I have been very bad and have neglected posting my third portion of my Canyonlands trip. I am forced to do so now so I can post my one that I went with my family 😉
So after my trip into Chesler park with the Arizona Backpacking club, three of us continued on to our final portion of our trip, Upper Salt Creek.
Bloody Basin road was closed due to too much mud and all around nasty conditions, so, we had to alter our plans. We were supposed to start at one end of Upper Salt Creek and hike to the other end of it, but since we could no longer do a through hike to a vehcile at the other end, we had to hike in as far as we could and then come back out. We changed our campsites around and now looked like instead of averaging 6-8 miles a day we would be averaging around 12 miles a day. The first night we slept in the at large camping portion which is where you can camp anywhere you like just as long as you practice the leave no trace rule. We chose a killer spot under a tree that was dwarfed by the towering cliffs and a really cool unnamed arch. We hiked up that day to take a look at Angel Arch which is another extremely cool arch, but as with most everything on this trip the timing was wrong and the lighting was horrible.
The second day we headed out to our camp which turned out to be as far as we would go on this trip. We did hike a half a mile or so and checked out some really cool ruins and petroglyphs. We camped beneath another spectacular view. I have come to the conclusion that there isn’t a single campsite in Canyonlands National park that doesn’t have exquisite views. That night we had to lock our food in bear canisters provided by the park service. I wouldn’t think the bears would be out in the desert like this. But we did come across some bear scat so it does look like they are in fact out there.
The Third night we spent the night at a jeep campground (Peekaboo) and I crawled into my tent cold and a bit wet. That was the first and only night I really got cold. I couldn’t get my feet to warm up and woke up to my boots frozen. The next morning we got up on the trail pretty early and took a small side trip to Paul Bunyan’s Potty. A interesting horizontal type arch. Then made our way back to the vehicles where I’d find my jeep battery drained. After getting a jump from a nice fellow I headed out to the needles outpost for a diet coke and a nice hot shower before making my way home.
Code_Joe 