Birthday Trip 2023: Day Five
Friday, June 2nd, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Indigenous Cultures, Regions, Road Trips, Society.
I woke well-rested in my beautiful campsite, as more UTV riders passed up and down the remote canyon in early morning. The plan for the day was to head north, stopping briefly to check out a couple of modest but better known sites near the highway before making a longer drive into unfamiliar backcountry, hoping for another good campsite in preparation for a canyon hike the next day.
The first stop was a pictograph site located near a popular state park designed for off-roaders of all kinds. They were all naturally avoiding the pictographs and unloading their UTVs, ATVs, and dirt bikes to raise dust and sand in a roar of engines.
This small panel in the ancient “Barrier Canyon” style has severely decayed due to natural erosion. It was lunchtime so I made a sandwich before heading north again.
Not long after, I joined the westbound interstate for about three miles, signalling far in advance and carefully making an abrupt right turn onto a gravel road with big rigs barreling past me at 80 mph. This road leads into a spectacular narrow canyon with towering walls where I abruptly came upon a big family group of adults and kids who’d arrived on dirt bikes and UTVs and were noisily climbing around in the shade of a huge, shaded stone alcove where water oozed out of the base of the cliff in a profusion of ferns. There was one kid tottering around in bike helmet and full body armor who couldn’t have been older than three.
It turned out that this was not the pictograph site, so I parked and walked a short distance to the next bend, where I saw a pictograph panel under a smaller overhang, at the base of a tall sunlit cliff. All these publicized sites had fences to prevent vehicle access, but the fences had trails leading behind them for a closer look on foot.
This site was called the Black Dragon, but I couldn’t see what the name referred to. Maybe it was farther down the canyon and I missed it? Still, these paintings in the heart of the Barrier Canyon “stylistic region” were done in a completely different, seemingly abstract style – much more like what we have in the Mojave. In any event there were too many people there today – other vehicles passed me several times.
I rejoined the interstate and headed west across the “Swell”, past constantly changing canyons and formations, and finally down the other side, where I took an unfamiliar shortcut on my way north. There were high snow-draped mountains in the western distance, and this road started by following one of the creeks that drain that range, all of which are raging torrents now, gray with sediment.
The back road I wanted led east from a small farming town – I stopped there for gas and motor oil to top up my engine. Here I found the core of the UTV culture that’s taking over the rural west. The extra-wide streets had been repurposed for UTVs, speed limits were set to 25 and UTVs had the right of way, so if you wanted to drive through town, you had to creep behind them as the drivers waved to each other and defiantly ignored you. They kept their cars and trucks parked at home, reserved for highway driving.
I’d printed complicated directions on backcountry roads to the edge of the remote canyon which “should be better known for its high quality petroglyph panels”. These directions led me past heavily irrigated alfalfa fields, grazing cattle, and dilapidated or outright ruined Mormon farmhouses – the poorest I’d ever seen. The gravel road climbed a plateau, then descended through a maze of gray canyons, eventually emerging onto a red clay plateau to a crossroads. All along the way, big roadside clearings were occupied by parked pickup trucks with empty UTV trailers, and at one point I met a group of teenagers on dirt bikes.
I came to a Y junction and took the left branch, which had been rained on and driven while the clay was wet, leaving deep crisscrossing ruts in a rock-hard surface which went on for a couple of miles.
Cattle were grazing along the clay road, fifteen miles from any ranch. I came to another Y and climbed another plateau, finally reaching a wooden fence and the rim of the 600 foot deep canyon.
I followed the rim, on a fairly rough and hazardous clay and bedrock road, to the trailhead, and past, where campsites had been promised. There turned out to be only one, totally exposed on the very rim of the canyon. I unpacked and set up my shower bag to warm in the sun. A wind came up, and got steadily stronger, becoming a full gale across the rim.
As an experiment, I tried spreading and anchoring my tarp, but even with a continuous line of heavy rocks it still ballooned out in the middle. I tried to warm up leftovers for dinner, but had to enclose my stove in the back of the vehicle and wait over a half hour for the pot to warm in the crazy wind.
I had about 20 minutes of sunlight left when I finally gave up, after two hours in this ridiculous campsite. I drove six miles back on the road and found another site on an exposed ledge below bluffs. This site had no wind, and I quickly took a cool shower just as the sun set. Tomorrow I would drive back to the canyon rim and hike down into it looking for more petroglyphs.
