Saturday, June 16:
Sunday, June 17: Monday, June 18: Tuesday, June 19: Wednesday, June 20: Thursday, June 21: Friday, June 22: Saturday, June 23: Sunday, June 24:Sunday, June 24, 2007
Return to California
My Utah adventures complete, I spent the rest of Saturday driving across Utah to Cedar City. Sunday I drove the 700 miles from Cedar City to home. Surprisingly, I was able to make the distance in just under two tanks of gas. This is the first time ever that my fuel milage actually matched the EPA highway estimate. Possibly I have never before actually traveled a full tank of gas entirely on interstate highways with no city or mountain driving mixed in.
The drive was pretty uneventful. The only think I distinctly recall is the huge, smelly cattle feedlot near Coalinga. Man, that was gross. I wonder how I'd failed to notice it on my trip out the previous weekend.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Moab Slickrock
I got up early again on Saturday to head over to the Moab Slickrock mountain biking trail. I thought that the motel's continental breakfast would be available at 6:30am, but I was wrong, and the office didn't open until 7:00am. So I dropped off my key and headed off without breakfast.
The trail is in the Sand Flats Recreation Area, and the entrance station was also not manned quite so early in the morning. Unfortunately I didn't have the appropriate change for self registration. OK, if I had to head back to town for change, at least I could also get breakfast.
OK, so trying again at 7:30am I got myself registered and drove to the head of the trail. My bike had survived the week OK in my trunk (even over the washboards), so I got it put together and set out. After about 100 yards I realized that I'd forgotten my sunscreen. OK, back to the car.
OK, headed out once again. This time I got about 400 yards before stopping for a drink... and realizing that I'd left my water in the car. Grn. Hurrying back to the car, I carried a little to much speed into a gully, trying to keep some momentum up the other side. Wham! My bike just couldn't change angle that fast without taking a beating. The mount for my mini-pump has been cracked for a while, so it doesn't hold quite as securely as it should, and the pump went flying. I was surprised that the only consequence of that heavy hit and horrible scraping noise was the pump falling out.
I retrieved the pump, returned to the car, and strapped on my hippack full of water. On the parking lot it became clear that my front wheel was now scraping the brakes once on each revolution, as if it were now out of true. It was clearly wrong, but not too bad, and I almost decided to go back on the trail that way. But I took a couple more turns around and finally realized that I'd actually unseated the tire in one place. Whew; I could fix that.
OK, one more try. It's a good thing I stopped for water. As this
sign made clear, water is highly essential. In fact, the sign had me
thinking about maybe not doing the full 12-mile loop. Well, I'd
decide how I felt as I went.
I didn't bring my camera along. I feel confident in my biking skills
that I figured I probably wouldn't crash, but I didn't want my
camera to be under me if I was wrong. So you'll just have to live
with this picture from the parking area. Almost all of the trail was
along the rock. Although the trail did not go up that rock hill in
the center background, that slope is pretty representative of what
most of the trail did look like.
Near the beginning of the main trail is a 2-mile practice loop is supposed to cover pretty similar terrain conditions. I went around the loop and found that I was doing OK. I have enough bike control that I could handle even the steepest downhills, although I now made sure to keep my speed under control. Many of the uphills were so steep that I had trouble steering with so little weight on the front tire. A few I had to give up and walk up, but I noticed that I wasn't the only one with that problem, so I didn't feel too bad.
Toward the end of the practice loop, although I was still doing OK, I decided that doing the entire 12-mile loop was going to be too hard to remain fun. I figured I'd continue down the main trail a mile or so to what looked like a decent viewpoint, then perhaps turn around and head back. That seemed like it'd give me enough distance to feel like I had fun, but not so much distance to ruin it.
So I continued on, crawling carefully off each rock fin and and slogging in low gear back up the next one. After what seemed like more than enough distance, I didn't hadn't seen any particular viewpoint, nor did it seem like one would be upcoming, so I went ahead and turned around.
Just past the bottom of the first hill my front tire suddenly started hissing loudly. It didn't take long for it to lose essentially all of its air, but fortunately there was a good shady spot just within range.
I was surprised that I had gotten a flat since I hadn't hit anything, and there hadn't been any obvious sharp things on the polished rock. Upon inspection, I realized that it wasn't a puncture at all. The problem was that the valve stem had cracked at the base. My best guess is that the tube hadn't been seated quite straight, perhaps after the hard hit earlier in the morning. Or perhaps the tube was simply old enough that it couldn't stand up to the sustained forces from the hard downhill braking.
The next guy along kindly offered assistance, but I waved him off since I had all the things needed to replace the tube. Or so I thought. Just after he rode off I realized that I'd forgotten one more thing in the car: spare tubes. [Insert swearing here.]
It's bad for the tire to roll on it with an empty tube, so I hitched the front of the bike under my arm and started hiking back to the car. That was pretty tiring, but I soon realized that I could flip the bike over and push it by the handlebars while rolling it on its rear tire. This was reasonably comfortable except that by this time rivers of gross dirty sweat were dripping into my eyes, and I didn't have a hand free to wipe my face.
Looking on the bright side, that final incident ensured that I had no
regrets about leaving Utah and heading home. I had no pangs of, "Gee,
I'd love to stay out here just one more day."
Moab Slickrock
Time: 7:30am - 9:45am
Biking distance: 2.0 miles
Biking ascent: ~400 feet
Hiking distance: 1.2 miles
Biking ascent: ~200 feet
Water: 1.5 liters
Friday, June 22, 2007
Post-Arches Relaxation
I was ready to relax by Friday afternoon, so I ate lunch at a microbrewery restaurant, Eddie McStiff's. (I bet they hate it when people call them Ed McStiffy's.) Utah's liquor laws are very strange, but I didn't notice any difficulties in just getting a beer at a restaurant.
I spent the whole afternoon hanging out at my motel reading a book, then went to another microbrewery restaurant for dinner, the Moab Brewery. The Moab Brewery was having some sort of motorcycle "show and shine", so the parking lot was filled with cruisers, and the restaurant was filled with burly motorcycle dudes. Fortunately they had room for a small hiker dude.
During dinner I heard gossip from the next table that they'd had a fire in the electrical box and they'd be shutting off the electricity soon. Indeed, just as I was signing my credit card slip the lights went out. It was still light outside, and the windows were large, so it probably wasn't a big deal for those people still inside as long as their food was already ready.
Six-day hiking total:
Time: 30 hours 10 minutes
Distance: 61.7 miles
Ascent: 12,210 feet
Water: 10.25 liters
Arches - Devil's Garden
After returning and packing up camp, I drove over to the Devils Garden trailhead. This trail packs a lot of arches in a short area. I did the loop backwards, meaning that I did the more difficult primitive trail while it was still cool, then returned on the maintained trails later. Since everything was so close together, this section will have more photos and less text for each.
This turkey vulture was just getting ready for morning.
This boulder appears to be melting.
Private Arch.
A hare.
Dark Angel. (I checked. There is no Arch Angel. Why not?)
Double O Arch. Notice the second, smaller arch below.
A boulder with eroding supports.
As usual, the primitive trail was hard to follow. In some places a
bit more explanation was required. Interestingly enough, just after
taking this photo I helped a couple coming towards me to find the
appropriate place to climb down off the fin.
Many more fins. Apparently it is very easy to get lost among them.
Navajo Arch.
Partition Arch. (The other side of the partition is unexciting.)
Landscape Arch. This arch has the longest span in the park. The
trail used to go up to the base of the arch until a 60-ton slab fell
off in 1991. Fortunately, the people underneath had sufficient
warning to get out of the way. The park collected some good photos
and even a video of the event. It must have been something to be
there when it happened.
Tunnel Arch.
Pine Tree Arch.
Devils Garden
Time: 7:10am - 10:55am
Distance: 7.2 miles
Ascent: ~500 feet
Water: 1.25 liters
Arches - Broken Arch
Friday morning I got up at 6:00am. While it was still cool I checked
my tire pressures and restored them to something decent. I left my
tent up and walked over to to the Broken Arch trailhead just three
campsites away. It was still early enough for bunnies to be out and
about.
I was expecting the Broken Arch to not go all the way across. It
turns out that it does make a complete arch. I guess it's called
"broken" because it has a distinct crack across it, so the two halves
are perhaps only staying up by leaning on each other.
Broken Arch
Time: 6:20am - 6:45am
Distance: 1.1 miles
Ascent: 30 feet
Water: 0.25 liters
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Arches - Double Arch and The Windows
Next up was Double Arch. I assume that "double" refers to the two
major arches that share a pillar, but I noticed that one of those
arches is itself a double, with a tiny gap in the top of its span.
While walking toward the Windows trailhead, I walked into a shaded
area. I looked over my shoulder to see what formation was blocking
the sun and saw this scary sight. I don't even know if these windows
have names, but only at just this angle could a small amount of sky
be seen through both at once. With the sun behind casting red light
against the wall of each window, it made quite the impression of
bright eyes with red-glowing eye sockets. It reminded me a lot of a
jack-o-lantern.
After that view, the Turret Arch and the North and South Windows
seemed rather prosaic.
The sunset was pretty, though.
Double Arch and The Windows
Time: 7:45pm - 8:40pm
Distance: 2.5 miles
Ascent: 150 feet
Water: 0.5 liters
Arches - Balancing Rock
A trivial trail goes around Balancing Rock, but the best viewpoint
seemed to be right at the trailhead.
Balancing Rock
Time: 5 minutes
Distance: 0.2 miles
Ascent: 30 feet
Water: 0.0 liters
Arches - Park Avenue
After dinner in Moab, I headed back into Arches with the idea of
stopping at the various viewpoints along the road. Many of these
stops turned into short hikes. The first hike was along Park Avenue.
Much of the route was along the bottom of a wash that was scraped down
to the underlying sandstone. The sandstone was weathered in
interesting ways. I'm still trying to figure out what carved out the
straight channel from lower right to upper left of this photo.
Park Avenue
Time: 6:35pm - 7:20pm
Distance: 2.0 miles
Ascent: 300 feet
Water: 0.25 liters
Arches - Intermission
Before leaving the trailhead, I dropped the pressure in my car's tires. I had had them pumped up pretty high for optimal highway grip, even higher than the recommended pressure (which is tuned for comfort). I had no way to get a "cold" temperature, but I took about 8 p.s.i. out of each tire to get them down to a warm pressure of 33-35. Now I could skim over the top of most of the washboarded sections at 30 mph with minor chatter. Before that, anything over 15 mph induced vibration severe enough to be scary.
I wanted to hike some more, but it was getting too hot. So instead I went driving. (Mmm... air conditioning...)
First I checked the Willow Springs Trail. This dirt
road is marked as a 4wd trail on the map, although that didn't stop
Google Maps from recommending it as the route into Arches. I was able
to get a good distance along it before running into a major
obstacle. It's hard to tell in the photo, but this wash needed three
tricky maneuvers to cross it. In the near foreground is a sharp drop
that I'd need to take on the left to avoid scraping my belly. Just
beyond that is a another drop, less severe, but ending in a sharp
angle that would threaten my front air dam. That one would be safest
to take on the right, if I could get over there in the space
available. The other side has a sharp rise that would be completely
impossible except for a very narrow region in the middle that was
barely enough for my car... maybe..
I might have tried it (very slowly) if I'd had somewhere important to go on the other side. Since I didn't, I just turned around and went back.
Next I headed back to UT-128 to find a spot in a
canyon shadow where I could sit and watch the river. As this photo
shows, there were shaded spots, and there were areas to pull off, but
somehow the two never intersected until much later in the afternoon.
I'd been contending with bugs all day. I'd hit a cloud of tiny bugs
first thing in the morning, but they must have gotten bigger
throughout the day. By afternoon, this is what I was trying to focus
through.
Arches - Tower Arch
After claiming my campsite, I drove up a dirt road to my second
planned hike. The road was advertised as a "2wd road". It was
certainly graded well enough for low-clearance vehicles, but it was
pretty badly washboarded. There were also some washes with very soft,
fine dirt, but that posed no problem for my 4wd car, even with my
balding tires. Although it was sort of neat to feel the car dig
straight down for about half an inch when taking off from a stop.
My destination was the Tower Arch. Given the minor inconvenience of
getting to the trailhead, I wasn't surprised that I saw no one else on
the entire hike. In addition, being in a less traveled area, the
trail was even more primitive. Here is a picture that I swear I took
with the camera dead level. In places, the trail was quite steep up
the rock faces.
In some places, the trail was easy to follow. In other places, it was
hard to find the next duck. In the photo on the right, there were six
ducks in the general field of view of the camera, but I can only spot
two now. Even for the two that I can see in the photo, I'm only sure
that they're ducks because I remember seeing them in person.
The tower arch was suitably impressive.
Returning toward the car, it was interesting to contrast the
ruggedness of the area I was hiking to the flatness of the area that I
drove across.
Signs similar to this are throughout Arches. They're telling you to
not walk off trail because you'll kill the delicate stuff growing on
the rocks. This one had a particularly surreal graphic.
Tower Arch
Time: 11:30am - 1:00pm
Distance: 3.4 miles
Ascent: ~500 feet
Water: 1.0 liters
Arches - Delicate Arch
I slept Wednesday night at a motel in Green River from 9:30pm to 5:45am Thursday morning. From Green River, my intention was to take I-15 a short distance to UT-191, which would take me down the west side of Arches National Park to its entrance at the south end.
Perhaps it was during one of those five-minute one-mph passes on I-15 that I missed seeing my exit. In any case, when the next exit of consequence showed as UT-128, I checked my map and realized my mistake. Fortunately, UT-128 goes down the east side of Arches along the Colorado River. So not only was it a valid alternate route, but it was a fun, pretty alternate route.
I had a reserved camping spot, so I could head straight for the first
hike of the day, to Delicate Arch. Despite its popularity, this was a
"primitive" trail, meaning that you had to follow the ducks (cairns)
to find the path. This would become an Arches theme.
On a short spur was a view of pictoglyphs on a boulder. These are
historic, not prehistoric. One clue that they're not so old is that
they show a man riding a horse, which didn't happen until Europeans
arrived.
Delicate Arch
Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Distance: 3.0 miles
Ascent: 480 feet
Water: 0.25 liters
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Escalante Petrified Forest
A little further up the road is the Escalante Petrified Forest. I felt going in that I wasn't very excited to see the rocks shaped like wood, but it might be interesting to learn about them. As it turned out, however, they were all out of trail guides. It made me somewhat cranky to see the marker for interesting item #3, and all I could see was that it was a rock. Also, it was hot.
Escalante Petrified Forest
Time: 11:45am - 12:45pm
Distance: 2.0 miles
Ascent: ~600 feet
Water: 0.5 liters
Mossy Cave
Leaving Bryce and heading towards Arches, I stopped at Mossy Cave. This is technically within the Bryce boundary, but on a different highway and outside the fee area.
The trail parallels a gully that gets its water entirely from an
artificial ditch that the early settlers dug. Somehow that makes it
less impressive. But it did have the only waterfall I saw on the
trip.
The cave is spring fed, so it's natural. It's also boring. Is this
the only place in Utah with moss or something?
Mossy Cave
Time: 20 minutes
Distance: 0.9 miles
Ascent: 300 feet
Water: 0.0 liters
Bryce - Peek-A-Boo Loop
Wednesday morning I got up at 6:00am. After packing up camp, I headed
back to Bryce Point to start the Peek-A-Boo Loop Trail. Well, first I
blinked and missed my turn. That did lead to this pronghorn spotting,
however. During this Utah trip I saw a fair number of deer that had a
remarkable ability to run away as soon as they heard my camera lens
motor out. For this guy I cheated by taking the picture from inside
the car so that he couldn't hear the lens.
The Peek-A-Boo Loop follows a horse trail for part of its distance. Here's a riddle for you: why is it that a horse can be broken, but it can't be housebroken? I've noticed in my hikes that the horses seem to poop mostly on the steepest parts of the trail. Thus, a trail with only one major steep part has most of its poop in one area. Stinky!
The hoodoos here were the same as elsewhere in Bryce. So instead of
more hoodoo pictures, here's a squirrel.
I mostly avoided taking pictures of artificial windows cut for the
trail, but this one was kind of neat.
Peek-a-boo Loop Trail
Time: 7:20am - 9:40am
Distance: 5.5 miles
Ascent: 1555 feet
Water: 0.75 liters
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Bryce - Auto Tour
Many of the interesting spots in Bryce Canyon are clustered close together near the entrance, close enough that if you blink, you'll miss your turn. After missing my turn back to the campground, I figured that I might as well take the auto tour of the back areas of the park. I ended up stopping at Farview Point, Rainbow Point, Natural Bridge, Paria View, Bryce Point, and Inspiration Point.
Some of these points included a short hike from the parking area to the best view.
Auto tour:
Time: 4:00pm - 5:45pm
Distance: ~1.5 miles
Ascent: ~350 feet
Water: 0.0 liters
After dinner, I wasn't so sleepy as on previous evenings. I tried to read a book at my campsite, but the bugs were bothersome. I tried shutting myself in my tent, but that was warm from sitting out all day. Also, the guys at the next campsite were having a good ol' time, so I didn't really get to sleep until 10:30.
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