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.
