Rock of Ages
The jeep rental place allows us to pick the little red beast up the night before so that we can get an early start on our adventure.
It is brand new, only 4000 miles on it, they sell them off after 12,000 miles. This is known in the 4x4 world as a stocker. It has bigger more aggressive tires than normal and it has some lift, meaning the body is higher off the ground. Kind of like picking up your skirts to get over a mud puddle. It does not have lockers, which lock the differential and make all 4 tires work all the time, and it does not have the extra body armor that the extreme jeeps do, nor the special transmissions that make it slower and more powerful. The really extreme jeeps don’t go on regular roads, they come in on trailers and their fancy tires never have to touch pavement or go to the grocery store.
In CO, we went along on a jeep trip with a club, and the guys could talk for hours about the things they did to their 4x4’s or the things they wanted to do. I’m able to talk about wheels pretty good for a girl, but I understood maybe one word in 10. Now I’m down to one in 5. It always interests me that people like to have an impenetrable jargon to use while talking about their hobby/job/obsession. I have been told that this is due to need for precision in communication, but I have my doubts.
We have been approaching the choice of trail with a little wariness. Don is an experienced off road driver, he took truckloads of tourists on some of the most hair raising trails in the San Juan Mountains, and in his stock small pickup took me on some of them. However, those trails weren’t really chosen for their technical difficulty, they just went to gorgeous places, albeit with some heart stopping drop offs. Here, some of the trails are for to get to gorgeous, but a lot of them are to see if you have the cojones and skill to try anything.
We settle on a trail that the book calls Fins and Things that is rated difficult, but we are told is OK for a stocker. This trail is up in the rocks above the town, past the dump, where the really bad trails are. We drive off with our map and our book, up into the dirt. A little way in, we see a fin, a solid smooth lump of rock that shows the faint black marks of tires and has the white stegosaurus stencil that is the trail marker on it, going up and out of sight. We are apparently supposed to drive up it. We have seen pictures of doing this. Talk about a distant elephant. Deep breath, tighten butt, hold on, and we slowly, yes, yikes, the little red jeep does climb up the rock. Wow. OK, now we are on top of the rock and we can’t see where to go because the nose of the jeep hides the road down, off, Yikes again. We get out and look over the edge of the rock which is nice a smooth and goes down just as steeply as the up side. Once again, we grab hold, take a deep breath and s-l-o-w-l-y ease our way down. Another deep breath. Wow, yahoo, we did it!
We spent the rest of the day happily crawling up and down slick rock fins, and scrabbling down rocky ledges and climbing up bolder fields with a happy grin on both faces. Having actually done it we have a great time. There are one or two places where the drop off gives me paws, but in general what a blast. I can see why all these people are here to play on this stuff. We go on to Gemini Bridges trail with more ledges to crawl over. These leads to another double set of arches, and this time we are on the top of them. One peek at the big drop and I go back to the jeep.
For our final run, we go after some caches that sort of needed a 4x4, and sadly give the jeep back to his father.
The scenery while we were climbing around was pretty spectacular, with the La Sal mountains completely clear and snow capped, and all the other red bluffs and orange cliffs being really almost too picturesque. We are getting a little jaded about all this extravagant red rock. It is pretty imperious scenery, demanding attention and adulation at every turn of the road..
Next day we drive the truck out to Dead Horse Point State Park. The Colorado River charges its way through the red canyons and meets the Green River which is charging through its own canyon, so there is a vast maze of canyons to see out here and in Canyonlands National Monument. Dead Horse Point is a narrow spit of land on top of the level mesa. According to local legend, some wranglers built a horse trap out on the end of it by blocking off the 30’ wide spit. They apparently took some of the horses and left the others to die there in the natural corral with a 2000’ drop on all sides. Not very nice, I’m guessing the wranglers came to a bad end on the way out with the first group of horses, at least that makes me feel better than them just leaving them.
The view is astonishing. A sharp drop to what is called the White Rim, a strata of pale and slightly tougher sandstone. This white rim edges the rest of the canyons which goes down through to the deep red rock. The strata look like one of those contour models made from layers of cardboard to show the elevation.
On the way back, we daringly took the truck on a trail that is billed as easy and OK for 2 wheel drive. The truck has plenty of ground clearance, but it is a big stout diesel with way too much power, and no weight in the back to speak of. But we clunked our way through Pucker Pass, had to pull in the mirrors in a couple of places so we didn’t scrape the mountain side while we tried to keep the outside tires on the road, but the truck was great.
Next day we drove into the Canyonlands National Monument which is really in the middle of the confluence of the two rivers, and affords endless wide vistas and dark red abysses. We can see the White Rim Trail going all around the high point we are on. This trail doesn’t have many evil places, and is 92 miles long and would be a two or three day camping jeep tour. I am plotting how to do this in my 4x4 truck . It would be so grand to sleep out there in the great stillness of these canyons.
At this point I am really tired of red rocks. They are just too much. And there are way too many of them and too many buttes and needles and canyons and yes arches. So for a change, we drive up into the La Sal Mountains to look for some geocaches on our list. We pass through yet another series of red and yellow canyons, into a lovely green valley that has a red rock “Castle”, so of course it is called Castle Valley. But in the distance, the slopes of the La Sals are gray! Oh joy, a mountain that is a proper color. As we switchback our way up, we are in stunted oak forests that are not leaved out, so they are a dark gray, and soon we have the lighter gray of the aspens drifting like smoke up the mountain side. We stop for lunch at a primitive CG and underfoot I can see what will be a riot of spring flowers, but it is too soon, and quite chilly. The clouds come in, the road to two of the caches is not open, and soon it begins to snow very lightly.
So we come back down to Moab, and avert our eyes from the Technicolor rocks and the fit and furious bikers and the jeepers whom we are jealous off.
Next day, after a long pull through the totally last red canyon, we are up on the dry plateau and the only rocks we can see are pale tan and lie quietly as rocks should. We cross Douglas Pass, a climb of 4,000 feet, with no red rocks. It is a long hard climb, and the truck just keeps on keeping on. We cross into CO for a bit and then back into UT for a stop at Dinosaur National Monument, which has nice tan and pale yellow rocks as well as dinosaur bones.
It is brand new, only 4000 miles on it, they sell them off after 12,000 miles. This is known in the 4x4 world as a stocker. It has bigger more aggressive tires than normal and it has some lift, meaning the body is higher off the ground. Kind of like picking up your skirts to get over a mud puddle. It does not have lockers, which lock the differential and make all 4 tires work all the time, and it does not have the extra body armor that the extreme jeeps do, nor the special transmissions that make it slower and more powerful. The really extreme jeeps don’t go on regular roads, they come in on trailers and their fancy tires never have to touch pavement or go to the grocery store.
In CO, we went along on a jeep trip with a club, and the guys could talk for hours about the things they did to their 4x4’s or the things they wanted to do. I’m able to talk about wheels pretty good for a girl, but I understood maybe one word in 10. Now I’m down to one in 5. It always interests me that people like to have an impenetrable jargon to use while talking about their hobby/job/obsession. I have been told that this is due to need for precision in communication, but I have my doubts.
We have been approaching the choice of trail with a little wariness. Don is an experienced off road driver, he took truckloads of tourists on some of the most hair raising trails in the San Juan Mountains, and in his stock small pickup took me on some of them. However, those trails weren’t really chosen for their technical difficulty, they just went to gorgeous places, albeit with some heart stopping drop offs. Here, some of the trails are for to get to gorgeous, but a lot of them are to see if you have the cojones and skill to try anything.
We settle on a trail that the book calls Fins and Things that is rated difficult, but we are told is OK for a stocker. This trail is up in the rocks above the town, past the dump, where the really bad trails are. We drive off with our map and our book, up into the dirt. A little way in, we see a fin, a solid smooth lump of rock that shows the faint black marks of tires and has the white stegosaurus stencil that is the trail marker on it, going up and out of sight. We are apparently supposed to drive up it. We have seen pictures of doing this. Talk about a distant elephant. Deep breath, tighten butt, hold on, and we slowly, yes, yikes, the little red jeep does climb up the rock. Wow. OK, now we are on top of the rock and we can’t see where to go because the nose of the jeep hides the road down, off, Yikes again. We get out and look over the edge of the rock which is nice a smooth and goes down just as steeply as the up side. Once again, we grab hold, take a deep breath and s-l-o-w-l-y ease our way down. Another deep breath. Wow, yahoo, we did it!
We spent the rest of the day happily crawling up and down slick rock fins, and scrabbling down rocky ledges and climbing up bolder fields with a happy grin on both faces. Having actually done it we have a great time. There are one or two places where the drop off gives me paws, but in general what a blast. I can see why all these people are here to play on this stuff. We go on to Gemini Bridges trail with more ledges to crawl over. These leads to another double set of arches, and this time we are on the top of them. One peek at the big drop and I go back to the jeep.
For our final run, we go after some caches that sort of needed a 4x4, and sadly give the jeep back to his father.
The scenery while we were climbing around was pretty spectacular, with the La Sal mountains completely clear and snow capped, and all the other red bluffs and orange cliffs being really almost too picturesque. We are getting a little jaded about all this extravagant red rock. It is pretty imperious scenery, demanding attention and adulation at every turn of the road..
Next day we drive the truck out to Dead Horse Point State Park. The Colorado River charges its way through the red canyons and meets the Green River which is charging through its own canyon, so there is a vast maze of canyons to see out here and in Canyonlands National Monument. Dead Horse Point is a narrow spit of land on top of the level mesa. According to local legend, some wranglers built a horse trap out on the end of it by blocking off the 30’ wide spit. They apparently took some of the horses and left the others to die there in the natural corral with a 2000’ drop on all sides. Not very nice, I’m guessing the wranglers came to a bad end on the way out with the first group of horses, at least that makes me feel better than them just leaving them.
The view is astonishing. A sharp drop to what is called the White Rim, a strata of pale and slightly tougher sandstone. This white rim edges the rest of the canyons which goes down through to the deep red rock. The strata look like one of those contour models made from layers of cardboard to show the elevation.
On the way back, we daringly took the truck on a trail that is billed as easy and OK for 2 wheel drive. The truck has plenty of ground clearance, but it is a big stout diesel with way too much power, and no weight in the back to speak of. But we clunked our way through Pucker Pass, had to pull in the mirrors in a couple of places so we didn’t scrape the mountain side while we tried to keep the outside tires on the road, but the truck was great.
Next day we drove into the Canyonlands National Monument which is really in the middle of the confluence of the two rivers, and affords endless wide vistas and dark red abysses. We can see the White Rim Trail going all around the high point we are on. This trail doesn’t have many evil places, and is 92 miles long and would be a two or three day camping jeep tour. I am plotting how to do this in my 4x4 truck . It would be so grand to sleep out there in the great stillness of these canyons.
At this point I am really tired of red rocks. They are just too much. And there are way too many of them and too many buttes and needles and canyons and yes arches. So for a change, we drive up into the La Sal Mountains to look for some geocaches on our list. We pass through yet another series of red and yellow canyons, into a lovely green valley that has a red rock “Castle”, so of course it is called Castle Valley. But in the distance, the slopes of the La Sals are gray! Oh joy, a mountain that is a proper color. As we switchback our way up, we are in stunted oak forests that are not leaved out, so they are a dark gray, and soon we have the lighter gray of the aspens drifting like smoke up the mountain side. We stop for lunch at a primitive CG and underfoot I can see what will be a riot of spring flowers, but it is too soon, and quite chilly. The clouds come in, the road to two of the caches is not open, and soon it begins to snow very lightly.
So we come back down to Moab, and avert our eyes from the Technicolor rocks and the fit and furious bikers and the jeepers whom we are jealous off.
Next day, after a long pull through the totally last red canyon, we are up on the dry plateau and the only rocks we can see are pale tan and lie quietly as rocks should. We cross Douglas Pass, a climb of 4,000 feet, with no red rocks. It is a long hard climb, and the truck just keeps on keeping on. We cross into CO for a bit and then back into UT for a stop at Dinosaur National Monument, which has nice tan and pale yellow rocks as well as dinosaur bones.
posted by Thistledown24 at 11:04 AM
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