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.

Dillon Pinnacles

When I drive out west to go hiking out where the scenery is really something, (which so far has mostly been in either Utah or Colorado, although Wyoming has tempted me a lot too—and one of these days I'll go even a little further and explore New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) I always try to find a way to get as far out of the Great Lakes region as possible on the first day so I can take my time and enjoy the western scenery a bit more leisurely the second day of driving.  For instance, on two trips to the Uintas, I've made sure that I got as far as either North Platte or even Ogallala Nebraska, and then went and spent a couple of hours at Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff National Monument, hiking and messing around, before then enjoying scenic drives over the Medicine Bow mountains and the Flaming Gorge area.  (The interstate drive across the red desert isn't nearly as bad as a lot of commuters I talk to claim it is, but interstate drives are never as good as little country roads if leisurely enjoying the scenery is your goal.)  Sadly, my sister-in-law doesn't live in Vernal anymore, so that option isn't really a very good one anymore, but with a different destination and a different route, I have some new opportunities this time around.

If I'm going to start hiking in the Needles district, for instance, then I'll want to spend my second night on the road—right before I hike—in Monticello Utah, I think.  It's closer to the Needles area than Moab.  And that gives me an opportunity to still have the same first day of driving, but then cut through Colorado instead of Wyoming, and drive through Gunnison and some other areas that are quite on the way to where I'm going anyway.

So for my Sunday afternoon stop driving and hike around for a little while pit stop, I'm thinking of the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison with it's fabulous Dillon Pinnacles rock formation.  There's a four mile round trip trail (although I think it's actually just a point to point that you backtrack on with maybe a little lollipop like loop at the end) and it's not very far out of the way at all, if it is even out of the way.  And, although the season isn't as exciting as if it were summer or fall, I'll also be driving right by Mount Sneffels, which will be fun.

It always helps that I gain two time zones heading west, and also that daylight savings time will have started by the time I'm making this trip, but assuming I get to Ogallala the first day, I've only got 10½ driving hours.  With the extra time zone crossing and plenty of daylight, if I get a nice early start, and have easy like Sunday morning traffic (on Sunday morning) then I should easily have a couple of hours in the early to mid-afternoon to check out the Pinnacles, hike the little trail, and just have a nice drive around the area.

Which is nice.  I actually really like Scotts Bluff and Chimney Rock, but I've seen them twice already, and I'd like to see something else this time.

Next time I do southern Utah, which I'm sure I will do because I'm only seeing a fraction of the red rock paradise that I'd like to see, I may even make a couple nights stop in Grand Junction and see Colorado National Monument, camp there, and hike for a couple of days before crossing the border into Utah again.  But for now, this'll be a nice way to get psyched up for the hiking trip while still driving.

April Desert hiking

Well, it looks like I'm going.  I'll be gone the same time my wife has planned to take the boys during their spring break to Utah and Idaho, ostensibly to pick up my daughter's stuff from storage in Rexburg, visit her sister (and see her first Tabernacle Choir concert) and see General Conference while they're out there.  It'll be the week before General Conference, and the plan is that I'll meet up with them on Friday sometime and go to the first Saturday morning session with them before we hit the road for home together.  I'm a little disappointed that neither of the boys will be with me, and honestly, I think maybe they are too—or at least, they'd rather do that then go back to Rexburg, which for whatever reason they kinda felt was a depressing place, at least during Spring Break when it's still cold, windy, brown, etc.  Maybe we'll talk about that, but I really think I can handle being on my own better than my wife can, even though I'd like to have the boys hike with me.

Anyway, as I said earlier, sadly, I have to use the weekend to travel, because that's the only thing that works out from a timing perspective, so I'll be driving Saturday and Sunday and arrive in... Monticello, I think, on Sunday evening sometime.  Let's do a day by day break-down of my plans

• Saturday March 30—Drive to mid-Nebraska; stay in hotel
• Sunday March 31—Drive to Monticello; stay in hotel
• Monday April 1—Go to Needles District of Canyonlands and hike into Chessler Park.  Camp overnight
• Tuesday April 2—Explore Chessler Park, Druid Arch, etc. Continue camping in same place.
• Wednesday April 3—Hike out, drive to Dead Horse Point State Park, set up camp
• Thursday April 4—Explore Dead Horse Point State Park, whatever I wasn't able to see the day before.  Drive to Goblin Valley State Park, set up camp
• Friday April 5—Explore Goblin Valley State Park and Little Wild Horse and Bell slot canyons.  Drive to Stansbury Park, or wherever my wife is staying Friday night.
• Saturday April 6—General Conference morning session, and start driving home
• Sunday April 7—Finish driving home.

I do feel like the Dead Horse Point and Goblin Valley State parks are a little rushed, and I wish I had another day (maybe even another day each) to explore them more, but I'll probably be OK.  I don't need to literally hike every single trail at each location.

Needles and Moab

I'm still trying to decide what I'm doing for my solo hiking trip this year.  As February comes to a close, my chances of making it to Moab during the Spring season start to diminish; I still don't have a date, or even a serious plan, so how likely is it really that I'll actually be putting boots to ground in a month or even two or heck—even three?  And three is already starting to lean into weather that's likely to be too hot, honestly.  If I'm really serious about going, I need to nail down a schedule in April... or put it off until the fall.  I can always go in October or even early November, I suppose.  Although then I start to step on other commitments; Alex will be eligible to go on his mission starting late September when he turns 18, so October or early November is probably when he's leaving.

And I'm reconsidering some of what I'd planned.  I do still want to do Chesler Park and camp there, maybe two nights, for a relaxed, packless exploration of the region.  But I'm now starting to become increasingly convinced that the Salt Creek area should be the subject of it's own trip that focuses just on that area, and is done as a point to point with some kind of shuttle, or two cars, or something.  So, I should just ditch that (for now) and look for some other stuff to do in the Moab area after doing a Chessler Park backpacking trip for... I dunno, three days and two nights or so.

Luckily, there are a lot of potential day trips or short in and out one-nighters in the area that look really good too.  There's a six mile loop trail at Dead Horse State Park that few people take (because they just hang out at the drive-up lookout point and then leave, mostly) which is highly recommended: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/east-west-rim-trails-loop

There's always more to see at Arches, although avoiding crowds can be a challenge in its own right: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/klondike-bluffs-trail-tower-arch-hike
https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/devils-garden-primitive-trail

And there's a few other spots in Canyonlands worth taking a look: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/horseshoe-canyon-hike

And, of course, there's plenty of BLM land that I'm curious to see more of: https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hidden-valley/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/fisher-towers/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/negro-bill/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hunter-canyon/

And this link has some of the same options listed above, but a few other ones as well:  https://www.explore-mag.com/10-of-the-Best-Hiking-Trails-Near-Moab-Utah

Of course, if I do a lot of day hiking like that, I need to figure out where I'm actually staying at night; a campground somewhere?  A hotel? 

Either way, if anything is going to come of this, I need to get on it pretty darn fast.  Now that my wife is home from her girlfriends cruise, it's time to pivot to my solo vacation (which is actually solo, unlike hers) and figure out what I'm doing.  Maybe I'll even piggyback off of their trip out west to see conference and do a few other things during Spring Break in April.  It'll be a little odd, because I've had the fact that I can't go with them on my mind from the get-go, due to vacation schedules, and my own requirement that I get my solo backpacking trip that I missed in 2018—so going with them to go backpacking will be weird.  But maybe for the best after all.

A little more thought on a Needles trip

Let's see more specifically how I could pull this off, and specifically how to pull it off in a week, since I don't want to take more than 5 days of vacation.  Most likely, I'd try to take this trip in March, in which I can't tack on any holiday days, but if I somehow decided that going in later April and adding the Easter holiday to the routine, I could make it easier, including keeping the trip down to four days of vacation time and having more cushion to do it in as well.  But let's go for the harder itinerary first.

Day 1 (Saturday): Drive from home to my normal mid-Nebraska midpoint.
Day 2 (Sunday): Drive from mid-Nebraska to Moab.
Day 3 (Monday): First day of Chesler Park hike
Day 4 (Tuesday): Second day; stay back at Squaw Canyon campground
Day 5 (Wednesday): First day of Salt Canyon exploration
Day 6 (Thursday): Second day of Salt Canyon and Horse Canyon exploration; back at Sqauw Canyon
Day 7 (Friday): Explore some other Moab sites reachable by car, particularly Fisher Towers.
Day 8 (Saturday): Drive back to Omaha
Day 9 (Sunday): Drive the rest of the way home.

If I do it in April, I can leave on Friday, take fewer vacation days, and get an extra day of hiking, which means I can actually do Horse Canyon and Salt Creek canyon as to discrete trips with a stop back at the water and established campground at Squaw Canyon.  I have to come almost all the way back to Squaw Canyon campground from exploring one to take the other fork to the other anyway, and that keeps me from needing to carry more than two days worth of water.

Of course, I may decide that I don't even want that much backcountry time anyway, and that I've already bit off as much as I want to chew.

I also don't really like using Sundays as driving days, but realistically, with a normal work schedule and a 2-day drive on either end of the trip, I don't have a lot of choices that don't make significant sacrifices to my ability to actually do the purpose of the trip.  I suppose if it's really that bad, I could stop for Church somewhere in whatever town I'm passing through at 9 AM and get at least sacrament meeting, but most likely I'll consider that and not do it, which is what normally happens.  It's just too difficult to pull off, and makes my arrival schedule too late that day too.

I may be overthinking the water management problem, though.  From what I've seen of trip reports in the area, it's not necessarily that dry during the spring.  And this was actually quite a bit later in the spring than I was talking about.  In fact, it's late enough that if this worked out, it does kind of make me think that maybe April or even early May might not be a bad time to go.

https://backcountrypost.com/threads/salt-creek-canyonlands.3945/

https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/backpacking/canyon-country-southern-utah/big-needles-loop-canyonlands/

https://www.backpacker.com/trips/canyonlands-national-park-salt-creek-lavender-canyon-loop

UPDATE: I suspect that, as normal, I'm being too ambitious.  I see from various online trip reports that people do the Salt Creek as a point to point and still take 4-5 days to do it.  Here, I'm thinking that I'd jaunt most of the way down it and turn around all in two days!  Granted, some of those people had rather leisurely approaches, but then again; wouldn't I rather do that myself?  One group got caught in a pretty serious storm that lasted most of an afternoon, and then had to contend with flooded, swampy conditions the next day, both of which slowed them up considerably too.  But, it looks like unless you're doing a late season approach, there should be plenty of water in the Salt Creek canyon to make carrying gallons and gallons unnecessary.  In any case, I've seen other trip reports that call it a day hike, albeit a long one.  I'm unsure on how to proceed.

Although it's not cheap, I like the idea of having a shuttle. (It gets cheaper (per person, anyway) the more you have in your party.)  Hiking from Cathedral Butte to Chesler Park sounds doable and great, before finishing the Chesler Park loop and returning to Squaw Canyon campground and the car.

Needles district potential itinerary?

I'll add a Caltopo of this later.  How about starting at Elephant Hill (or Squaw Flat if the road to Elephant Hill looks bad) and doing two separate jaunts.  One of them does a loop into Chesler Park, spends the night there, sees Druid Arch, comes back around through Joint Trail, and gets back after less than 48 hours.  There are five campsites in Chesler, and any of them will do, although CP1 is further away from the other four, which are relatively close.  The two EC campsites are another nearby option.

At Squaw Flat, by the way, there's drinking water and a campground, so after doing this, we just dump out there and spend the night.  Early the next morning, we tank up our water containers (including our stomachs!) and hit the trail again, this time heading more directly south and exploring the Big Spring and Squaw Canyon areas before taking the Salt Creek Canyon and spending another night at SC4.  This is a relatively long day of hiking (about 15 miles or so) but you could cut it back to nearly 10 by just heading more directly to Salt Creek Canyon.  You'll probably want to come back that way anyway.  Get SC4 for two nights and explore the Salt Creek Canyon area the second day without your packs, specifically seeing Angel Arch.  If going all the way to Kirk's Cabin isn't your thing, you can instead take the unimproved road to Paul Bunyan's Potty, Tower Ruin, Fortress Arch and Castle Arch, and get back to SC4.  After spending two nights at SC4, head back to your car and into Moab for a shower, a restaurant and recuperation before driving back home.


Fairly quick and easy, without over-extending too much (although if I really hiked all the way to Cathedral Butte and back, that second leg would be more than 50 miles, without even talking about the side exploration, so that's probably not happening.

It would be easier if I had a good 4-wheel drive, of course, because I'm walking on some umimproved jeep trails for part of the way that I could drive on with the right vehicle.  But still; I prefer my feet anyway. I just won't be able to do all of this, because the second loop is potentially too ambitious.  I marked more than I'd ever be willing to do.  Plus, with water being an issue, even in March or early April, I don't want want to spend more than two nights and three days out.  Maybe not even that long if it's really dry and relatively hot.