Day 5 - Canyonlands
Trip Start
Jul 14, 2008
1
6
13
Trip End
Jul 28, 2008
Moab,
Utah,
United States
Saturday, July 19, 2008
some off-roading. We set off with maps in hand and plans to take
Shafer Trail from Moab to the Canyonlands, in itself, was labeled an
easy 2 hour trail. The beginning was a nice, somewhat rocky, even
drive. About 45 minutes into the ride and we were on the edge of
a cliff. One particular pass (in one of the pictures) was quite
frightening to say the least. It was a single lane that looked
like some of the edge had fallen off around a blind right hand curve,
downhill. Beth had a "come to Jesus" moment as we made that
turn
Salt Ponds
. Soon after, we had a breath-taking view of an "S" shape ofthe Colorado River from 3500 feet up (no ropes, no fence). You
can see the Jeep parked next to the cliff edge in one of the
photos. The trail wound around the cliff edge for quite a bit,
then connected with another trail which heads up the face of the cliff
in a series of switchbacks. We had a driver in front of us in a
2-wheel drive Toyota SUV that got stuck numerous times. We helped
put rocks in the sand areas on the cliff edge to get them
through, At one point I thought we were going to have to tow them
up. Once at the top, there was an overlook of the switchbacks
which we posted as a photo on this page.
Once at the top, we
took a breather at the "Island in the Sky" visitors center, then
followed the asphalt roads to the overlook points on this uppermost
tier of the Canyonlands park
See the cliff road?
. We have a picture of Beth and I atthe Grand View overlook and we have some incredible panorama video of
the view.
On the way down, we took a trail called the "Long
Canyon". This starts off with "Pucker's Pass" which is labeled a
difficult trail and it was a technical rock crawl in a canyon that was
barely wide enough
for the vehicle to pass. A little ways down
and there was a huge fallen rock that I guess was too big to move so
you just drive under it like a tunnel (see photo). The rest of
this trail was a fairly easy set of switchbacks since the drop was only
about 500 feet as opposed to the 4000-6000 foot drop on the other trail.
Once
out we ate at a diner in Moab and are calling it an early night since
we are getting up at the crack of dawn to white water raft on the
Colorado tomorrow.
Take care,
Tadd and Beth
