Canyonlands II - The Needles District

5/01/09
So I hit the road, into Moab for supplies, then south and west into the Needles District, 70 miles from Moab. The rangers at Island in the Sky had warned me that getting a campsite at Needles would be tough, so I decided to grab a site on BLM land outside the park for Wednesday night and then go in early Thursday to get one in the park. I chose a comparatively developed site called Hamburger Rock, a huge rock with sites of orange sand tucked into its alcoves, set up my tent and headed into the park for a late afternoon hike on the Slickrock Trail.

Slickrock is a southwest term for the bare hard rock surface that makes up much of the landscape. Slickrock can be as smooth as a school hallway though rarely as flat, and makes for great walking. When it’s dry it is about as slick as Velcro, though loose pebbles can be perilous. The surface rock of the Slickrock trail is Cedar Mesa Sandstone, the oldest formation I’d yet encountered on the Colorado Plateau. While Navajo Sandstone is from the early Jurassic period, maybe 190 million years ago, and Wingate Sandstone is a bit older, forming in the late Triassic period maybe 20 million years earlier, Cedar Mesa Sandstone goes back to the Permian period, some 270 million years ago. I found it an amusing little erosive, reminding me of enormous oyster shells.



The trail was demarcated by cairns, little piles of rocks that lead hikers around the platform to four or five stellar viewpoints, keeping us from falling off the cliff or walking on the cryptobiotic soil, patches and sometimes expanses of dark, crusty soil punctuating the slickrock. This was a new one for me. Cryptobiotic means "hidden life." The key to its composition is cyanobacteria, formerly known as blue-green algae, one of the oldest known life forms on earth. When wet, these bacteria slither through the dirt, “leaving a trail of sticky, mucilaginous sheath material behind.” This sticky stuff binds the soil in “an intricate webbing of fibers“, which in turn nourishes and protects other hidden life such as green algae, mosses, lichens, liverwort, and fungi, all of which further contribute to the consolidation of the soil.

Cryptobiotic Soil

Over time, cryptobiotic soil becomes a complex oases of life among the rocks, “alive with earthworms, snails, millipedes, insects, and microorganisms, and nourishes grasses, wildflowers, and even trees.” As for humans, cryptobiotic soil is crucial to holding southwest soil intact and on the ground through the violent flash floods and wind storms that wash or blow away loose soil. In sum, it reduces erosion and blinding dust storms, two banes of the southwest landscape. What it cannot survive is trampling, by cows or horses, hikers or ATVs. Once crushed, its key components take decades if not centuries to recover, that is if the dirt doesn’t just blow away in the meantime. Old growth dirt! Must be a tough sell: Please Don't Step on the Dirt. Anti-environmentalists must love that one, though possibly the dust storms make some of them, the locals at least, more sympathetic.

The Slickrock Trail is only a 2.5 mile loop, but for its size it’s a great one. I could easily see myself doing it over and over, in different directions, different seasons, different light. On this evening, the breeze was strong but delightful and blowing no dust, though I wondered how my tent was faring in its pile of orange dust (it was faring fine). The skies were active but the light was awful, and I lollygagged twice around in hopes of getting some good pictures. I could see swaths of distant landscape lit by the sun, brilliant detail on canyon walls some 20 miles away. I remained in gray though, and tried to be content with pure form.






Just when I gave up and started heading back to the car, the sun came out in time for a fine sunset. Still, I had a deep sense of dejection, which was troubling. I had just enjoyed a terrific stroll. Was I dejected because I got no light and no pictures? I had to puzzle that out. I realized that taking pictures in great light gives me a sense of elation, and the absence of this elation brings dejection. At first I thought it might be similar to an alcohol or marijuana high, but what really struck my memory was the elation of winning a Little League baseball game, and the opposite sensation of losing one. It isn’t serious, it fades soon enough, but is quite real while it’s there.

After a night at Hamburger Rock I got to the Needles Squaw Flat campground at 8:00 A.M. Things were tougher than I’d expected. I approached three sites where the people appeared to be leaving and each time they told me someone had already claimed the site. It seems you had to approach people before they showed signs of leaving, presumably from the ticket on their post. It seemed awfully rude to me. I guess you have to put up the next day’s ticket before going to bed or else they’ll be rattling your tent at dawn. But I got lucky. A woman saw my Seattle plates - her party was from Port Orchard - and arranged for me to get the site next to them that was opening up later in the morning. I felt like I should give her a finder’s fee, but she was just looking out for her group. The two sites were close together and by putting me in there they were preventing a big party, like theirs. Nevertheless, without her intervention I probably would not have gotten a site at all.

By the time I was all settled it was mid-day and I waited out the heat making calls to set up my prescription refill. The pharmacist in Moab did not carry my medication, and though the pharmacy in Monticello didn‘t either, the woman there was nice enough to order it for me so I could pick it up when I got down that way a couple of days later.

Finally I set out hiking on the Big Spring/Squaw Canyon loop. A stiff breeze, hazy, not ideal conditions, but at least I was off the ground. The trail skirted slightly above a landscape of slickrock oysters and juniper- bearing cryptobiotic patches similar to what I had hiked the night before on the Slickrock Trail. But rather than looking out across eroded washes I was now surrounded by huge orange and white walls rising high above. Some of it was carved into interesting shapes but most of it was more monolithic. Swirly, giving way to blocky, and above that another cap of tan sandstone. Cedar Mesa Sandstone interspersed with the Cutler formation said my guide book, but I wasn’t really able to identify which layer was which.

The pinnacle of the hike was the 5520’ divide between Spring and Squaw canyons, a terrific overview of a landscape eroded into a distinct architecture, like a great stone city. It was windy as all get-out so I found a little overhang shelter that did not sacrifice views. Well, I lost one direction but that still left three. No dust storms, the crypto-buggers were doing their part out in the untrammeled wilderness. Whenever the wind subsided, quiet reigned; not many people were out there. It would have been a great place in the low evening sun, but that was still a ways away. I would have needed a book.
















Chesler Park
I was up early Friday and on the trail out of Elephant Head Trailhead by 7:30, heading west toward Chesler Park, the heart of the Needles District, to catch the early morning sun on the rocks and - phooey - the sun didn’t deliver more than the milkiest of light. This is not as heart breaking as a cloudy evening; morning light is never as spectacular or sustained. Still…

Chesler Park is a wide-open, scrubby meadow surrounded by walls and towers of Cedar Mesa Sandstone rising hundreds of feet above. Unlike the monoliths from the day before, here the walls were eroded into fins, topped by turrets sculpted into amusing shapes: chess pieces, say, a hot water bottle, the kids from Our Gang. Reasonable people could differ, as thankfully the park hasn‘t taken to giving them official names. Not much in the way of arches, but some pretty good balancing rocks. I passed what I took to be a Fremont storage bin tucked into a high alcove. I also saw a dead-ringer for the Bob’s Big Boy hamburger.

The breeze was delightful, the temperature perfect, the scenery intriguing, yet I never broke out of my funk. Some of that I think was due to the flat terrain. I shuffled along without elevation gain for 11 miles round trip and never got any kind of heartbeat. Elevation gain generates aerobic breathing, plus it promises and then often delivers some kind of visual attainment.

The highlight of the hike was the Joint, where the trail enters a passageway slit between two towering fins. Some stretches narrowed to less than two feet wide, wider bits were filled with huge boulders to clamber over. It’s only about a tenth of a mile long, so the fun was brief, though I got to do it again on the way back. Then I was back up among the mushrooms, still dispirited but also hungry. Bob’s Big Boy. Mushrooms. Oyster Shells. It’s important to bring a good lunch on this hike. The forecast had called for a mostly sunny day, but the thin overcast never broke. I climbed up on a rock and took a brief nap to shake off the torpor.

The Joint

Back at the CG I ate and then took shelter from the sun and wind in an alcove conveniently located near my site. I studied my geology, trying to synthesize what I had learned thus far about the Colorado Plateau. Layer upon layer of steady state deposition for hundreds of millions of years! (The land then was not where the land was now.) Salt and sand and mud, one layer on top of the other, pushing the lower one down, time and pressure and chemicals producing distinct strata. Nothing got metamorphosed - it was not deep enough in the earth. Not much faulting or tilting. Very few igneous intrusions. Calmness itself.

Anyway, there it all sat until suddenly, geologically speaking, it all uplifted some 5000 feet. Geologists seem generally clueless about how this happened other than to say it seems to be related to the Rocky Mountain uplift. But unlike the Rockies, or nearly anything else that gets uplifted, it came up orderly and intact, like it took the elevator, with comparatively few jumbles and big messes. After that it gets pretty obvious. The Rockies rose higher and started sending down huge volumes of rapidly flowing water. The Colorado and Green Rivers cut deep. The bare and dry plateau sent less frequent floods cutting and slashing down to the big rivers. Layer after layer gets revealed, differentially exposed, differentially eroded. And here we are.

Pretty rudimentary I knew, and I figured it would sound quaint by the time I got to the Grand Canyon, a good reason not to start with the Grand Canyon I figured.

Saturday‘s forecast was dicey so I took the day off. I had decided the night before amid the din of my noisy neighbors that I would scout out a new campsite in the morning, but with morning upon me I settled in my chair and realized I didn’t really want the stress and aggravation of finding a new site. I got to thinking that this was a microcosm of life: you go out and hustle and find something a little better for yourself, or you find something nice about what you already have and just enjoy that. And this was nice - an expansive view over grassland, mesas in mid-distance, mountains in deep distance, some sun some clouds, and very quiet. Sure I wish I didn’t have to come 150 yards from my tent. But I could work hard all morning to get that, then have some lout pull in right next to me and play the radio all afternoon.

As for the metaphor, the problem in real life is this: if you settle back and just enjoy what you have, forces will be at work to take that very thing away. Nothing is secure. Except maybe alcohol. If you settle for an alcoholic cloud you’re not likely to be disappointed. They’ll always let you have that.

The day began to cool, but the wind kept me hunkered down in my alcove, at first out of the sun and then out of a light drizzle. The forecast also called for thunderstorms, which would render my shelter a bit more hazardous. In addition to studying my geology (and daydreaming) I was reading Trespass, by Amy Irvine, in which she and her boyfriend, both Utah wilderness activists, move into the heart of the rural county most virulently opposed to their cause. The author’s intermittent sketches of the issues of grazing and ATVs were quite good, and her account of Mormon history was excellent, at least for ol’ ignorant me. She’s good on her father, and his mother. But there was something odd about her story. While she portrayed the people of San Juan County as rather pathetic and contemptible, she badly wanted to make friends and be accepted. She seemed happy when people were friendly to her because they were assuring her she was a Mormon, a religion she expressed contempt for. It was more relevant to me than most of my reading. In two days I would be driving into the country she was discussing. I would be picking up a prescription the drugstore was quite nice to special order for me. Then again even Irvine liked the bank tellers.

The day never did turn around. The wind only got worse, intruding even on my hideaway. My books and notebooks became gritty with sand and I got a couple of face-fulls myself. No dramatic thunderstorms arose. When my feet started getting cold I began to wonder if it was just me, but then a couple walked by dressed for winter. I retreated to my car and turned on the heat.

Rugged outdoorsman hah!

I’m an effete aesthete

(with stinky feet).

Peekaboo

Early Sunday I set off on my most ambitious Canyonlands hike, a 9.4 RT cross-country jaunt to Peekaboo Arch and an ancient Fremont pictograph panel. The nice early light hazed out some throughout the day but generally held its own. The temperature was hard to beat. And the trail, nearly all slickrock, was terrific. Cairns marked the trail but sparingly enough to require real attentiveness. The net elevation gain was only 400 feet but constant climbing up and over ridges made for more invigorating hiking than the mild gradation would suggest. Loose gravel on the steep slickrock inclines offered opportunities for slipping and breaking an arm. Getting handholds and footholds could be a challenge. At one point, a six-foot metal ladder was bolted to the rock to enable hikers to scale a mushroom lacking adequate footholds. This was the first time I’d come upon a ladder on a wilderness hike. Later a second ladder closer to 20-feet descended a vertical joint barely wide enough for me and my day pack.

All of this had the effect of focusing the mind on the detail near at hand, discouraging daydreaming or soaking up the scenery. The broader landscape was certainly compelling in its own right but remained relatively constant. Nor was it entirely stark; intermittent canyons cut into the slickrock held little greenbelts of juniper and pinyon. The trail was ingeniously laid out, giving a novice such as myself a real sense of exploration while implicitly pointing to a thousand directions for actual exploring. Our hero Doug Peacock would be out here for weeks, scornful of the cairns of course. 

Spot the cairn

The trail ended at Salt Creek Road, a 4WD track along a sweet riparian area, part sun, part shade, light breeze, birdsong. I thought Peekaboo Arch was a dud, but the pictograph was great. White chalk-like drawings from the Ancestral Puebloans were cool, and beneath them were deeply faded more primitive red drawings going way back to Archaic hunter gatherers. I had seem two people all day - two women from Flagstaff, and was out here all alone. 

My solitude was broken when an SUV came quietly down the Salt Creek Road. The driver hiked up to the arch where I was sitting and we had a nice chat. He had spent the last several days in the Maze, getting battered with lightning and thunderstorms. He had a prosthetic leg but was still a rock climber. He was not afraid to talk about it but I was too cowardly to ask what I really want to know: did it happen in Iraq?

Sunny Chesler Park

Up and out early Monday to once again hike to Chesler Park, this time in beautiful morning sunshine and temperature. Largely the same hike as a few days earlier but with better light. In 4.2 miles and back, an 8.5 mile stroll. I could have stretched it to Elephant Arch but I just found the flatness too enervating. I was back to my car by 12:15.

Our Gang

Over coffee I took to deep daydreaming about hiking in the Cascades and when I snapped back to reality it took me a moment to remember where I was. I got to feeling that Canyonlands couldn’t touch Mount Rainier. As far as I had seen, Canyonlands is not beautiful as the other parks, though it is rougher. Color of the main formation a bit bland, not the right word. The other formation while not beautiful is one of the more amusing formations I saw. My point being basically that Thelma and Louise got lucky.

Then it was time for me to drive to Moab. I didn’t want to, as it felt pretty great where I was. But I did it anyway. The drive was fine. I was struck by how much of the scenery was “National Park quality”. I topped at KOA for a shower, went to a grocery store to pick up a few things and promptly locked my keys in the car. Locksmith - $55. I had coffee at a bookstore and then bought a new camera - $300. Then up to Upper Big Bend CG for an $8.00 site in the wind and the dust. These windy days were getting to me.