Last week, in a last ditch effort to get out of town before ski season starts, I went down to the desert with Adam, who is a seasoned desert hiker, but still loves visiting Moab whenever he can. We had four days out there, five if you count travel days.
We started at Arches National Money-mint (Monument). Edward Abbey worked there in the ’50s and wrote a book Desert Solitaire while out there. I read it on this trip and it is absolutely fantastic. Everyone else thinks so too, apparently - the bookstore in Moab has a dedicated Abbey section.
Arches was absolutely gorgeous, but I could see what abbey was concerned about - he lived in a trailer out by Balanced Rock in the 50s, about ten miles from the nearest paved road and enjoyed the solitude. Now, the road that tourists drive into the park goes just about 200 feet past the Rock. Not exactly good for solitude.
After a sunset hike and a full day spent in Arches hiking the Devil’s Garden loop, we moved out to Needles, in Canyonlands National Park. We camped here for two nights, hiking out to Druid Arch in a 14 mile loop the second day we were there. This campsite was insanely luxurious - flush toilets (in the desert), tiled floors in the bathrooms, tent pads at each campsite.
Incidentally, car camping is something I’d never done, and the luxury of having a Coleman camp stove is amazing. We had a hot dinner every night, coffee every morning, and didn’t have to build a fire for either. Since we had a car, we brought five days worth of food, but just packed what we needed for the day. Very nice. I missed the feeling of actually having to provide everything yourself -there’s something about building a fire that makes me feel very self-sufficient. But wood’s hard to find in the desert, and it wasn’t bad to have that stove.
Another neat fact - desert hiking in the fall/early winter is fantastic, because there’s much more water than you might expect. In some areas, you can drink straight out of potholes - impressions on the tops of the sandstone fins that collect rainwater in the fall.
The last day we had we did an 8 mile hike in Islands in the Sky - just a loop, but with incredible elevation gain and views. It was a fantastic way to end the trip. From there, we drove all the way back to Steamboat, where it had snowed heavily while we’d been gone, and is still coming down as I write this. We’ve gotten probably four inches of snow and it’s still coming down steadily. The mountain opens in less than a week, and I just got my pass for the year.
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