From: Herberg_David@tandem.com (David Herberg)
Subject: Trip rpt: SE Utah 4wd vacation, part 3/4
Organization: Tandem Computers Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 22:09:03 GMT


Thanks for all your encouragement to parts 1 and 2 of this travelogue.  
This is part 3 of my report of an 8-week 4wd camping trip I took last 
summer with my wife and three kids.  It covers the fifth and sixth weeks 
of the vacation.

At this point, we had just met up with my wife's mother in Blanding.  She 
is quite knowledgeable in Indian archeology, and visits rock art sites all 
over the Southwest and into Baja.  She has written a paper on the 
so-called Indian Bathtubs of the Sierra Nevada, and has served as 
President of the Fresno Archeological Society.  Impressed?  Good.  She had 
brought her Jeep Cherokee; together we would have the confidence to go a 
little farther away from civilization, in search of Anasazi ruins and rock 
art.

We do have a basic difference in opinion, though.  I'm out there for the 
photography first, swimming holes second, and other sightseeing third.  
Photography only happens from dawn for about 2 hours, and then again for 
the two hours prior to and including sunset.  That leaves the warmest part 
of the day for sightseeing with a stop at a swimming hole.  But you have 
to be *out at the scenery* at dawn and dusk.  In her opinion, and 
therefore my wife's, this time is for eating breakfast and eating dinner, 
*back at the motel*.  Except for her general disinterest in swimming 
holes, we get along fine the rest of the day.

We manage to get along during the other parts of the day by not always 
going everywhere together.  We spend a few days on my schedule, a few days 
on hers, and a few days apart.  Also, I don't make everybody leave camp at 
dawn while I'm out hunting photons.  I generally take a morning 
constitutional before breakfast alone, then return to pack everything up, 
if we are leaving.  The major conflict is at dinner time.  When I win, 
everybody eats dinner in the dark.  When they win, I don't take photos.

With that explained:

============================

We had just spent the night of August 22 in a motel in Blanding, Utah.  We 
split up at this point.  I went to Natural Bridges NM for 2 nights alone, 
while my wife and kids stayed with their grandmother at the Blanding 
motel.  We were to meet at Natural Bridges for a subsequent tour into Beef 
Basin.

Camping in the Utah desert gets you used to the idea of bringing your own 
water.  Just like the campsites in the Island in the Sky, there is no 
water available in the campground at Natural Bridges.  I hadn't explained 
previously that the recommended water intake is 1 gallon per person per 
day, a bit less for small kids.  Times say 4 full people for 6 days (our 
Island circumnavigation) is 24 gallons.  I had carried  27 gallons, enough 
for a small contingency, on that sortie and had loaded up again for this 
one.  My mother-in-law was going to bring a few gallons, too, for good 
measure.  We were planning a two-day circle of Beef Basin, and then a 
couple of days in the Needles District, entering by the back door.  All 
that water on the roof rack makes for interesting cornering 
characteristics of my vehicle.

While I was in Natural Bridges alone, I was able to concentrate full time 
to photography.  I gingerly took hikes to each of the bridges and studied 
them from all angles.  Somehow that foot wound wasn't bothering me too bad 
if I kept all weight off my heel.  The streams were flowing from recent 
rains, so there were a few clod pools in the bottoms of the canyons.

I made some great photos of an Anasazi cliff dwelling and associated 
granaries.  Another site had moderately well preserved granaries, 
considering the visitor traffic it receives, but its nearby pictographs 
had been scratched off.

On one of the trails was an immense pile of guano, with considerable 
freshness to its scent.  But there was no obvious roosting place where 
pigeons might be seen standing as around the facade of a city building.  I 
looked closely, and there was a vertical crack in the rock wall under and 
separating an overhang from the wall itself.  In and out of this 2" crack 
were swarming hundreds of swallows.  The incoming birds would fly from the 
outside and fly up vertically to disappear inside the crack without 
slowing down, and the departing birds would fall out and gain their 
composure before reaching the ground.  There must have been a huge cave 
back in behind that crack, judging from the aerial activity and the 
mountain of smelliness on the ground.

To keep myself company I bought Edward Abbey's _Desert_Solitaire_ at the 
visitors center.  Wow, that was great, reading the master iconoclast's 
words in the middle of the country he describes.  The book came in handy 
the second day, when it rained heavily and I was confined to the tent.

Everybody came to meet me right on schedule and we headed up the Elk Ridge 
road through the Bear's Ears to spend the next few days in Beef Basin and 
the Needles.  The Bears Ears are two buttes, remnants of the Wingate 
Sandstone, that have been lifted high on a hill.  The road goes between 
them.  Several rangers at Natural Bridges had warned against using this 
road, especially after a rain, because of its slickness and roughness.

Well, that simply wasn't the case.  It was smooth and dry except for a 
couple of puddles.  The rain had just kept the dust down.  It was as 
smooth a gravel road as I had been on.

The road winds up and up to get on top of Dark Canyon Plateau on the 
shoulder of the Abajo Mountains.  At this elevation there was enough 
precipitation to support a pine forest rather than the usual Utah 
junipers.  The Forest Service responded, naturally, by logging the area.  
At least there is some effort to replant, as several FS roadside displays 
took pains to point out.

North of the Abajos is the sculptured slickrock country of the Needles.  I 
drove out a rough, rocky spur trail to the Big Pocket overlook, out on the 
end of a 2-mile "peninsula" into the upper basin of Salt Creek.  The view 
was spectacular, of course.  Nothing but a panorama camera could take it 
in.  There were also the obvious remains of a partyer's campsite, 
surrounded by vertical cliffs on all sides but one.  The wind blew 
strongly here; I wonder how many partyers have slipped over the side in 
the night?

We continued on down toward Beef Basin, and camped near a the remains of a 
cliff dwelling.  The walls of the ruin looked about to fall down, and the 
whole area under the cliff overhang had previously been thoroughly 
pothunted.  Sign posts from the BLM reminding visitors that it is a crime 
to disturb archeological sites had been lovingly shot up, then uprooted, 
and tossed to the side.  On the other hand, it was still interesting to 
see 800-year-old construction still unaided by well-meaning stabilization 
efforts such as at Mesa Verde and Hovenweep.  You can still see the 
detailed fingerprints of the stonemasons who had constructed this building 
and had lived and farmed here 800 years ago.

Beef Basin was named for the major use of the area, cattle grazing.  The 
cattle have really done a number on the local ecology: *all* the 
microbiotic (cryptogamic) crust was gone, the grass was gone, and the 
cactus had grown up to replace it.  When the microbiotic crust goes, the 
soil quickly blows away in the wind, taking with it the region's ability 
to grow anything but cactus and sagebrush.

The next morning we began a circumnavigation of Beef Basin looking for 
ruins and other sights.  The older ruins we saw had just foundations left. 
 How did I know they were older?  Current archeological theory suggests  
that prior to 1000 AD or so, the people lived and farmed on the flat areas 
in communities relatively free from marauding attackers.  By 1200 AD 
raiders had increased to the point that surviving farmers moved to 
inaccessible cliff areas as a defensive measure.  Increased invasions 
coupled with a possible drought led to the eventual abandonment of all the 
permanent settlements.  So... on the flat: 900 or more years old; in a 
cliff alcove: 900 years old or younger.  That's for residences, anyway.  
I'm not sure about cliff alcove granaries.

So there were a few foundations out on the flat, and a couple of granaries 
in the cliff sides of the side canyons.  We saw a few chert flakes, but 
still no chert source.  There was one cliff dwelling marked on the map 
that was quite high in a cliff high up in the hills surrounding the Basin. 
 We scoured the site with our binoculars, but were not convinced that the 
alcove actually had anything worth the long bushwhack up there.  We went 
on.

One of the Beef Basin outlets drains through Gypsum Canyon toward the 
Colorado. I took a 1 mile hike down the dry creekbed to find a bit of 
water flow accumulating.  Suddenly I came to a 100' waterfall.  OK, so it 
was just flowing at a high drip rate.  It should look plenty impressive in 
a flood!  Just above the precipice the tiny creek twisted around in some 
sculptured stone, forming pools up to bath tub size wherein I cooled off.  
I thought the rock scrambling to the waterfall's plunge pool too 
time-consuming and dangerous to be worth it.

I drove several miles up one of the side canyons to find a wonderful 
ruined cliff dwelling.  This was a two-story residence, one of whose roofs 
was still intact.  The single door was at the first floor, but immediately 
stairs led up to the second.  It was like the second floor was the main 
living area, while the first floor was a storage basement, even though it 
had the front door, and even though the whole arrangement was high in a 
slickrock alcove.  Although the soil around it had been clearly pothunted, 
the walls were in the best shape of any of the ruins I saw on the trip.  
It was exciting again to see the mason's fingerprints in the mud mortar.  
A bit of personal connection across most of a millennium.

This canyon was recently flash flooded, so much that much of the jeep 
trail had washed away; I followed the creekbed most of the way.  I bounced 
across a pavement basketball-sized stones left in the creekbed three to 
five feet below the former level of the jeep trail.  At one point, 
climbing out of the creekbed to regain the next segment of vehicle tracks, 
I got stuck on my front wheels in sand and on my trailer hitch in back, 
with my rear wheels off the ground.  Fortunately I was able to power 
backwards using only the front tires, or that would have been one long 
walk out.  Where there was still a fragment of jeep trail uneroded, the 
brush on the sides had grown in so far as to severely modify my Blazer's 
finish.  It now definitely has that brushed look.  Don't try this at home, 
kids.

After 2 nights we were going to go into Canyonlands NP by the back door.  
For those of you in the know, this route is called Bobby's Hole.  For 
those of you not in the know, forget this route.  That is, except on foot 
or in a tracked vehicle.  I exaggerate only slightly.  There were 2 sets 
of tracks going down the trail since the last rain, both were *huge* 
tires.  If the vehicles also had comically tall lift kits, they might have 
made it without damage.  I had been expecting a rotten section of road, so 
I stopped at the top, and walked the length of the bad section.  It is 
extremely steep and highly eroded, leaving huge outcroppings of gas-tank 
ripping rock between deep axle-breaking holes.  There was an 18" culvert 
across the steepest section; the down hill side was *completely* exposed.  
That is, there is an additional 18" unavoidable cliff to fall off of.  I 
really wanted to go through, but the women thought I was nuts to even 
consider it.  After a long period of soul-searching I eventually chickened 
out.  Later, the ranger at Needles told me of a tourist in a rental 2wd 
import had gone down that trail.  He bent all the rims, flattened the 
tires, and punched holes in the oil pan and gas tank.  After a loooooooong 
walk out, he had to pay for the tow out of there ($1200-$1500) plus had to 
buy the wreckage from the rental company.  We joked that the tow was just 
to avoid a littering charge.

So we spent one more night in Beef Basin.  We found many more ruins, most 
of which again were just foundations.  We camped by a two story ruin, and 
there was one large ruin that originally was as large as two modern 
suburban houses.  The sign nearby said that this area was once (prior to 
1000 AD) a large farming community.  The sheer number of sites proves that 
this area was once heavily populated.  Archeologists believe that SE Utah 
had three times the population 1000 years ago that it has now.

We finally found the chert mine that had supplied the other Indians in the 
area.  The chert outcrop lay at the foot of a gentle hillside, and there 
were Anasazi buildings around the area.  Gobs and gobs of fabrication 
flakes for a considerable distance around.  Others before us had found a 
half dozen pot fragments and had left them on the wall of one of the 
structures, out on display.  Although you're technically not supposed to 
remove pot fragments from the exact spot where you find them, I was glad 
they put them out on display so that I could see them.  I was also glad 
they didn't take them home.  We left them there, too.

We found the ruins of an old cowboy's or miner's cabin near a seep spring. 
 I figured that this would have been an ideal spot to find an Indian site, 
too, so I hunted around till I found it.  It was directly underneath the 
cabin.  The cabin builder had used some of the Indian foundations for his 
own.  We found one tiny pot fragment nearby.

At one other site we found a very tiny ruin, 5' square, and a 1 1/2 x 3" 
pot fragment.  It was decorated in black and white with a zigzag pattern.  
Very careful painting work.  These fragments are both still there, if you 
care to see them.

At our campsite by the two-story ruin we again found the BLM sign posts 
admonishing against disturbing archeological sites.  They also had been 
lovingly shot up, ripped out of the ground, and thrown aside.

I trust that you will excuse my purposely vague descriptions of the exact 
locations of these archeological sites.  Beef Basin is some ten miles in 
diameter, counting the various flats, feeder canyons, and ridges in the 
middle.  These directions shouldn't get you any closer than 5 miles to any 
of these sites.  With the rampant, uncontrollable vandalism that has 
happened to many archeological treasures, most authorities believe that 
only continued secrecy, like that practiced by the caving community, will 
delay further loss to vandals.  Even caves can be gated; the ruins cannot. 
 During our stay in Utah, somebody painted obscenities across the Butler 
Wash Pictographs on the San Juan River, thereby destroying a 2000 year old 
panel.  The BLM has uselessly offered a reward for the vandals' capture.  
The concern and the crimes are real.  One thing the government cannot 
control is pothunting on private land by the land owner.  The BLM agent in 
Monticello sadly described to me how he helplessly watched a landowner dig 
up an archeological site with a backhoe looking for potsherds.

We drove back to Blanding by a different route over the Abajos.  We met a 
hunter already scouting the area for elk, even though the season wasn't 
going to open for another 6 weeks.  At about 9000 foot elevation, I saw a 
cliff dwelling high in the hillside.  This one was truly inaccessible 
without a ladder.  Believe me, I tried.  I don't think it was original, 
but there was half of an Indian ladder (just one of the poles) going 20+' 
up an overhung face toward the ruin, and after a few attempts I decided 
not to climb it.  I did see the ancient pocks in the rock where the two 
poles of a proper ladder would fit.  Although these residents would never 
thirst, farming might have been a bit tough here.

The next four nights we stayed in Blanding.  I was beginning to see the 
women's point: getting up late, not breaking camp, sleeping in a *bed*...  
It can become habit forming.  I didn't get any photos taken though.  In 
fact, the first day was spent sitting by the motel pool and down at the 
laudromat getting all the filthy clothes clean.  I suppose we should have 
had to pay a pollution fine at the laundromat, too...

While in Blanding we took day trips to various Anasazi sites in the area.  
The Westwater ruin is practically right in town, so it gets a lot of party 
trash.  It has been stabilized, and is used for archeology students to 
practice their excavation techniques.  We drove out to Hovenweep NM and 
crawled all through the stabilized ruins there.  My boys collected Junior 
Ranger Buttons here, too.  Another day we drove out to see the ruins in 
Montezuma Creek.  These ruins are either fenced off, or have been 
stabilized.  Three Kiva Ruin has had one of the Kivas restored, so you can 
walk down the ladder inside.  That day I had somehow managed to snag a 
twig with an auxiliary gas tank I had mounted to the roof rack.  The 
branch punched a hole in the plastic container, rendering it somewhat 
useless.

On September 4 we split up again, my wife and kids went along with my 
mother-in law for a trip to Mesa Verde NM and stayed in a nearby motel.  
They then went on a day rafting trip on the San Juan River.  I was going 
to the Needles to camp at the Devil's Kitchen campground for three nights.

Getting to Devil's kitchen involves some serious four-wheeling over the 
Elephant Hill jeep trail, which is left over from when the area wasn't yet 
a park.  The trail is very roughly blasted out of the rock, just barely 
enough to get a jeep by the hardest spots.  The trail surface is mostly 
bare rock, but the Park Service has applied dollops of concrete to some of 
the deeper holes to prevent too much damage to visitors' 4x4's.  The 
ranger told me that when they did this, some of the old-timer "purist" 
four-wheelers complained that they had taken all of the challenge out of 
the trail.  Wrong.  This is some of the wildest jeeping I've ever done.  
Even with the occasional concrete  patches the trail is exceedingly rough; 
my trailer hitch is somewhat the worse for wear.  The switchbacks over the 
Hill are so tight that in one point you have to go beyond the turn, turn 
around, and try again.  Another steep switchback you have to negotiate in 
reverse.  I have no idea how you could ever handle oncoming traffic.  Down 
on the other side, you drive through a slot that folded both my side 
mirrors back.  Driving down the Silver Stairs was an indescribable bounce 
over undulating slickrock.  Later on, the trails get more normal, but 
there is quite a purgatory to get through, first!

Devil's Kitchen has 4 very private campsites, each site in its own 
miniature slot canyon tucked into cracked and settled layer of Cedar Mesa 
Sandstone.  Some even have a rock overhang to keep you out of the rain.  
They would be comfortably cool during the heat of the summer, and the 
interconnecting maze of tiny passageways formed by the settling cracks 
leads back deep into the rock.  Deep in one passage somebody had set up an 
informal display of pottery fragments.  I assume they had been found 
nearby.  Jimson weed (_Datura_) was everywhere; this is nearly always an 
indication of Anasazi presence.

Three of the four sites were occupied the first night, two the second, and 
I had the area to myself the third night.  One of my neighbors the first 
night was a commercial tour with 4 passengers, two men from Germany and a 
couple from the US.  That tour driver really earned his money: driving, 
cooking, cleaning up, hauling wood, building a fire, as well as filling 
all tour guide duties.

One of the days there I drove through the Grabens and visited the overlook 
over the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers.  Grabens are 
straight, flat bottomed canyons with vertical sides.  There are several 
parallel Grabens between the Needles and the Colorado.  On that day, the 
Colorado was greenish, and the Green was reddish.  I guess nobody told 
them.  The Park Service has set up a couple of picnic areas along this 
section of road, which I think is pretty nice.  I also took a hike into 
Red Lake Canyon toward the Colorado River, but only made it a third of the 
way there before deciding to turn around.

Another day I continued out Devil's Lane to the south, through the notch 
at S.O.B. Hill, to see Bobby's Hole from the bottom.  I was really glad at 
that point that we didn't go down it.  The bottom part was even rougher 
than the part I chickened out on.  S.O.B. Hill is no piece of cake, 
either.  You have to back up across a switchback into a cleft in the rock 
just wide enough for your vehicle.  Although that switchback took me a 
couple of tries in each direction, there really isn't any more to it.

While in the south end of the Needles district I visited Horsehoof Arch, 
so named because it looks just like the lower leg of a horse.  I stopped 
at a picnic/parking area that serves as the trailhead into Chesler Park 
when it began to sprinkle.  Then it began to rain.  Four guys had driven 
up before me in a CJ-5 with the top down.  They came down the trail 
completely soaked and had to put up the top before they could have any 
escape from the rain.  If you don't know the CJ-5, it is *tiny* when you 
start packing 4 hefty men into one, and the top is *extremely* awkward to 
put up or down.  It is simply not made for inclement weather.  When they 
left, it really began to pour.

While I was sitting in the Blazer waiting for the rain to quit, I finished 
up _Desert_Solitaire_.  Thunderstorms are usually over in 20 minutes, but 
this one rained heavily for an hour.  While I was reading, I heard a 
*wham* on the side of the truck.  I got out to investigate, and found that 
the whole parking area was a foot and a half under water.  The area didn't 
look like it before, but in the midst of a flash flood, you could see that 
a minor wash went through the parking lot.  Well, it was no longer minor!  
Brown water was swirling around my rear axle, so I pulled forward as far 
as I could without removing any trees, and just barely got my wheels out 
of the torrent.

When the rain abated, I walked a mile or so up the jeep trail beyond the 
trail head, which is now closed by the Park Service.  The surface was so 
muddy that I was either slipping all over or had inches of gunk adhering 
to my soles.  I found that I was surrounded by several flash flooding 
washes, and would just have to wait awhile yet for any chance to drove 
back to camp.  After about another hour, the floods abated enough that I 
could cross one of the tributaries.  I then hiked up the Joint Trail 
toward Chesler Park.  After about a half mile, the Joint Trail follows the 
bottom of some deep cracks in the Cedar Mesa Sandstone for another half 
mile into Chesler Park.  It's similar to the campsites at Devil's Kitchen. 
 But right after the rain, bottoms of the slots were flooded with water.  
I slogged through for about a quarter mile after it became ankle deep, but 
I quit and turned back when it got over my knees.  It was kind of cold the 
way I was dressed, and still drizzling, too.  So I still haven't seen 
Chesler Park.  No disaster; I'll be back.

Now it was starting to get dark, so I very carefully drove back toward 
camp.  The trail was soft and muddy, and where it crossed bare rock, it 
was slippery.  Slickrock.  Just after wedging through the notch one more 
time at the top of S.O.B. Hill, I found the same CJ-5 I had seen at the 
Chesler Park trailhead now stuck in middle of the road.  The rain had 
softened the dirt in the wheel ruts, and now they were high-centered and 
going nowhere.
They had been stuck there trying to dig themselves out for *at least* 
2-1/2 hours in the rain, wind, and drizzle.  Just not comfy when you're 
wearing a T-shirt.  The road is two feet below the natural grade, so they 
had few options.  I stopped some distance away from them to avoid the same 
fate for myself, and walked up to see how they were doing.  The oldest 
fellow had had enough of this.  Without saying a word, he blew past me as 
I was walking up, got into my truck, and turned on the heater!

Forgive me, Park Service, but I climbed up out of the roadway and went 
around them to pull them through.  I dropped back to the road level, but 
promptly got myself high-centered!  Fortunately, I was able to back up and 
out of the ruts again.  The old fellow, still in my truck, exclaimed, 
"when I get one of these [4wd vehicles], I'm getting a Chevy!"  I fastened 
my chain to their CJ-5 and pulled them out and along far enough that it 
was safe to return to the official track.  Only then did the old fellow in 
my Blazer get out and go back.  They then proceeded to drive down the 
Silver Stairs and over Elephant Hill in the dark.

It turns out I had left a pot all day on the picnic table at my campsite.  
I measured 1-1/4" of rain in that hour.  For some silly reason, I had 
stacked suitcases, stove, and other water-susceptible stuff on top of the 
ice chest back in camp.  The whole thing was under a rock overhang that 
kept the rain off the top.  That smooth move saved them from a thorough 
soaking, since the campsite crack in the rock flash flooded too.  There 
was 6" of sand piled up against the upstream side of that ice chest, and a 
huge new lake had formed between it and my tent.  The tent had collapsed 
slightly under the strain of the wind and the weight of the rainwater 
accumulation on it, but nothing catastrophic.  So I actually spent a 
mostly dry night.

The next morning, I packed up and returned to the visitors center, where I 
met up with my family right on time.  We were going to go camping together 
in the Salt Creek are of the Needles District.  On the way to the visitors 
center, I did notice that the CJ-5 had made it out OK.

============================

End of part 3.

Depending on my time and your feedback, there are 2 more weeks to cover.

David Herberg, Herberg_David@tandem.com
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry