Weather in Grand Junction

Not that I necessarily trust it, given that it's still a week and a half or more away, but the ten day forecasts on weather.com are starting to reach into the first days of my hiking trip.  What am I looking at?  Cooler temps, but not cold: highs in the upper 50s, lows in the upper 30s overnight.  A higher than expected humidity forecast and chances of morning showers(!)

I think that's going to drive me towards more "standard" routes; I don't want to get stuck on a muddy, bad road, or have to worry about flash floods, or even just the rather more banal but still uncomfortable and undesirable problem of getting stuck hiking in rain that lasts for more than a few minutes or so at a time.  Anyway, so much for going to the desert for clear skies and dry air!

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the forecast as the trip gets closer.  I doubt it will make any significant changes to my plans, but it might require minor tweaks.

Playing with options (Kodel's, Devil's and Pollock Canyons area)

Well, gjhikes suggests that getting to Monument Rocks north of Grand Junction in the Little Book Cliffs area is difficult if not impossible without a high clearance vehicle.  However, according to the Trails Illustrated map I got, there's a paved road that goes right to it.  Looks like I'll need to make a call a little later today (after Mountain Time Zone areas open) to find out what the real status is.  In any case, I want to have some modular plans that I can pick and choose from depending on what I feel, rather than the static itinerary that I posted yesterday.  Let's see what I can come up with.

First, I've got several potential modules in the Pollack and Kodel Canyon area, really close to my campsite, but outside of the National Monument on BLM land:

• The Devil's Canyon (D3) hike, which I almost certainly will want to do.  It's not really long enough to be a whole day.  Maybe I can even do it half a day and have time to do something else, although it's long enough that the second half will have to be something relatively short.
• Rattlesnake Arches is another one that's a little long, but not long enough to really be a whole day.  Although if I'm going faster than I think and feeling good (because after all, it'll probably be cool still, and I won't have a backpack on) maybe I can do both of these together.
• More likely, I'll combine it Devil's Canyon with some of the Kodel's trails, since they connect and are all in the same general area.  These trails are usually kind of short, although they sometimes require hiking one trail to reach another.  The nice thing about it is now flexible and modular the whole affair really is though.  The simple expedient of parking at the Kodel's Canyon instead of Devil's Canyon trail head forces me to pick one of the many routes through the Kodel's area to get to Devil's Canyon, which I kind of like.
• Another desirable hike in the area, although fairly long, would be to see Pollock Arch in Pollock Canyon. Although I don't know that it's more distant from the Pollock Bench trailhead than the Rattlesnake Arches are, and although there are less arches for your effort, you get a rare free-standing arch, like Utah's famous Delicate Arch for your work.

I really kind of see three main destinations here in this area: Devil's Canyon (via Kodel's for more scenic variety, and it actually only adds modestly to the distance), Pollock Canyon and it's Arch, and the Rattlesnake Arches.  I wonder if I can work them into two days or so?  I fairly long loop, although a fun one, and if all I have to carry are water, snacks, a jacket and a headlight in case I'm not back before it starts getting dark, would be from Pollock Bench up to Pollock Arch (maybe through Flume Creek Canyon, since the distance looks to be about the same), around through Pollock Canyon, out to the Rattlesnakes, and back again.  I'll whip up a Caltopo to get the mileage and elevation and see if it looks reasonable to do as a longer day hike or not.

Here it is, with some stats:

• Kodel's to Devil's loop: 9.3 miles, 1,553 total elevation gain, most of it in Devil's Canyon itself.
• The Flume-Pollock-Rattlesnake loop is truly epic.  Almost 18 miles with quite a bit of elevation gain.  It looks like it's not doable as a day hike, at least not unless I was quite a bit younger or quite a bit thinner and can go faster and longer than I'm likely to want to go. 
• On the other hand, cutting the Rattlesnake area off, painful as that may be, does make it achievable.  Or doing only Rattlesnake without the Pollock Canyon exploration, maybe—although that's still a pretty long day for someone my age, with my knees and my weight.

Van camping

I'll probably do something very unusual, at least for me.  Because I'm bringing the minivan instead of my much smaller car (because I need to haul my wife and two teenage boys back home, plus my daughter's stuff which has been in storage in Rexburg), I have all kinds of room that I don't normally have.  And because I have established campsites that I can drive right to at every night that I'm not in a hotel...  I'm almost certainly just going to fold down the seats, set up a bigger, more comfortable air mattress in the back of the van, put big, puffy, heavy and bulky sleeping bags over it, and sleep in the van.  I don't have to carry any of this stuff, so why not?  I'll be trialing this approach this weekend in a campground near Toledo, and we'll see how it goes.  One interesting side effect; "breaking camp" means that I don't really have to do very much at all, do I?  Pack up my camp chair (another luxury I wouldn't normally bring), scan the site to make sure I didn't inadvertently leave anything laying around, turn on the car and go.  That's it!

Granted, this is an unusual trip.  I normally wouldn't consider this, because normally I'd be trying to get out at least somewhere that I can't reach in a single day (I'm actually feeling just a bit constrained by that as I'm planning this trip this time) and normally I'd also not have access to a vehicle that's big enough for me to set up like this.  In fact, I don't necessarily anticipate ever having access to a vehicle big enough to do that again; we're within a couple or so years striking distance of finally getting the car I want (instead of something too utilitarian for commuting to work and letting teenagers drive it) and also phasing out the need for a minivan at all.  My wife will probably replace the van with something about the size of a Ford Escape or Edge, whereas I'm leaning right now towards a shorter Jeep Wrangler.  I couldn't sleep in either of those things even if I wanted to, which I probably won't.

It is possible that I'll get a pickup truck instead of a Jeep, and have access to the bed, but honestly, most of those beds aren't really long enough for me to sleep in anyway—I'm a solid 6' 00" and I guess if I put the gate down, I could do it with my feet hanging out of the bed proper—but would I really ever want to cowboy camp in the bed of a pick-up truck?  Actually—maybe.  But that's still the plan B; I've wanted a Jeep since I was a little kid, and all of these options are now grossly overpriced compared to what they used to be even in the 90s.

Anyway, other than this, I still have one of my days where I only have about a half days worth of itinerary on my schedule.  I'm having trouble finding something else to add, because I want to make sure that I don't do something too ambitious after I've already done 8.5 miles in the morning and early afternoon (and this is my last day of hiking around Grand Junction before heading to Utah) and Trying to get very far away from where I already am will also be challenging.  Or rather, it will be challenging to do so without burning through too much time to allow me to actually still do anything meaningful after I get there.  I may well just hang around the Monument and see more of it.  There are a lot of smaller trails, only some of which I highlighted in my last post, so maybe I can do a few more of those.  Or, depending on the time, maybe I'll do something a bit more ambitious like Rim Trail #8 or something.  Maybe Rabbit's Ear is slightly better; big views payoff and a couple of miles shorter.

I may be stymied by road conditions.  I'm actually having to go a little bit earlier than I'd prefer; later April rather than the very beginning of April would be better.  Some hikes I've looked into have said outright that their trailheads aren't available by road until April 15, and even if they technically are, conditions on the road might be muddy with snowmelt.  Again; what I should have done is either gone even further south (like to Big Bend National Park) in late February or early March, or gone to Grand Junction and Moab more like the last two weeks of April.  I'm in a kind of uncomfortable position where conditions could be variable.  And because it's been a high snow year, that means some stuff will be unavailable to me.

Backpacking vs hiking

Well, I went ahead and made my campground reservations to last for all of the nights I'll be in Colorado National Monument.  I can blow off the $40 dollars I spent, get a backcountry permit and do the route described in the post below, but I'm thinking, even with relatively short distance, do I really want to climb 2,800 feet in one day?  Probably not.  And if I do, will I really want to keep hiking for another day and a half (or whatever it ends up being?)  Again, probably not.  Although, granted, if I just suck it up and do it, it's mostly all downhill after that first day, I still probably don't want to do it, and I won't actually plan on doing so after all.  Rather, I'll look around for day hikes, both in the monument and the surrounding area.  I'm actually a little excited to see if I can get up on the Book Cliffs a bit, or Dominguez Canyon, or some of the other areas nearby.  Of course, there's more to see than I'll have time to, so I'll have to be judicious in how I spend my time, all the while making sure now to overplan too.

So what does my new itinerary look like with just day hikes?

Well, the driving days are the same, including hopefully having time on Sunday afternoon to the do the Dillon Pinnacles. 

Monday: well, I actually probably am not in any particular hurry to get to camp, since I have a reservation.  But I want to be sure and get in before the office closes, so I'll probably go early, then go get some lunch, and then hike the afternoon and evening.  I'm actually thinking of doing the Devil's Canyon hike, which is just outside the monument, but curiously very, very close to the edge of the monument where I'll be camping.  If there's still time and daylight, I'll explore some of the little minor hikes of the Monument before turning in, like Artist's Point, Coke Ovens, or the Canyon Rim trails.

Tuesday will be a big hiking day, but since I don't have to carry my backpack, and since I can turn around and head back at any point I decide I've had enough, it shouldn't be too bad.  I intend to start out with Wedding Canyon and hike to Independence Monument.  I'll head up the Upper canyon trail as far as I feel like, before turning back around.  Probably about the time that I'm not on the canyon floor anymore and start to see that I'm climbing out, I'll quit and turn around.  Then, doing a kind of inverse lollipop, at the Monument itself I'll take the Lower Monument trail instead of Wedding Canyon and do a loop back to the car.  Or, I could do that lollipop in reverse.  I guess I'm indifferent to the two options right now.

Anyway, this is a long day, so I'll probably tired, dirty, thirsty and hungry by the end of it, and ready to head back to camp, make some dinner and take a load off for the rest of the evening.  On the off-chance that I'm not, I guess I can finish any of the small hikes I noted above that I didn't do yet.

For Wednesday, I want to hike the Bench loop.  It's probably not really a full day, unless I sleep in a lot or something, but I don't yet know what I want to supplement it with.  Probably something outside of the monument, but it has to be a relatively short trail, and one that I can reach quickly.  I'll keep researching various ideas.

Thursday I break camp and drive into Utah.  I probably have plenty of time to enjoy a scenic day of driving and stopping and even some hiking.  I only have to get to the Goblin Valley State Park area by nightfall and it's a ridiculously close two hours away.  Even driving from Colorado National Monument to Dead Horse Point to Goblin Valley is less than four hours.  If I want to go check out the Fisher Towers, that's probably even a little bit closer.  So that gives me some time to really enjoy the day; I do have to do some driving, but if it's only about four hours, I can afford a few hours of hiking and sightseeing too.

I couldn't get a camp site at Goblin Valley State Park, but here is dispersed camping in the BLM land nearby, including on the side of local rinky-dink roads, so I'm planning on doing that instead.  Friday morning it's the Wild Horse/Bell Canyon loops and then drive up to SLC.

Colorado National Monument

While not as spectacular nor as remote as the Needles District, it is more lightly traveled by hikers and backpackers, so given my failure to get a permit for Canyonlands in time, I've decided to make Colorado National Monument my alternate destination.  I'm still working on the exact itinerary, but here's my rough thoughts:

• Saturday March 30—Drive to North Platte NE.  I've already got a reservation.
• Sunday March 31—Drive to the Curecanti National Recreation Area.  Pick up one of the more remote first-come first served individual campsites and set up camp.  Presumably there will be time to explore a bit before dark.  
• Crystal Creek would be desirable, assuming snow is clear.  Dillon Pinnacles is the must-do hike.
• Monday April 1—Finish exploring the recreation area.  Drive to Colorado National Monument and take a site at the Saddlehorn Campground.  Get my backcountry permit, but otherwise take it easy.  Assuming that there's time, do some drive/short hike exploration, including possibly:
• Artists point
• Canyon View/Window Rock
• Otto's Trail
• Tuesday April 2—start of actual "backpacking".  Route is a loop from Monument Canyon Trailhead through Wedding Canyon, joining Monument Canyon at Independence Monument, getting up via Coke Ovens and the CCC trail to the Black Ridge Trail heading south.  Once I hit the trailhead down there, take the Liberty Cap Trail to the other side of the monument, and the Bench Trail back towards the Monument Canyon Trailhead, dropping down via Gold Star Canyon to the cliff base trail, and arriving back at my starting point.  Trying to decide if I want to stretch this out via two nights so I never feel rushed... and I kinda think that I might.  Although that means carrying quite a bit more water.
• Wednesday April 3—Continue backpacking.
• Thursday April 4—Continue backpacking.  Arrive at car and drive to Goblin Valley State Park, where I'll spend the night one more time car camping.  Any exploration of Goblin Valley that I have time to do is great; I'd prefer to do this more this evening.
• Friday April 5—Do the Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon loop.  I need to start fairly early, because this will take until lunchtime.  Eat lunch and drive to Stansbury Park, or wherever my wife is staying.  This is another good four hours, so I'll be arriving late afternoon; hopefully without there being any stress about being on time to help my wife turn her rental car in before it's due and she has to pay another day.
• Saturday April 6—Go to the first session of General Conference and then hit the road, hoping we get a good enough signal to at least stream the audio of the next sessions.  Arrive (again) at North Platte NE
• Sunday April 7—Finish driving home.

I'd plan tentatively on camping the first night not too far from the Coke Ovens; but I'll probably make the climb up to the Black Ridge Trail and camp on the other side of the road somewhere.  For the second night, I'm thinking staying in the canyon alcove somewhere after doing the Bench Trail.

The second day is quite long, and the first day is kinda short; just under 7 miles (although with a pretty steep and significant climb.)  There's a good chance I'll take advantage of my fresher state and push further on the Black Ridge Trail to make a slightly more equitable mileage total between the two days.

UPDATE: I changed the route slightly; the first day now goes all the way to the western trailhead.  I probably won't really walk that far, although by the time I get up to the top up there, I've already done all the climbing I'm going to do and some flat walking might be OK.

On the other hand, did you see that elevation change?  Do I really want to climb the better part of three thousand feet in one day?  Ugh.  I'm having second thoughts about this backpacking loop portion.

Needles

Well... I didn't plan far enough ahead and now there are no camping sites available at Chessler Park, or really almost anywhere in the Needles District at all.  I'll need to have a Plan B.  Because it's relatively easier to do, I'm thinking of either Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction CO, or Natural Bridges National Monument near Blanding UT.

Sigh.