portal overlook

It took us just a little while to get going Sunday morning as we had to wait for the rain to stop.  But stop it did and around 10 a.m., H and I were headed to the Potash Road for a short hike up to the Portal Overlook.  Somehow we have never done this trail, despite its accessibility.  The trailhead is just a few miles (approx. 4) down the road at the Jaycee Campground; there are about five parking spaces with more room to park along the road.  It is about a 4 mile out and back, although you can connect to the Poison Spider MTB trail if you keep going past the overlook.

Colorado River view

The trail starts out mostly level, paralleling the Potash Road.  There were cacti just waking up from the winter and both sand and rounded river rocks underfoot.  We even heard a canyon wren's trilling call.  After we passed the trail register, the trail takes a few switchbacks and then starts to climb - steeply - up the sandstone ramps.  We were almost directly across from the Moab Rim trail that we had revisited just a few weeks before.

Working our way up

Once we got to the overlook, there were sweeping view of the north end of the Moab valley, the Sandflats area, Arches National Park, the mountains behind the Book Cliffs and the snowy LaSals, in addition to the muddy Colorado River far below.

Northeast view from the overlook

As I mentioned above, the trail actually continues past the overlook to connect with the Poison Spider trail.  The MTBers tend to come from that way, descending the way we had just come up.  We didn't seen any cyclists but we did see the warning signs. 

Be careful

The Portal Overlook trail is one of the most dangerous MTB trails in Moab.  In a couple of spots, the trail is only three feet wide, with a sheer wall on one side and a serious 200 foot cliff drop off on the other side.  People have literally died trying to ride their MTBs here.  It was nerve-wracking enough on foot.  If you don't have a head for heights, don't venture past the overlook. 

Be really, really careful!

For us, we just went out past those two extremely exposed spots and then turned around and went back the way we came.  Going down those sandstone ramps was much quicker than churning up them but we did stop for some time to watch three jeeps maneuvering their way over obstacles across the river on the Moab Rim trail.

The Portal Overlook is a great little trail if you don't have much time but want a workout and some spectacular views.  In the summer it will be very hot until late afternoon/early evening when the cliff walls shade the trail from the sun.  We haven't been able to pin down exactly what the portal itself was historically - our best guess is that it's where boat traffic used to enter the town from the river - so if anyone knows, please leave a comment.