Canyonlands - Islands in the Sky

4/24/09

At 338,000 acres, Canyonlands National Park is nearly five times larger than Arches, and far more complex, with three distinct districts formed around (mostly above) the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. The Colorado comes in from the northeast and the Green from the northwest, each at similar angles, so when they merge they form a huge Y as they continue south, though more like a y as the combined stream veers southwest. The Island in the Sky District sits within the top half of the y, 2000’ above the rivers. The Needles District sits to the southeast of the confluence; the Maze along the western side of the Green and along the confluence to the south. The three districts are close together geographically but require long drives to get from one to another. The Maze is accessible only with 4-wheel drive. I’d be sticking to Islands in the Sky and the Needles.

Islands in the Sky is right across the highway and the Moab Fault from Arches, a 40-minute drive, the closest of any two national parks that I know of. Along the way I passed by Deadhorse Point State Park, site of Thelma and Louise’s last ride. Alas I can’t do it all. Islands in the Sky is not an island but  an enormous mesa connected by only a thin neck of land. Once that collapses it will indeed be an isolated sky island, at least until someone builds a bridge.

As I approached the entrance station I saw a sign announcing that Islands in the Sky had no potable water. Seemed like something I should have known earlier. I later checked my guidebooks and saw that three different sources on the front seat of my car mentioned this detail. I just never considered the possibility. All National Parks have water...  This one doesn’t because it sits way up high and efforts to drill wells have all come up dry. The Visitors Center was selling gallons for $2.00 which I found reasonable, given that my only other option was a 40-mile drive back to Moab.

I headed straight for the campground and was surprised once more, this time to find the 12-site campground more than half empty at midday. Islands in the Sky gets some 200,000 visitors a year, but apparently they all come just for the day. I got a very fine site amid pinyon pines and thick red sand. It was cooler than in Arches. More shade. More green in general. Midday nap in my tent. Mmmmm! 

Willow Flat Campground

In addition to being the closest to civilization (Moab) of the Canyonlands districts, Islands in the Sky is also the most accessible; paved road extending throughout most of the mesa to a variety of overlooks. This district is primarily about views, so my first afternoon and evening I sampled three of them. 

First was a short hike to an overlook of a geological curiosity called Upheaval Dome, a crater-ish depression of crumbled sedimentary rock that geologists cannot explain. For many years they ascribed it to traditional geologic forces, rocks collapsing into an underlying salt depression, but more recently some have been saying it seems to be the result of a meteor crash, though no evidence of the meteor remains.

Upheaval Dome

An interesting mess for sure but basically an anomaly. I was hungering for the main act - eroded stratigraphy - better witnessed from the next two overlooks: White Rim and Grand View. These looked down about a thousand feet to a wide, nearly flat shelf of land, itself another thousand feet above the rivers running unseen in their canyons. The shelf is known as the White Rim, its surface layer the White Rim Sandstone. White Rim Sandstone is fighting a losing battle protecting the more erosive underlying layer called Organ Rock Shale, which is being eaten away from below by gravity and runoff, crumbling into slopes and taking huge blocks of White Rim Sandstone down with it. At the interface of slope and rim the two formations comprise a classic “pinnacle forming combination”, large white blocks atop dark brown stems, and from 1000’ above they look like this.

Erosion on White Rim

Pinnacle Formation

A 100-mile jeep road circles the entire White Rim. The federal government cut it in the 1950s to help prospectors search for uranium to fuel the atomic age. They found it but not enough to make it economical, and in 1964 Congress made Canyonlands a national park. It could have gone either way. Now the White Rim Road brings adventurous bicyclists and more leisurely four-wheel drivers out for what Adkinson calls “a quasi-wilderness experience.”

Beyond the White Rim the Colorado Plateau stretched out, to the Needles District, the more distant La Sal range, and intermediate pinnacles and mesas - bits and fragments of the Island in the Sky mesa. As the sun got lower these expanses became lost to shadows and the ledges I was standing on turned a glowing gold. This was the Kayenta Formation, here a relatively thin veneer atop the red Wingate Sandstone cliffs plunging straight down, giving way in turn to the slopes of the Chinle Formation and then the ledges of Moenkopi. The same formations as Capitol Reef. Magic time say the photographers, and I toiled amateurishly, joyously away.

“Century by century, canyons widen and plateaus reduce to mesas, mesas to buttes, buttes to pinnacles, until nothing is left but piles of rocky rubble.”

Each of these three hikes was 1.8 miles, giving me a total of 5.4 for the day. Trails tend to be short here, as roads go to the best places, requiring mere strolls to the vistas. Any serious hiking on Islands in the Sky consists of plunges down the side of the mesa, either to White Rim or all the way to the rivers. Some half-dozen official trails make the plunge and I chose the Syncline Trail. It provides the best access to Green River and I felt a pilgrim’s desire to stand along that mighty and historic stream.

I made my descent early the next morning in cool canyon shade. The first leg of the hike was a steep two-miles of Wingate Sandstone, desert-varnished walls soaring above, enormous blocks of spalled off rubble below, more geological mess than canyon grandeur. At the bottom I was face to face with thick exposures of Chinle Formation exposures, muddy looking walls of various colors, plus a less-innocent seeming layer of cemented stone that somehow looks like it would contains uranium.

I started down Upheaval Canyon for a 7.5 mile round trip hike to the Green. The canyon began as a sandy wash in between 40’ high walls of strata, overhung by the big red walls of the Wingate Formation, and after about a half mile I concluded that seven and a half flat miles of that would be too tedious. Some kind of pilgrim I am; the Green would have to wait. I turned around and finished the Syncline Loop, a steep and rugged ascent I was glad I hadn’t descended. It was a pretty tough five hour hike, even without the extra seven miles out to the river and back.

Back at my tent I took a three hour break, including a good meal in the shade at midday, and contemplated the words nocturnal, diurnal and crepuscular. Nocturnal is a familiar term, diurnal less so because that is what most people are. Crepuscular is the way of the desert. Up in the cool early morning, taking shelter during the hot midday, then back out for the delightful evening. 

Ravens had gotten into the food of the campsite next door and strewn it all over the place. The camper was off on his motorcycle and I feared he would return to find his camping trip was a bust. I discussed his situation with a concerned couple in the RV across the way and we decided we could give him some food for the night. But then I checked a bag he had hanging from the tree and saw he still had enough food for that night’s dinner.

Late that afternoon I hiked the Gooseberry Trail to White Rim, steeply down a crumbly trail of Wingate, Chinle, and Moenkopi formations - the entire remaining deposition of the Triassic Age. I was hiking from the Jurassic to the Permian. What I took from above to be a greenish rock strata atop the White Rim proved on closer examination to be vegetation. Got a good look at the huge white blocks of White Rim sandstone and the crumbling Organ Rock Shale. Slope formation before my very eyes.

Wingate Sandstone - La Sal Mountains

White Rim Sandstone atop Organ Rock Shale

I sat on the White Rim in the sun with a light breeze, amid the shadows and chasms, resting and digesting my Cliff Bar. A large group of campers was set up 100 yards away. I would like to have stayed a while longer but I was concerned with my return ascent up the Triassic, a steep rocky cairn-defined scramble in dwindling light. As it turned out the light held up fine though the hike was beastly steep. I got back to the car at 8:30 with some light to spare and read by headlamp at the picnic table amid the pinyon pines. God it was nice out. Around ten I drove back to the campground along dark roads with bad signage. I was the only one out and it was a little spooky.

I awoke early on Wednesday as my body was in too much shock to sleep. The crescent moon was closely tagged by what had to be a planet, a thrilling site, really. Other campers out with binoculars told me it was Venus, which I suppose I should have figured. They were looking for Mercury, a tougher find. I started to read but was distracted by the morning light and then suddenly I realized I was sitting ¼ mile from the Green River Overlook. So I headed over there and had a great hour watching the sun slowly penetrate the whole mesa, butte, and tower expanse. Green River was a distant sliver, and this would prove to be my only glimpse.]

Green River Overlook