northside canyon, just outside of town, where a terrifying, vertiginous paved road climbs all the way to the crest. The trail starts at a campground just below 6,700′ and switchbacks to a 9,400′ saddle, where it drops steeply towards one of the mountaintop campgrounds which are inaccessible in winter. Depending on my progress in the snow, I planned to turn off at the saddle and take a spur trail nearly a mile farther, to a 10,000′ peak bristling with communications towers and a fire lookout. I normally despise man-made structures on peaks, but at this point it seemed my best opportunity to reach that elevation, for one of the most spectacular views in the range.
On the way up the road, a couple of little Japanese sedans raced past me – the road is closed for winter at the crest, but is plowed to the 7,500′ level where there’s a cluster of vacation cabins. At 6,000′ I encountered solid patches of ice in shady stretches of road, and despite switching into 4WD, found my extreme all-terrain tires had almost no traction on this road with hairpin curves and 700′ dropoffs with no shoulders and no guard rails.
Before the recent era of mega-wildfires, this trail was likely popular and regularly used, despite its over 3,000′ of accumulated elevation gain. But a short distance from the lower trailhead, it dips into a narrow canyon which was washed out and filled with debris after a fire 18 years ago. Very few people made it past that obstacle until a few months ago when the trail was rebuilt by convict labor, and with the absence of a local hiking culture, I figured I would be one of the first up it in almost 20 years.
A few inches of snow covered the campground, which remained in shade, well below freezing. There was a Subaru already parked in what I assumed was the trailhead parking area, and walking back through the campground, I had to avoid vehicle tracks which were solid ice. There was no trailhead marker for this famous trail – I had to search and guess where it casually began, at the back of a group campsite – and as I stopped there to put on my gaiters, a young woman appeared with an off-leash dog, returning down the trail.
Their tracks ended after only a quarter mile, at the previously blocked creek crossing. I wondered if she’d driven all the way up that perilous road just to walk her dog for a few minutes in the snow?
Even before the crossing, I’d encountered snow up to 8 inches deep, and I was still below 7,000′. My chances of reaching 10,000′ didn’t look good. Past the creek I began climbing the switchbacks, where the only tracks were from deer.
I kept hoping for stretches of trail that got enough sunlight to melt the snow, and I did find occasional bare patches that enticed me to keep going. But they were few and far between, and I climbed about a mile and a half through snow that averaged six inches deep before I reached sunny slopes.
This area had been badly burned, and the ground consisted mostly of small boulders. The trail was a shallow trough that collected deeper snow than the surrounding ground, but the surrounding ground was too dense with obstacles to make it worthwhile to go off trail to avoid the snow. So I kept trudging, the snow getting gradually deeper the higher I climbed.
More than halfway up to the crest, the trail crosses out of the first canyon, makes another half dozen switchbacks, and finally begins a long traverse to the saddle at the crest. Up there the geology changes and you encounter spectacular rock formations, and get your first view of the peak with the towers. But virtually all that traverse is shaded north slope where the snow was now at least a foot deep. I’d always wondered what it would be like to walk a long distance in snow that deep. If I’d known what it was like, I wouldn’t have tried it!
I did reach the saddle – it took me more than four hours to go four miles. Now I know – it takes me more than twice as long to climb in snow.
At the saddle, I found the trail to the peak. It was really steep, and the snow was drifted up to 16″ deep. I followed it about 200 yards, to where it crossed a knife-edge ridge and began a short descent before the final climb. I could see that the rest of it was in shade and the snow would just get deeper, but at least I got a view across the crest to the highest peaks.
One consolation I had on the way up was the assumption that the descent would be easier and go much faster. This turned out to be true – I could go much farther without stopping to catch my breath – but I had to be careful too. Like most trails in the Southwest, this was lined with rocks, and every dozen yards or so I stepped on a rock hidden beneath the snow. The sharp ones threw me off balance, and when I stepped on a tilted one, one foot immediately slid out from under me.
The sun was going down when I crossed back into the first canyon, and could see how much farther I had to descend to the creek crossing and the campground. At this point it was obvious that this trail had been built primarily on slopes where the deepest snow would collect. I had really put my snow hiking ability to the test today, and would be likely to reserve hikes like this for snow-free conditions.
But with the end in sight, I started paying more attention to the habitat. These Arizona ranges host very different plant life from our New Mexico mountains, and I always look forward to it.
Back at the vehicle after more than 7 hours of snow hiking, my hips and ankles were worn out from all that instability. This would be a great trail to hike without the snow – the convicts did a great job, and only about 3 logs had fallen across since their work.
It was the eve of the shortest day and the sun was well set as I descended that icy road, lucky to have no one behind pressuring me – although I did pass a Jeep and an SUV on late runs up to their cabins.
Friday, December 23rd, 2022: 2022 Trips, Grant, Hikes, Pinalenos, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands, Southeast Arizona.
Three and a half years ago, I tried to hike this canyon without a map, and ended up mistakenly scrambling up a three-mile-long pile of giant logs and boulders, enticed by pink ribbons that turned out to have nothing to do with the actual trail, and almost losing my mind.
I did reach a spectacular waterfall, but was left with a powerful yearning to come back some day and find a less maddening route all the way up this canyon to the crest of the range. It would be a route that’s unique in taking you from high desert, through Southwest riparian habitat, to alpine fir forest at 9,000′, with massive rock formations and views across the landscape on your way.
One reason I got in trouble in 2019 was that floods had washed out part of the lower trail, and I could find no information on how or whether I could reconnect with the upper part. Being well-watered this canyon is dense with vegetation as well as boulders – it’s a jungle where it’s easy to go astray – and there was no record of anyone using this trail since 2015, two years before the big wildfire that led to the flood damage. It’s a remote and challenging trail that likely never saw much use anyway.
But when planning this trip I revisited the crowd-sourced page for this trail and found that a group had hiked it in September, claiming it had been rebuilt by a trail crew and was now clear and easy to follow.
I’d driven the access road twice before – it’s a very rocky high-clearance-only path roughly bulldozed up the alluvial fan behind the state prison, to the creek crossing, about a mile below the mouth of the canyon. On both previous visits, the creek crossing had been flooded to over a foot deep and blocked by 18″ tall boulders, so I was assuming I’d again have to park at the crossing, find a log to cross the raging creek on, and walk the rest of the way up the old road on the opposite side.
With a perennial stream, this canyon has always been attractive to miners, ranchers, the military, and prison developers. The map shows the dirt road continuing up two miles past the mouth of the canyon, making two more creek crossings in the process. At least two different water pipelines were laid down the canyon in the past – an old buried iron pipe, and an elevated PVC pipe which formerly supplied the prison. But even before the wildfire, floods damaged both the pipelines and the upper part of the road. Now you find broken 20-foot lengths of 8″ PVC pipe stuck in trees and protruding from boulder piles.
Following the road and trail as shown on the map, from the first creek crossing to the crest road, would be 6-1/2 miles and over 4,000′ of accumulated elevation gain, so I was expecting a long, challenging day, and hit the road over an hour earlier than usual. But when I reached the creek crossing, the water was less than 8″ deep and was clear of boulders. So I drove across and continued to just before the mouth of the canyon, where there’s a turnout. Now the hike I was planning would be two miles shorter, round-trip, and I should have plenty of time!
Since the lower part of the trail follows the old road, it’s always interesting to see how drivable that road is, and how far people have made it up recently. With floods, this canyon has regularly been conveying the top of the mountain down from time immemorial, and the top of the mountain surrounds you all the way up, in the form of white boulders that fill the creekbed and have been bulldozed into rows beside the road.
It was below freezing, and even here at 5,500′, little patches of snow hung on in the shadow of boulders. Entering the mouth of the canyon, I was glad I’d parked where I did – what was left of the old road needed higher clearance than I’m comfortable with. But tracks showed that a bigger truck had recently been up here. And someone had been collecting sections of the old PVC pipe and stacking them alongside the road, presumably to haul out at some point. It would be an even more beautiful canyon without the ruins.
I started making noise as soon as I entered the riparian forest, to alert bears. I’d encountered a black bear here on my last visit, and this range is reported to have the highest density of bears in North America.
Before long I came upon a flock of 7 wild turkeys. And a little farther, a boulder I figured would stop even the biggest truck. But no, some macho dude had made it over that, all the way to the next creek crossing, where there’s a graded turnaround, since no vehicle on earth can cross at that point now.
After a little deliberation and searching for sticks, I crossed the roaring creek on a thin, sinuous fallen tree trunk I expected to flip on me at any time and dump me in the ice-cold water (it’s all snowmelt). A few dozen yards from the bank, the old road reappeared, rockier than ever. And a few hundred yards up canyon, I came to the third creek crossing, which was both easier and more dangerous.
That third crossing was probably where I got lost before. But on the other side, after climbing over a towering tangle of logs and branches, I found a series of faded pink ribbons which actually led me through a thicket and back to a surviving segment of the old road. From there, it was a straightforward “walk in the forest” until I reached the next flood washout.
I’d never found this route on my previous attempt, but at the washout, another pink ribbon beckoned me up the left bank, where a faint trail bypassed the washout, climbing high above the creek, and back down, to rejoin the next surviving segment of the old road.
Rounding the base of a boulder, I came upon a rock alignment – again, something I hadn’t encountered on my previous visit. The rocks showed a branching of the trail, and a marker post with an arrow directing hikers toward the first waterfall, partway up the opposite side of the canyon. Apparently that’s the destination of most visitors here.
Continuing on the left branch, I reached the original end of the road, at the base of the massive boulder pile. There, two tributaries come together to form the lower creek, and that would be my moment of truth, since that’s where the old trail had been completely washed out.
Back in 2019, after wasting over an hour scrambling over flood debris in the lower canyon, I had finally relocated the road and reached this point. I hadn’t seen evidence of a trail continuing on this side of the creek, but I saw a pink ribbon in the trees across the base of the boulder pile, so I clambered across and went that way, which led eventually, with utmost difficulty and increasing desperation, to the waterfall.
Now, however, I spent more time scouting, and finally noticed a pink ribbon hanging from a tree, straight up the left bank from the washout, and some disturbed ground that might have been a faint game trail. I decided to go up there – it was about a 40% grade – and continuing, found what was obviously a new trail bypassing the old one that had been washed out. It was very narrow and very precarious, climbing 50-60 feet above the creek, skirting the vertical bank in places. But eventually it led to the original trail, which followed the left-hand tributary. What a relief to avoid that apocalyptic debris flow!
This tributary canyon was narrow, and on the left side, the trail was forced to wind back and forth between big boulders at the base of a cliff. Rounding one huge boulder, I surprised a small troop of coatis. And I finally came upon a small, very old pile of bear scat – the first I’d seen so far. So much for all my noisemaking to warn away bears!
And at last, I came to the final creek crossing, beyond which I hoped to find my trail to the crest.
Since this tributary was smaller than the lower creek, it was easier to cross. But the old trail had been blocked by debris on the other side, and I found another narrow, precarious bypass that again took me 50-60 feet above the creek and involved climbing over deadfall and boulders. It had become obvious that the September hikers had been exaggerating – this trail had hardly been rebuilt, let alone cleared. The best you could say is that an expert can find a route.
Now I was in deep shade, where snow had collected up to 8 inches. But the trail to the crest consists of nearly 40 switchbacks climbing 2,200 vertical feet, and the slope they climb faces west. I figured every other switchback would have enough southern exposure to melt the snow, and I was right. All the way to the top, I faced only limited patches of snow, at most a hundred yards long.
But I had more immediate obstacles to get past: deadfall and overgrowth. Far from being rebuilt and cleared, the switchbacks were blocked again and again by deadfall logs and small, tough shrubs. And I began to suspect that the September hikers had lied about coming this way, when I kept finding old rotten trunks and branches blocking the trail that you would normally need to snap or toss aside in order to pass. Not just for yourself – removing obstacles is good manners, to improve the trail for the next visitors.
Eventually, I did come to a deadfall log across the trail showing a recently broken branch that someone had snapped in order to step over it. I concluded that the September hikers had been there after all, but generally preferred to go around obstacles rather than removing them. So I did my part by breaking branches and hauling small trees off the trail wherever possible.
The switchbacks seemed interminable, and I came to a few spots where tread disappeared completely and I had to scout a route before relocating the trail. But the reward was the view, which got better with each increase in elevation. Finally, on the last switchback, I got the full view south out of the main canyon, and shortly after that, I crossed the crest into the interior of the range. I’d done it – what I’d been dreaming of for years!
Unfortunately, that seemed to be the end. I’d expected to continue up this ridge about another mile, to the crest road, but the trail ended abruptly at a distinctive cairn, with nothing ahead but a maze of deadfall across a steep, overgrown slope.
I scouted and I scouted, finally returning to the cairn in dismay. I checked my map, which showed a tiny dogleg at this point. What if I just went straight up the slope?
That’s what I did – about a hundred feet, climbing over deadfall logs. And finally spotted the continuation of the trail, on the opposite side of yet another couple of deadfall logs.
In short order, that took me to the fairly level top of the ridge, partly forested, holding deeper snow, where I had glimpses of the high peaks of the range, arrayed to north and east.
I knew I’d only gone about 5 miles so far, and it’d taken me 5 hours. I hoped to go faster on the way down, but I was still surprised at how much slower I was hiking on this trip. In any event, I was now where I wanted to be – on top of the world. I had no need to go any farther – only to reach the crest road – and I didn’t want to rush on my way back.
Going down those switchbacks was so much easier! I’d achieved my goal of reaching the crest, and despite all the obstacles, I decided the condition of this trail is just right for me, as is. Enough ambiguity, deadfall and overgrowth to make it a challenge without making it a bummer. Yes, I benefited from a few pink ribbons, for which I’m grateful – but they could’ve been put up any time in the past couple of decades. Wild animals are now keeping it open and maintaining tread – no human workers needed.
And in the canyon bottom, I encountered what I assume was the same troop of coatis. This time I could see at least one was a juvenile, and while the others hid, the biggest adult perched on a boulder above and chuffed at me for a while.
One thing I noticed on the way up, but puzzled over on the way down – the soil of the trail in the tributary canyon bottom was “turned” as if with a plow – like walking in mashed potatoes – with frequent deep holes like large hoof prints, but at random, without any identifiable pattern. It was another thing that slowed me down, and I still couldn’t figure out what caused it.
It was only later that I realized it must be the coatis that were causing that – they apparently both consume leaf litter and dig in soil for invertebrates, hence their long, flexible snouts.
Returning those 5 miles, with many stops, took 3 hours. But at sunset, what should I find at my vehicle, but a big black bull?
Some may remember my past experiences with bulls in the wild – being followed, chased, and charged. But I was tired, and it was getting dark, and my vehicle was right there. Standing behind a barrier of brush, I yelled and clapped my hands, but the bull ignored me. So I emerged in the clearing, and still yelling, walked past the bull to my vehicle. It moved off a little and stood watching to see what I would do. So far, so good!
This was a first for me. I unloaded my gear and got in the Sidekick, while the bull stood like a statue, never making a threatening move. If only they could all be so placid!
Saturday, May 27th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Regions, Road Trips.
After making a solitary trip to my desert land last fall, I told everyone I would return for a more social visit in the spring. But over the winter I became immersed in finishing my book project, and as it got better and closer to being finished, the desert trip got pushed back.
The book was essentially completed a couple of days ago – I ordered a one-off print copy for my mom, who will be my first reader – so I was finally free to travel, just in time for my birthday.
On the planned day of departure – to my amazement – I was fully packed with a full gas tank, and left precisely on time, at a reasonable hour in the morning but with plenty of time to reach my first day’s destination long before sunset. For some reason, for the first time in my life, I was starting a trip not frantic and beside myself with stress, but fully prepared, having checked and double-checked my packing list. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was starting a trip in a state of perfect calm.
My little Sidekick was packed with everything I would need for a ten-day backcountry trip, yet it looked nothing like the humongous “overlanding” rigs every yuppie is now expected to have for expeditions like this. One reason I chose and keep this vehicle is that you don’t have to climb up or bend over to reach any of the cargo, and the rear passenger doors provide easy access to stuff packed in the middle. There was even plenty of headroom left to see out the back.
My usual starting point for this trip is a small town in southeast Utah. But it’s seven and a half hours from home, and years ago I vowed never to drive more than six hours in a day. In the past, I’ve started later and made an intermediate overnight stop. With a stop to make lunch, today’s drive would last more than eight hours, and by the time I reached the north end of the Navajo Reservation my calm was gone, I was thoroughly frazzled, and both my hip and shoulder were in pain. I did arrive long before sunset, but I still had to shop for supplies before dinner and a shower.
I’d booked a room in the motel Katie and I had discovered on our “rock art expedition” in April 1987. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s a small, modest structure that nevertheless won our admiration with its clever adaptation to its high-elevation Southwestern habitat.
I’d stayed there once since, a few months before COVID, and found it in harsh decline. The original clerestory windows that you opened with a long-handled crank had been replaced by fixed windows, the beautiful built-in hardwood furnishings hadn’t been maintained, and the place had been clumsily rewired so that my neighbor woke me up in the night because his TV was plugged in to my room through a ragged hole punched in the wall between us.
After COVID, two local women bought and refurbished the place. Now, it’s modern and fairly comfortable, but it’s lost much of the old “Wright” feel.
Saturday, May 27th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Regions, Road Trips.
My next destination was a motel in a town four hours west. On the way, I would attempt a side trip into some forbidding back country, hoping to explore a remote canyon where others had found rock writings and paintings.
I headed west on what may be the world’s most beautiful highway, frustrated that I couldn’t stay in this area for months instead of days. In the past, I’d dreamed of exploring the sprawling, red sandstone plateau that loomed 1,600 feet above on my right. But it features forested habitat similar to our high mountains back home, and my vague goal for this trip was to find unfamiliar pictographs, not familiar habitat. So I kept driving past one of my favorite landscapes and reminiscing about past visits.
Past the alpine plateau, the road enters a land of red-and-white sandstone, following ledges between high mesas on your left and deep, sheer-walled canyons that are mostly hidden at right. It gets drier and more stark as you approach the River, and finally the peaks of one of my favorite mountain ranges emerge from behind the mesas to the west. They were still carrying a lot of snow, and while I was getting sick of snow at home a few months ago, I always thrill to see snowy mountains in the midst of desert at this hot time of year.
The River crossing is a truly awesome, heart-in-throat place which is normally passed too quickly on the highway. But my turnoff was just past the bridge on the right – an unmarked dirt road.
This is one of the few routes into the most inaccessible parts of the canyonlands – the terrain in which Jeep commercials are filmed. I’ve driven shorter, less rugged roads on similar terrain in nearby areas, but I expected this road to be a harsh test of my vehicle. Driving here comes with all kinds of warnings – if it rains, you’ll be stuck in cement-like clay, and if you break down and need a tow, it will cost a minimum of $1,500. Of course there’s no chance of cell phone service anywhere nearby.
I pulled over just past the turnoff to review my maps. And just as I finished, a convoy passed me: a late-model 4-door Jeep Wrangler and a Toyota FJ, both kitted out in full expedition gear. I pulled in behind them, and to my surprise and probably theirs, it soon became obvious I was faster than them. They stopped to take pictures, pulling over so I could pass.
This was completely new country for me. Like the highway, this back road follows ledges around the base of mesas, with a maze of canyons below on your right. My destination was only about nine miles away as the crow flies, but it takes over twenty miles of driving to get there because the road repeatedly winds back into deep coves then leads out around sharp points, following the ledges to skirt the network of canyons below.
Soil is very thin in this country, and like most, this road was built on bedrock, so I soon encountered what I’d expected: stretches of rumpled sandstone that you have to cross very slowly, rocking back and forth, if you can – there are always transverse ledges and spines that require high clearance. And then, when the road crosses a wash that forms the head of one of the lower canyons, there are sections blocked by boulders and ledges you have to carefully drive over so as not to break an axle, or a differential, or get stuck with a wheel in the air.
But at least this road is maintained, unlike the abandoned mine roads I drive in the Mojave. I hadn’t even needed my 4wd yet, and I got farther and farther ahead of the Jeep and Toyota, but it still seemed to take forever. Each point I rounded revealed a whole new landscape.
Despite the dozens of very slow bedrock sections and boulder-lined washes, I was pushing my little vehicle everywhere else, for an overall average of at least 15 mph. Finally I crested a rise and saw what I believed to be my canyon down in the bottom of a broad valley. Again I stopped to review the maps, and before I could get going again, the Jeep and Toyota overtook me for the second time, all waving and smiling.
But when I reached the bottom of the valley, I ended up passing the Toyota yet again – while all I was using were paper maps, this driver was checking GPS on his phone. Here, the road forked – I was taking the dead-end left fork up the canyon, thinking I would eventually encounter the Jeep, but I eventually realized that the others had taken the right fork farther into the backcountry.
I was here because an online trip report by “rock art nuts” said they’d found both petroglyphs and pictographs up the canyon. The road just followed the dry wash, which, since there had been rains a while back, was now hard-packed red clay. The surrounding valley started out open, but after a mile the cliffs closed in on both sides and I came to an old corral – the only human structures in this region are corrals. Beyond that point the wash was only wide enough for my vehicle, and I soon came to bouldery stretches that required all my ground clearance and concentration. Too late, I realized I should’ve parked at the corral and walked in, but fortunately I soon came to a campsite where I pulled up and parked. Time for lunch! And someone had long ago left a much-corroded chrome dinette standing here among the junipers, which I hauled into the shade.
Despite the spectacular surroundings, the long, strenuous, rough ride had left me in a strange mental and emotional state. I found I was suddenly severely absent-minded, with virtually no short-term memory. Powerful gusts blew down the canyon, knocking things over and sending me chasing after them.
After lunch, I packed for a hike up-canyon, but I kept locking the vehicle only to have to unlock it and unpack it again to find something I’d forgotten. I couldn’t get anything right the first time.
As soon as I started walking I discovered I was the first person to drive up here in a long time. The only remains of tracks were from a UTV.
The road, such as it was, veered out of the main canyon into a side canyon, and the main canyon became impassable to vehicles. And past that point I found a simple petroglyph panel.
To my chagrin those were the only prehistoric markings I found in that canyon.
I returned and followed the road into the side canyon. All I found there was an old print of a cowboy boot, and some ranching debris.
So I returned to the Sidekick and drove back to the corral, where I saw another side canyon, and found an old road leading to a campsite in its mouth. I explored that canyon on a cattle trail, and found it was a box canyon, headed by cliffs with a dry pour-off high above, and with an old earthen dam below which had been breached by flood. As I approached, a great horned owl flew out of a juniper in front of me. It went left out of sight behind vegetation. And then as I proceeded toward the cliffs, I thought I saw something flying to a crack up there, so I snapped a quick picture. In my room that night, I zoomed in on the pic and sure enough, there was the owl, huddling under a small bush.
Like I said, I was in a weird state. I felt really disappointed at finding only one little petroglyph panel after such an arduous drive. I was perfectly aware I should be thrilled by the natural beauty surrounding me, as I would’ve been in the past, but I simply wasn’t, and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was some kind of physical depression.
On the drive back to the highway I took it slow, stopping frequently for water and pics. My clutch is wearing out so that it needs annual adjustment, and it was becoming almost impossible to shift gears without stopping and turning off the engine first. That’s something I can fix and will probably have to in the next few days.
The day had felt either hot or cool when I was out of the vehicle, depending on whether I had shade from cliffs or clouds. But in the vehicle it was always hot – big windows all around – and I soon turned the A/C on high. The highway drive up the long wash from the river went smoothly, and went even faster once I emerged onto the rolling country below the snowy mountains.
When returning on the back road along those ledges I’d been hearing a strange squeaking noise from the back, and about ten miles from town I suddenly remembered that when I stopped in that canyon for lunch, I’d taken two bundles of firewood out of the vehicle so I could reach my clothes bag underneath, and set them loosely on top, so they hung out over the edge of the roof rack and would be easy to notice so I wouldn’t forget to put them back in afterward.
But in my absent-minded state I’d forgotten them completely, and in all the bouncing and shaking and rocking over twenty miles of that bad road they’d certainly bounced off, probably before I even left the canyon. And even if they’d survived that, driving 65 mph on the highway would’ve definitely blown them off.
But I watched for several more miles until I saw a turnoff. And once stopped, I found that the firewood bundles had settled into the space between crossbars of the roof rack, miraculously surviving all that rough ride and highway speed. Something good was finally happening!
As I drove north to town, I passed a continuous parade of big southbound pickup trucks hauling powerboats that were twice their size, heading south to Lake Powell. It was Friday evening, and dozens and dozens of Mormon families from the tiny hamlets of the remote interior were driving hours to spend their national holiday on the doomed reservoir.
