Hole in the Rock Road to be paved?

I'm thinking at least we're glad they paved Hwy 12. Doh!!! Now I did it. Half of you are probably gonna say they should have left it alone.
 
powderglut said:
I'm thinking at least we're glad they paved Hwy 12. Doh!!! Now I did it. Half of you are probably gonna say they should have left it alone.
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For what it's worth, I'm don't so much mind that that road is paved. It's those dead ends into the wilderness I'm not so down with.
 
I think this is pretty timely for this thread.
Abbey in SLC in 1988. Part 1:


Parts 2 and 3 are great too.
 
Thanks for that post Greg!

I believe we first got a hair up our butt, about seeing all the cool Utah and Arizona stuff, from old Ed. I'm thinking the book was called Slickrock. Awesome pictures and words about desert colors and canyons and waters. We "had to" see some of this stuff.

So.. in the late 70's early 80's we did: Burr Trail, Coyote Gulch, Cottonwood road, Paria Canyon and Buckskin Gulch, Grand Canyon for a week with a midnight hike up the Hermits Tr, White Rim (before mt bikes) and...... (one of our dumber one's).... canoe down the Escalante from Hwy12 and up Hole in the Rock. At least that was the plan. This actually turned into hauling canoes down HITR to the lake, paddle up the Escalante and then haul them back up HITR. Reason? The Escalante river looked way too low for us to canoe at Hwy12. We figured it would be a pinball ride and probable disaster. So..... If the Mormon's could take wagons down the HITR, we sure as hell could carry canoes up and down it. Youthful exuberance!! Talk about an adventure driving that road out to the end. Yee Haw!!

So yes, leave HITR Rd alone, along with Cottonwood Rd, Skutumpah, Notom, and all the others that make it just a little bit of an effort to get to.

Hauling a canoe down the Hole in the Rock.

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"Beyond the Hundredth Meridian" is an amazing book.
 
I stand somewhere in the middle on this issue. I'm not for paving it, but I think leaving it unmaintained is a step in the wrong direction. How many people would honestly rather spend even more time driving down that road? In the short term I don't think paving the road would have much of an impact because most of the spurs are rough enough to keep a lot of people away anyway. I can't drive my car on most of the spurs, so even with the current maintenance I consider the area to be generally high clearance territory. Down the line it would likely become an issue, though. Once the main road is paved I think it's only a matter of time before they'd start paving spur roads. Then we're looking at the Escalante truly becoming overrun, and that would be a damn shame.
 
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