TheDunedain
Not all those who wander are lost
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2012
- Messages
- 37
So...I had been working on a conservation corps based out of Monticello, UT from mid March to the end of June so needless to say this will be the first of many trip reports from the southern Utah area. It was my first off time I had since I had completed the first few weeks of training so I was anxious to head down to the Cedar Mesa area being that is one of my favorite places in the region. I left a little later than I had wanted to with the plan of doing a bit of hiking in Road Canyon and then to find a place to spend the night in Comb Wash. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way.
I left the base camp near Monticello around 4:30PM and arrived at the trail head off of the Ciggarette Springs Road around 5:30. Already I was a bit skeptical about whether or not I should be starting this late in the day and the fact that the forecast had called for rain and snow in the near future made the "Road Impassable when wet" sign stand out all the more in my mind, but I let my excitement outweigh my skepticism and started off down the trail with what would prove to be a very unprepared backpack.
This particular trail in Road canyon is a bit tricky to follow at times but I think I may have been the first one to hike it that spring for it showed no signs of wear and still had cracks from the previous summer. The trail follows the rim of the canyon for a short distance and then follows some cairns down to the bottom where soon after I found my first Anasazi ruin, which happened to be the popular Fallen Roof ruin which is a small ruin with three rooms. After checking out the Fallen roof ruin I headed along the rim to see if I could find some more ruins and sure enough pretty much around each corner were more and more ruins. At about 7:30, After finding about 5 or 6 of these ruins I decided it was getting a little too dark for my liking and started hiking out back the way I came. This is where it got interesting.
I got to the point where the cairns lead you out of the canyon right after dusk and started ascending the steep sandstone in what I assumed was the right direction but being that this particular section of trail is poorly cairned I somehow ended up coming out of what I would find to be the wrong side canyon and out onto the mesa. When I reached top of the mesa I realized I had made a mistake for there was no trail anymore but by this point it was past dusk and I had no idea in which direction the sun had set being that it was fully overcast leaving me very disoriented. So, in stead of doing the smart thing and backtracking, I set of in the direction that I thought the trail was, which was a huge mistake.
After about an hour of walking over what looked like the exact same juniper trees, yucca, and cacti I realized I had royally screwed up and was not going to find the trail that night. I check my bag to see what supplies I had and it looked pretty grim: very crappy headlamp(my cellphone backlight proved to be brighter), few liters of water, 2 granola bars, an apple, 2 lighters, a first aid kit,a fleece, and a rain jacket. I was not prepared. After about 20 minutes of panic (knowing that I had only told people where I was camping and not hiking) and stumbling into cacti in the dark (ouch) I decided there was no use trying to find my way back and that it would be better to find a place to hunker down with a fire for the night. So that's what I did.
So after some more painful cacti kicks I finally found a very small rock overhang that would hopefully protect me from the rain if it fell and started a fire. I took the padding out of my backpack and put it down as a sort of makeshift pad, put some juniper branches over my legs for an attempt at insulation and laid there for what was definitely the longest night of my life. I slept for maybe an hour from 11 to midnight and woke up to just coals, I would not sleep the rest of the night.
At about 5 am it was just light enough to begin to see so I put out the fire and began backtracking the way I came only to find out I had been going in the complete opposite direction of my car and had been following the rim of Road Canyon in the dark for about a mile and a half... After about an hour of hiking along the rim and spotting all the ruins I had seen the day before I made it back to the trail. It began to snow literally the moment I made it back to my car. Talk about luck eh? From there I drove to comb ridge and napped in my car for a few hours in pouring rain.
Although Road Canyon is an unbelievably beautiful place I never wish to repeat this experience again...
I left the base camp near Monticello around 4:30PM and arrived at the trail head off of the Ciggarette Springs Road around 5:30. Already I was a bit skeptical about whether or not I should be starting this late in the day and the fact that the forecast had called for rain and snow in the near future made the "Road Impassable when wet" sign stand out all the more in my mind, but I let my excitement outweigh my skepticism and started off down the trail with what would prove to be a very unprepared backpack.
This particular trail in Road canyon is a bit tricky to follow at times but I think I may have been the first one to hike it that spring for it showed no signs of wear and still had cracks from the previous summer. The trail follows the rim of the canyon for a short distance and then follows some cairns down to the bottom where soon after I found my first Anasazi ruin, which happened to be the popular Fallen Roof ruin which is a small ruin with three rooms. After checking out the Fallen roof ruin I headed along the rim to see if I could find some more ruins and sure enough pretty much around each corner were more and more ruins. At about 7:30, After finding about 5 or 6 of these ruins I decided it was getting a little too dark for my liking and started hiking out back the way I came. This is where it got interesting.
I got to the point where the cairns lead you out of the canyon right after dusk and started ascending the steep sandstone in what I assumed was the right direction but being that this particular section of trail is poorly cairned I somehow ended up coming out of what I would find to be the wrong side canyon and out onto the mesa. When I reached top of the mesa I realized I had made a mistake for there was no trail anymore but by this point it was past dusk and I had no idea in which direction the sun had set being that it was fully overcast leaving me very disoriented. So, in stead of doing the smart thing and backtracking, I set of in the direction that I thought the trail was, which was a huge mistake.
After about an hour of walking over what looked like the exact same juniper trees, yucca, and cacti I realized I had royally screwed up and was not going to find the trail that night. I check my bag to see what supplies I had and it looked pretty grim: very crappy headlamp(my cellphone backlight proved to be brighter), few liters of water, 2 granola bars, an apple, 2 lighters, a first aid kit,a fleece, and a rain jacket. I was not prepared. After about 20 minutes of panic (knowing that I had only told people where I was camping and not hiking) and stumbling into cacti in the dark (ouch) I decided there was no use trying to find my way back and that it would be better to find a place to hunker down with a fire for the night. So that's what I did.
So after some more painful cacti kicks I finally found a very small rock overhang that would hopefully protect me from the rain if it fell and started a fire. I took the padding out of my backpack and put it down as a sort of makeshift pad, put some juniper branches over my legs for an attempt at insulation and laid there for what was definitely the longest night of my life. I slept for maybe an hour from 11 to midnight and woke up to just coals, I would not sleep the rest of the night.
At about 5 am it was just light enough to begin to see so I put out the fire and began backtracking the way I came only to find out I had been going in the complete opposite direction of my car and had been following the rim of Road Canyon in the dark for about a mile and a half... After about an hour of hiking along the rim and spotting all the ruins I had seen the day before I made it back to the trail. It began to snow literally the moment I made it back to my car. Talk about luck eh? From there I drove to comb ridge and napped in my car for a few hours in pouring rain.
Although Road Canyon is an unbelievably beautiful place I never wish to repeat this experience again...
