Moab, as inspired by Edward Abbey

I became interested in visiting Utah after reading the book, Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey. The book describes his first season as a Park Ranger at Arches National Park. Ed is probably rolling over in his grave at the thought that his writings would bring people to Utah - he would love nothing more than for people to STAY AWAY from his beloved desert. Mr. Abbey, it seems to me, was as wild and eccentric as the desert itself.

On this trip we visited Moab, Arches National Park (my favorite), Dead Horse Point State Park, and Canyonlands National Park.

"Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in sparseness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms." -- Edward Abbey

Quick Tips:

Be sure to have sufficient water with you all the time – you should drink at least a gallon of water per day while in the desert, especially if hiking. Also, having some extra gallons of water in the car for emergencies isn’t a bad idea either. Be sure to have plenty of sunscreen, and wear light colored long sleeves, pants, and hat for further sun protection.

If you plan to visit multiple National Parks on a trip, it may be best to purchase a National Parks Pass (, good at all National Parks for one year) rather than purchase individual passes at each park.

I always advise that folks read about Leave No Trace Outdoor Ethics before heading into the wilderness. One special consideration in the desert is that there is something called a cryptobiotic crust that covers some areas of the desert that cannot survive being walked on. It is a living crust made of cyanobacteria, lichen, algae, and fungi, which serves as a covering that protects against erosion, and absorbs moisture and nutrients for plant growth. It is best to stay on the trails to avoid inadvertently stepping on this crust.

Best Way To Get Around:

Edward Abbey was an advocate of banning all motorized vehicles from National Parks. He had this to say on the subject:

"We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places."

While I agree with Mr.Abbey, we all know that cars are currently allowed in National Parks. But I do suggest that you go beyond a scenic drive into the National Parks. One cannot truly appreciate and understand the beauty and diversity of what is being protected without getting out on foot into it and getting dirty. You can take a short walk, a long hike, or an ambitious backpacking trip – each will put you in contact with the wild plants and animals that make up each individual ecosystem. You will see amazing things that you would never notice from a car, find scenic views not available from crowded viewpoints on the road, experience solitude and a peacefulness not otherwise possible. Give it a try, even if you never have – see what you’ve been missing!

Canyonlands National Park encompasses the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, combining green riparian areas with dry redrock desert. It is made up of three separate districts: Island in the Sky (north district-high plateau, many viewpoints), The Needles (southeast-shallow canyons, rock formations), and The Maze (southwest-wildest and most remote). The easiest one to reach from Moab is Island in the Sky. The districts are not linked by road, so if you plan to go to The Needles or The Maze, expect to drive 2-6 hours between each of the districts.

We only visited Island in the Sky, which is on a plateau about 1000 feet above the rivers and canyons below. This area offers the best sightseeing by car, with a series of spectacular roadside viewpoints, some which allow you to see as far as the Grand Canyon. It took us about an hour to get to Grand View Point (the farthest viewpoint), and we stopped at most of the other viewpoints along the way.

Beyond the scenic drive/viewpoints, other activities at Island in the Sky include camping, a four wheel drive or mountain bike trip, ranger programs, rafting, or hiking. Camping is available at Willow Flat Campground. There are 12 campsites, which are first come, first serve and fill up early, particularly in the spring and fall. The White Rim Road is a 100 mile dirt road that loops around and below the Island in the Sky. It is for high clearance, four wheel drive vehicles (no ATVs), or for mountain bikes. It takes about 2-3 days to do this trip in a vehicle, and 3-4 days by bike. There are designated camping areas along the way – permits for driving the road and overnight camping are available at the Visitor Center. No water is available, so you need to bring all that you require with you. Ranger programs are available at the Visitor Center daily. Guided rafting is available in Moab.

Finally, there are numerous long and short hikes you can do at Island in the Sky. The one hike that we did was to Upheaval Dome. Upheaval Dome is a crater 1-2 miles wide, 1000 feet deep, with a whitish gray mass, or dome, rising up from the middle It is 1 mile round trip to the first viewpoint, but we hike to the second viewpoint, which was 2 miles round trip. The terrain was fairly level.

Upheaval Dome is a really unusual feature to be found amongst the canyons and redrock of Canyonlands. It is similar to a volcanic crater, but it was not formed by volcanic activity. In fact, no one knows for sure exactly what it is or how it was formed. The two most popular theories are:
1) that it was formed from meteorite impact, or
2) that a large salt deposit was pushed up out of the ground, and then eroded away leaving what we see today.

The Entrance Fee for Canyonlands is $10 per vehicle (good for 7 days).

Free camping is allowed on certain Forest Service (FS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) areas. It is called "dispersed camping" and basically means that you can camp almost anywhere you want to on FS or BLM lands. In these areas, you will have to provide everything for yourself…. water, firewood, stove, etc. The bathroom is in the woods or behind a rock. ALWAYS follow Leave No Trace Outdoor Ethics and pack everything out that you bring in.

I usually find these "free areas" by driving down various FS or BLM roads and looking for spots where you can tell people have camped before (no vegetation where they park and usually a rock fire ring –sometimes they even leave firewood!). Sometimes sites are grouped together, and sometimes they are solitary. BLM camping spots are trickier to find than FS, as BLM land is not signed very well. If you can get a good map, you may be able to pinpoint BLM areas more easily, but sometimes there is not road access to the land. Once on this trip I stopped to ask a gas station owner how to access a certain piece of BLM property – and he angrily informed me that there is NO access except through his land and he doesn’t care if it’s public land, NO ONE is getting there through his land! Traditionally, only local folks have used BLM land for grazing, etc. Now many others know about it and want to use it, and some local people don’t like that. They feel protective and invaded, and who can blame them. Possession is 90% of the law, right?

Here are some spots that we found to camp near Moab. There are many many more that we didn’t find, so maybe you can discover something even better than we did. See the map in the photo section for a better idea of location.

Fisher Towers: A few campsites on the way to the parking area. The sites were full because we arrived late, so we slept in our car at the trailhead.

Green River: When driving out of Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky area) we saw an unmarked dirt road winding down into the Green River valley. I would say it is the first noticeable road on the left that you would come to. It winds down some steep switchbacks (you can see old cars that went over the edge when you go down and then look back up at the switchbacks) to the Green River. There is a small boat dock, and a dirt road that continues past the boat dock to some campsites. We were the only ones camping in the area.

Long’s Canyon: The roads are not signed very well. From Moab, go toward Arches National Park. Take the first left after crossing the river, then the first noticable road to the right. You will find numerous campsites along this road (Long’s Canyon). We had the whole canyon to ourselves.

"Everything is lovely and wild, with a virginal sweetness. The arches themselves, strange, impressive, grotesque, form but a small and inessential part of the general beauty of this country. When we think of rock we usually think of stones, broken rock, buried under soil and plant life, but here all is exposed and naked, dominated by the monolithic formations of sandstone which stand above the surface of the ground and extend for miles, sometimes level, sometimes tilted or warped by pressures from below, carved by erosion and weathering into an intricate maze of glens, grottoes, fissures, passageways, and deep narrow canyons." -- Edward Abbey

Arches National Park is located 5 miles north of Moab on Highway 191. The park consists of 73,000 acres, and it contains over 2000 red sandstone arches which are it’s claim to fame. The Entrance Fee is $10 per vehicle, and the pass is good for 7 days. There is one campground at Devil’s Garden, which has 52 sites, is first come-first serve, and usually fills by mid-morning. The cost is $10 per night. Arches is considered a "high desert" which means very HOT summers, and very COLD winters. The best time to visit is definitely spring and fall, when the temperatures are pleasant and there is little or no precipitation.

The arches were formed over time by erosion, and are interesting because they represent millions of years of geologic history. Also, no two arches are alike – they range in size from 3 feet to 306 feet. The most famous arch in the park is Delicate Arch, but there are so many more! Many are named and can be seen from the road, but countless others have no name (find one and name it after yourself!) and are hidden treasures waiting to be found. Complimenting the arches are other rock formations, including fins, spires, and balanced rocks. One area that looked interesting was the Fiery Furnace… see further notes in my Arches National Park – Hike to Delicate Arch and Fiery Furnace" entry.

We started our trip by stopping at the Visitor Center to check out their displays and get information. Then we decided to drive all the main roads to see the many different arches and viewpoints – we drove the Windows Section first, then drove to the Devil’s Garden area. Having seen the roadside sights, we knew we had to get out on a trail and see the arches closer up. From the parking area at Devil’s Garden, we hiked 2 miles to see Landscape Arch, the largest arch in the park. There were a lot of people on the trail, so on the way back, we took an alternative trail called the Primitive Loop. The primitive loop trail is less maintained and has few arches, but we totally lost the crowd and had the trail to ourselves. All together, we hiked 5 miles roundtrip and saw maybe a dozen arches, great redrock, cryptobiotic crust, and lizards! I definitely recommend this hike.

"If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful – that which is full of wonder." -- Edward Abbey

Delicate Arch is a world famous symbol of the American desert. It is almost a mandatory hike, but another alternative is to drive to the Delicate Arch viewpoint, and see it from one mile away (but its just not the same). The hike starts at Wolfe Ranch, and is 3 miles round trip with 480 feet of elevation gain/loss. The trail starts out as a typical dirt trail, but then changes into a hike on red slickrock - Watch for rock cairns (man-made pyramid shaped rock piles) and follow them. Sometimes you will see a worn down path in the rock, made from years of people walking to the arch. Along the way is spectacular redrock scenery. The great part about this hike is that you can’t actually see Delicate Arch until you get to it… which makes for kind of a dramatic end to the hike. You come around a rock formation, and there it is, in all it’s fame and glory. It is perched on the edge of a dropoff, with the scenic La Sal Mountains in the background. There is sort of a rock bench near the arch, which makes a natural seating and viewing area.

"A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us – like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness – that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures." -- Edward Abbey

Another area that looked interesting (that we didn’t get to) is a maze of red fins called The Fiery Furnace. You need a permit (fee charged) to go into it, or you can go on a 3 hour ranger guided hike ($6 adults, $3 children). The guided hike happens twice daily (mid-March to October). Immensely popular, the limited spots fill up 1-2 days in advance. You can reserve spots 7 days ahead at the Visitor Center. More adventurous folks will like the lack of maintained trails, scrambling through narrow cracks, and moving along narrow ledges.

Dead Horse Point State Park consists of a narrow peninsula 2000 feet above the Colorado River. The park got it’s name from a legend that long ago, cowboys chased wild mustangs onto the peninsula and fenced them in. They chose the best horses for themselves and left the rest. One time, the cowboys forgot to open the fence when they left, and the horses died of thirst.

The park is 5362 acres, and is at an elevation of 5900 feet. It is located on Highway 313, 18 miles from Moab and near the entrance to Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky district). We had not heard of Dead Horse Point previously, but stopped because we had a little time to spare before heading down to our campsite in Long’s Canyon. Because we didn’t know what to expect, we were blown away by the view! This viewpoint surpassed all the others we had seen at Canyonlands…. the view was postcard perfect. The Colorado River looked as green as I’d ever seen it, as it wound through breathtaking redrock cliffs and plateaus. You could really see how the area was laid out… you could follow the different canyons with your eyes, and look down onto various mesas. We saw below us a jeep road that looked like it would be fun to drive, which turned out to be the White Rim Road (see Canyonlands journal entry).

Looking down to the river, I thought how great it would be to raft down it. Edward Abbey wrote a great chapter in Desert Solitaire called Down the River. It turns out he was one of the last people to raft down the Colorado River before the Glen Canyon Dam was built, changing the river and canyon forever:

"Down the river we drift in a kind of waking dream, gliding beneath the great curving cliffs with their tapestries of water stains, the golden alcoves, the hanging gardens, the seeps, the springs where no man will ever drink, the royal arches in high relief and the amphitheatres shaped like seashells. A sculptured landscape mostly bare of vegetation – earth in the nude." -- Edward Abbey

The park has a Visitor Center where you can learn more, a 21 unit campground, a museum, and a picnic area with grills. I think the campground takes reservations at (435)259-2614. There are ten miles of hiking trails that wind past sheer cliffs. We paid $6 for a day use pass.