March 25, 2007

By Tim Briese

The canyon country of Utah is one of Teresa and my favorite hiking destinations in the Spring. This year we decided to visit the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, a spectacular place that we had not visited in several years. We stayed overnight in Moab and left at seven in the morning for the 80 mile drive south to the Needles. We were treated to a beautiful drive on Highway 211 in the early morning sunlight as we approached the park. The first order of business was to try to get a campsite at the wildly popular Squaw Flat Campground, and we were fortunate enough to snatch one just as another camper was pulling out. Moments later several other prospects drove past attempting to repeat our good fortune.

We drove a few miles west on a winding graded dirt road to the Elephant Hill Trailhead and prepared to set forth on the hike. It was a sunny and cool morning, and several water puddles, a desert anomaly, stood in the trailhead area as a result of heavy rain the day before. At 9:20 we began hiking south on the Chesler Park Trail. The fun began immediately as the route climbed steeply up through a cleft in the slickrock to a more gentle rocky area above. The trail then wound through an incredible variety of terrain over slickrock benches and across sandy flats, past an amazing array of sandstone towers, pinnacles, domes, cliffs, and spires. All these features were carved in colorful rock in hues of beige or reddish pink. In places where the trail traversed across bare rock the route was well marked with plentiful cairns. It was exhilarating walking through this vast fairyland of rock forms, surrounded by visual imagery of unimaginable variety.

After a mile or so the route went through a nifty crack about three feet wide and ten or twenty feet high that opened onto a bench with a panoramic view of Elephant Canyon with the Needles beyond. We proceeded to make a sharp descent of a couple hundred feet into Elephant Canyon that was a lot of fun. Once in the bottom of the canyon we reached a trail junction and continued on the Chesler Park Trail as it climbed out the other side of the canyon. We continued to climb gradually for about a half mile until we reached the edge of Chesler Park. At this point we stopped for a break to enjoy the fine panoramic view back to the northeast and to gaze south into the fascinating park. Chesler Park is an interesting place, a rather flat grassy area about a mile across ringed with rocky spires, called the Needles, a few hundred feet high. A few rock towers are scattered about within the park.

We followed a sandy trail that curves around the eastern side of the park to reach its southern end. At this point we followed the trail across a rocky area to get to the incredible Joint Trail, a passage through a long, narrow crack about 200 yards long with walls perhaps 50 feet high. The crack opened up into large grottos, silent temples carved by Nature in the smooth rock The trail followed a crack that branched perpendicularly to the side from the main one, from which we presently climbed back out into daylight. We continued on this trail down a canyon for a short distance before deciding to turn back and retrace our steps through the crack back to Chesler Park.

We hiked back to the eastern end of Chesler Park and took another trail that took us on a fascinating one mile descent into Elephant Canyon. This route was particularly fun, winding around slickrock basins, crossing smooth benches, and dropping sharply into the scenic canyon, with a couple of minor Class 3 scrambling moves along the way. We had seen several other hikers thus far today, but once we reached the bottom of Elephant Canyon we saw many more. We contemplated hiking up the canyon a few miles to see Druid Arch, one of the park=s popular natural features, but decided that would make for too long of a hike today. Instead we hiked down Elephant Canyon a mile and a half to the junction where we had been in the morning, then retraced our steps out of the canyon back to the trailhead. We returned a few minutes before 5, after covering some eleven miles on the day. This hike is one of my favorites in the canyon country because it offers a refreshing variety of all the best the canyonlands has to offer, including narrow cracks, slickrock traverses, rock scrambling, and hiking both up on higher terrain with distant panoramic views as well as in canyon bottoms.

We drove just outside the boundary of the national park to shower at the Needles Outpost, then returned to our camp for the evening. After dinner around a campfire in the cool and pleasant desert air, we scrambled atop a smooth slickrock dome directly above our campsite to enjoy the panoramic landscape as it was bathed in the golden rays of the setting sun.

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