It was a Labor Day reunion for myself, Dan, Adam, and Mike in the small Utah border town of Bluff, as we prepared to set out across the state towards the Idaho state line. I was really looking forward to this because we had finished Arizona in May, and I had to drive home to Portland, passing Grand Staircase, Zion, and Bryce Canyon on the way. That was no fun. I arrived in Bluff early because I was traveling down through the Idaho backcountry but ran into road closures due to firefighting activity in the Boise National Forest and had to bailout and take the interstate. I took advantage of the situation and explored around Bluff, including Valley of the Gods. The rest of the gang rolled into town on Saturday, and we had our traditional kickoff dinner at the Canyon Smokehouse. The big decision that we had to make was how much time we would spend in the Jeep Mecca of Moab. We decided to table that decision until we were in Moab and had a better idea of how much time those trails would take, since none of us had been there.
We fueled up and topped off our water on Sunday morning and headed south out of Bluff towards the turnoff into Valley of the Gods. This leg would take us through Valley of the Gods, up and over Moki Dugway and then back into Bluff, where we would head north towards Blanding. 128 miles in all, but we were making good time as we rolled into Blanding for fuel and a snack. At the Canyon Country Bowling Center, which was gas, bowling, and an A&W restaurant, we spied three Jeeps in the parking lot and figured that they must be on the same route, but we could not locate the drivers. As it turns out, we would cross paths later in our journey. We headed west out of Blanding on Elk Mountain Road, before turning north into Bears Ears National Monument to find a place to camp for the evening. We split up, each looking for that perfect campsite, and while we were off looking, Mike ran into the three Jeeps that we had seen earlier in Blanding. Everyone was busy looking for campsites, so there was no time to talk. By this point, I was five or six mile west of the main road, Gooseberry Road, on a narrow trail called Deadman Point. The ominous sounding trail proved to be the perfect spot for the night, culminating in an overlook of several deep canyons. We were at 8,700 feet and, sure enough, clouds moved in against the mountain and it spit rain for about 20 minutes. It cleared up quickly, and we enjoyed the amazing views of the canyons, below.
The next morning, we packed up our Jeeps and headed back out to the main road, which continued east through Bears Ears. Evidently, it was some kind of hunting season because we began seeing more people out here in the forest. We stopped for a break at 10,300-foot North Creek Pass and got to chat with a gentleman who was local to the area. He said that it was bear season, and he gave us a great rundown on how they hunt and what they do with the meat. He showed us pictures of a huge black bear that his grandson had just shot, on a bow hunt. I have never eaten bear, and I am okay with that. We worked our way down the mountain, these roads were well maintained gravel, so we were making good time. We made a quick side-trip into Monticello, Utah for fuel and snacks. Again, we spotted the three Jeeps that we had seen earlier in Blanding, but they were heading out as we were heading in, and we did not get a chance to talk. Our plan was to push into Moab, so we headed back out of Monticello, working our way down to highway 211, which goes into Canyonlands National Park. We passed Newspaper Rock, then Dugout Ranch whose irrigated green fields stood in sharp contrast to the surrounding red rock, before turning onto Lockhart Basin Road, which would take us into Moab. We were not headed into Canyonlands today, but we would be back.
Today we would be skirting Canyonlands, which would remain off to our left as we traveled along Lockhart Basin Road. Bears Ears remained on our right; some 1,000 to 1,500 feet above the road. The views along the way are everything that southern Utah is all about; tall spires, red mesas and sandstone cliffs as far as the eye can see. The road was deceptively easy in the beginning, though it began to narrow and become rockier as we travelled north.
At some point we hit our first obstacle, which caused us to stop and study the situation. We would need to navigate a stretch of jumbled boulders and small ledges, that appeared to be the remnants of a flash-flood event. We were travelers, no rock crawlers, so our experience in these matters was nonexistent. We would become much smarter by the end of the day. We worked our way through the section with no issues, save for some scraping of the skid plates under the Jeeps. Several miles later we ran into a group of adventure bikes who were recuperating in the shade of a rock overhang. We refilled their water and gave them a heads-up on what they could expect, as they were heading in the other direction. They were beat, and happy to hear that they were almost out of the hard stuff.
We had another boulder-chute coming up, though. This was longer and tougher than the last one, with a large three-foot boulder on the left-side of the trail, that we had to get over, and then drop down the other side. I imagine that this stretch of road, roughly 200-feet long, looks like Class IV rapids during a flooding event. We picked our way through the area, scraping our skid plates and differentials along the way. After that, it was smooth sailing out to the Colorado River. It was late in the day, so we picked an open area along the rim of the river canyon, to camp for the night. As the sun went down, we spotted bright off-road lights coming down Lockhart Basin Road and as the first Jeep went by, we realized that it was the three Jeeps that we had been seeing for two days but had not really met. We flashed our lights, and they came down to the river where we were. It turned out that they were also looking for a place to settle in for the night, so we finally got to meet Gordon from Texas, Eric from San Diego, and Arno from Nevada. We had a great evening chatting about Jeeps and various adventures that we had been on. In the morning, Gordon, Eric and Arno continued their Utah Backcountry Discovery Route journey, while we decided to knock-out the Chicken Corners trail which was only about a mile back up the main road. We had also decided to spend the next two or three days in Moab, running some of the trails there.