The old dirt roads leading out towards several ranches and defunct mines fan across the northern quadrant bordering Capitol Reef National Park. Before leaving Salt Lake City, I made sure to take a photo of the quadrant from a Utah road atlas at a library. Without GPS, and not that it always works well, maps are my only guideline. It doesn't matter if the roads are named, or have National Forest or Bureau of Land Management numbers attached on these maps—signs aren’t always there or readable. Once I leave the highway, having already topped off my gas tank in Salina, I turn onto the adventure of winding my way through the dirt road maze and into Cathedral Junction along the Cathedral Valley Road in the Park.
Surprisingly, several National Park signs with arrows and mileages show up at major dirt road forks. But, some forks are not signed, so I’m relieved to be able to look at the map quadrant photo I took. Negotiating these back roads are tricky enough with road conditions—deep sand, eroded stretches having pulled up large rocks, dips where flash flood washes have funneled water below the road levels, and who knows what other obstacles might pop up. Being on the right road takes away some of the concern of getting lost.
A small “Entering Capitol Reef National Park” sign posts the boundary entrance a couple of miles from the junction with the Park road in the Valley where I wind my way a handful more miles up some switchbacks to the Cathedral Valley Campground. Five sites and a vault toilet, and the attitude that if you can get there, you can stay there for free.
The warning in the Park info online: Sparsely traveled, a tow could cost around $1500, so be prepared. High Clearance and possibly 4WD are needed. Bring extra supplies in case of flash flood—one might need to be out there for a few days until it dries up. No issues for me. The campground has two camping inhabitants and my pick of the other three sites. I secure one, then drive along the mesa to the outlooks for the overviews of the South Desert and Cathedral Valley.
The Valley
“I hope you are carrying a weapon,” the woman says to me. She and her husband, along with another younger couple, view the scattered monoliths poking up in the Valley. They’ve hired a guide/driver to negotiate these back roads and deliver them safely to overlooks and other natural viewpoints.
“If I feel I need a weapon where I stay,” I respond, “I won’t stay in that place.”
“Do you know how to change a tire?”
“I do.”
Every one of these questions is a glimpse into the fears that others carry, and with legitimate concern, dump into my lap. I smile at her and move down the trail towards a rock outcropping where the guide snaps photos of the young couple.
Fruita
In this land of harshness, eroded and inhospitable, rivers and creeks flowed with hope for indigenous peoples who lived here from 300-1300 CE. Hopi, Paiute, and Zuni , now referred to as the “Fremont” culture, lived here for about 1000 years. They planted corn, used rice grass for tortillas, and collected pinyon nuts to go with what they hunted.
Once John C. Fremont explored and mapped this rugged area, Latter Day Saints (Mormons) moved in to build communities to support their lifestyle and religious beliefs. No more than 10 families at a time lived in the area starting around 1880, and by 1904, the main way to cross the Waterpocket Fold along the Fremont River, found it’s name—Fruita. Farming and ranching were the mainstay of survival, along with the area’s propensity for fruit orchards.
By 1941, the small schoolhouse closed down with the graduation of it’s last class, and by 1937, the verdant life along the river became a National Monument, then in 1971, a National Park.
UT-24 winds through the Park and by the center of Fruita and the many orchards still thriving in the hands of the National Park Service. Framing the highway, nature has left its mark from the billions of years of the Earth's slow transformation.
Along Grand Wash, from where it meets UT-24 to the north, the morning winds tunnel through the canyon keeping cool the vertical rock walls lining the wash. The sand and gravel shifts underfoot with a "squish, squish, squish" all the way to the side trail leading uphill towards the well known Cassidy Arch.
"Excuse me," I say to them. "It looks like it's possible to control how fast you go down the rope?"
"Absolutely, "one says. "There are actually two ropes, and the right hand pull can slow you down, or let you go faster. Sometimes, it's a lot of work for you to actually move at all."
"Good to know. I have a friend near Zion that wants me to try it. But, I have a height fear."
"I go really slow," the other one says. "The hardest part is leaving the ledge and getting used to just hanging there.Then, it's really fun. See that guy hooking onto the anchor? It's his first time."
"First time here?"
"No, first time ever. There he goes..." He negotiates the rock face overhang until he just dangles from the ropes. Oh my,..........he disappears from sight down to the bottom of the arch and a ledge that will put him in line for the next repel. I can't bear to look over the edge to see. The two young women have done this repel before and explain it to me.
I had told my friend I would try it...if she could guarantee I wouldn't die. And maybe start with a small repel....preferably with a lot of soft padding at the bottom. I know it won't happen that way. Wish me luck for the future.
On my way back down the trail, several others are hiking up with ropes and helmets. They come from all over the world to traverse down the heights of the Grand Wash formations.
Once done in crowded Fruita, I head south on the Notom-Bullfrog Road paralleling the Waterpocket Fold, the largest monocline in the country.
Monocline:
A bend in rock strata that are otherwise uniformly dipping or horizontal.
It’s nice to just walk. The swish of sand into and out of my sandals. Just to walk where others aren’t right now. But, they have before. The sand holds remnants, artifacts, shapes of past walkers. As well as the aftermath of flash floods that barreled through the canyon— broken plant stalks, piles of rocks tossed, not placed. Waterpockets.
It’s nice to just walk. The mid-day sun bounces off the brim of my straw hat when blasting through the sky’s white puffs. A breeze gathers steam, then lets go, and the twisted junipers relax again. A lizard scuttles into the shade of a stone. The cottonwooods foretell of the water that has come, and gone, and will come again.
The rock layers, beaten down over time, offer a palette from eons of underscoring ocean and desert and forest habitats. Each layer compressed, one on top of the other. Each layer eroding to sand that contains each mineral, fossil, artifact. One cauldron chronicling the earth’s colorful memoir.
It’s just nice to walk. No goal, no agenda. Shade lingers below rock face outcroppings, under trees, and hides inside crevices and narrow canyons. My gait swerves into the shade when available—the sun’s heat no longer welcome–the sun’s heat dissipating along the shade’s border. My skin glistening with the dust of history. Dry, cracked, drought-laden.
Like a secret passageway, only those who find its opening, those who dare venture into the unknown crevice, will see what the earth’s lifetimes exhibit. Like all of us, the layers have been chipped away—sculpted, eroded, sanded smooth, or left rough. It wasn't pretty—the anger of the rushing waters though a crack. Or the wind letting off vented steam. The baking of clay soils dripping off the crests of youth. The newest of stone goes first, less compressed into its own history. The shaping has been easier. But, eventually, the water and the wind and the sun find their way into the most protected places, elbow out what hasn’t seen the light.
The croak of the raven echoes through the slot canyon as it cuts across the blue sky. Even higher, the white underbelly of a plane passes perpendicular over the bird. The plane’s engine roar never drops into the shade of Headquarter’s Canyon. The raven knows what the plane does not.
A few cars leave the pavement once past the tiny community of Notom and venture on the gravel, bumpy road. Several hiking opportunities have parking pull offs on the northern part of the road which leaves the Park. Once the road swerves back into the park and up onto Cedar Mesa, the single campground housing seven sites, the same rules apply as the Cathedral Campground—if you can get there you can stay there for free. As I pull in, I have the place to myself. By dark, several parties have driven in and set up for the night.
My new friend—Jack—hops through, curious about those of us moving about as well. But not too curious….he (or how does one tell a female Jack Rabbit from a male one?), pauses on the campground road just for a second before running off to munch an evening snack on some rabbitbrush.
All switchbacks now get compared to the Mineral Bottom Road heading down to the Green River near Canyonlands National Park. I know none of them have guard rails. I’ve watched you tube videos of people driving them. I’m as prepared as I can be.
“Okay truck,” I say. “We’re in this together.”
I’d prefer to go up them, rather than down them. The Cathedral Valley Road switchbacks up to, then down from, the campground, had longer inclines and fewer hairpin turns. Small bushes and rocks lined the downslope edges of the road, creating a visual containment barrier in my peripheral vision.
The same happens now as I ascend the Burr Trail Switchbacks. The road is wider than the other two had been, so I hug the upside of the road, never allowing myself to look over at the view until I almost reach the top of the road crossed the crest of the Waterpocket Fold. Turning into a pull out uphill, I put the truck in park, and open the driver’s side window.
“Oh wow!” The view is magnificent. I can hardly even vocalize the “Oh” or the “Wow”. As much as we, the human race, think we have it all figured out for ourselves—some pumped-up self importance—nature quietly rolls its eyes at us. Millions of years of shifting and humping, eroding and sculpting. Mountains, valleys, rock older than anything we can fathom. “Wow” cannot even contain enough of my awe, as I travel across and into the Grand Staircase -Escalante National Monument. Through a juniper-laden mesa, into redrock canyons, and Navajo sandstone hoodoos, and west and south towards UT-12 and the canyonland towns of Boulder and Escalante en route towards Springdale and Zion.