Moab!

This is the first of many posts lacking photos I took; snagged a couple Facebook photos to convey the impression...my words will have to step up to the task. You all know what Utah looks like anyway. My former roommate Jake and some friends were driving down to Moab for a contact improv jam, so I figured I would tag along and putz around in some of the wilderness areas nearby. We rolled in Thursday evening and meandered about the city park before heading to the home of Jake’s friend Travis, who lives with other folks working on a community home-building project. They use straw bales, mud, pallets, and passive solar techniques to build houses for low-income residents of Moab. Awesome! I made a visit to the Moab Farmer’s Market and enjoyed some ginger tea and live tunes from Stonefed, one of Moab’s two local bands. Hours after arriving, it was clear that Moab is definitely the Gainesville/Boulder/Portland of Utah. Travis tipped me off to some good spots for backpacking, and on Friday morning I headed over to the Mill Creek area, a canyon carved out by runoff from the La Sal mountains outside of town. The beginning of the trail lazily makes its way up the canyon alongside the stream, with occasional crossings. On a particularly difficult crossing, I carried my pack above my head and waded up the stream. After setting the pack on a rock, I began to climb up when the pack slid into the water and went for a swim. I grabbed it fairly quickly and the sun dried it out in due time… After that crossing, the trail became difficult to follow and eventually disappeared. My plan was to find a spot to camp and turn around and go back the way I came the next day, but I decided to make a loop and try to aim for some of the four-wheeler trails at the end of the canyon to get a ride back into town. So I continued on until I found a cozy tent spot on a flat rock elevated from the stream, right as the clouds rolled in… As I finished setting up the tent, the sky opened up with an onslaught of hail, and I dove inside to ride out the storm. Minutes after the hail stopped, the sun emerged and the canyon was as dry as before. I scrambled onto an outcropping and examined my canyon home. Surrounded by these fiery-orange monuments carved out by eons of erosion and the fragile ecosystem hugging the stream, I was humbled and awed with a deep reverence for the Earth. I could only sit and wonder until the next round of clouds rolled in, dumping fierce torrents of rain into the canyon. I was high and dry in my REI Camp Dome II, but could not avoid thinking about the rain dislodging boulders high above and sending them crashing down the canyon. In the next break between rains, I enjoyed a marvelous jambalaya feast, stretched out with some canyon yoga, and oriented myself with the map and compass. The rain continued on throughout the evening with less intensity until I fell into a deep and well-needed sleep. At the crack of dawn, I struck camp and headed up the canyon. I found a gentle draw to climb up and out onto the mesa and then hooked up with an ATV trail, following it for three to four miles before hitching a ride back to Travis’s place with a singer-songwriter living in Moab. On my way down, I passed a crew of four-wheelin country club types, who commented, “Poor bastard’s Jeep must have broke down.” The public lands outside of Moab have apparently seen a crazy uptick in Jeep and four-wheeler traffic, so much that many of these natural areas are being degraded and destroyed, requiring more and more regulation. Personally, I think this mode of travel destroys any chance of developing a real appreciation for how remote and difficult this terrain really is. Just hike or bike damnit! At about three o’clock that same day, the whole crew headed out to the Island in the Sky area of Canyonlands National Park, where Travis’s park pass got us in for free. Hell yeah! We began our hike on the Sincline Loop trail and then diverged from the path over a few ridges, eventually working our way onto the neck of an immense mesa. By this time the long light of the setting sun was dancing over the endless stretches of sage and crumbling crags interrupted by washes of burnt-orange and rust-red soils weaving their way down to the canyon floor in infinitely-repeating fractal patterns. We hiked to the end of the mesa, at one point crossing a narrow bridge about five feet wide with sheer cliffs on either side. The mesa itself was a beautiful alpine desert, strewn with boulders suggestive of ancient lava flows supporting tenuous populations of lichens, shrub brush, and microbes. From the top, one can see the Colorado and Green rivers, the Maze and Needles areas of Canyonlands, Glen Canyon, the San Rafael Swell, and all sorts of rock formations like Cleopatra’s chair. We set up camp just as the sun was setting on this surreal landscape and cooked up a feast, enjoying the cool, dry air late into the evening. We slept late into Sunday, enjoying short walks around our mesa and munching on pleasant foods, before hiking out that afternoon. This hike was a dream. Since there is no established trail leading out to this mesa, few people ever get the chance to experience Canyonlands in this way. Although I have been to Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks, there is no substitute for climbing up and down canyons, weaving around mesas, and scrambling up slick rock. Monday we returned to the Mill Creek Canyon to swim and relax near the stream, and then made our way to some more public land outside of town, where we swam in the Colorado River and hiked out to an arch. We made the somewhat-terrifying climb up and around to the top of the arch, using steep stairs carved into the rock. There were plenty of hooks for ropes, suggesting that we probably shouldn't be free-climbing this wall... Overall, I backpacked about 35 miles up and down various terrains on this adventure, and hiked much more. There is something spiritual about wandering around in the desert for a few days cleansing the body and the soul...I have rarely been in such harmony and communion with my body and with nature.