any trail will do

Wednesday night a cold front moved through the area, dropping the intermountain west's temperatures 30-50 degrees (!).  We had intended to ride at Dead Horse Point State Park on Thursday but with their forecasted high of 43 F, we opted for a couple of laps around the MOAB Brand trails instead, which are at a lower elevation and thus warmer.  There were more folks there than we'd seen for about five months and yet we still didn't see many riders on the trails. 

Riding the line

We did Rusty Spur to Bar M to Circle O (which was new to both of us: out on the slickrock, easier than Rockin' A and quite a lot of fun), and then finished our regular loop; then we did the Bar M loop again to the parking lot cut-off.  (Ride stats:  15.4 miles; 8.0 avg./19.9 top speed; 1:55 hours)

Multiple tracks in this slab

It's a Pushmi-pullyu!

Toes

Friday was even colder than Thursday.  We were hiking, though, so we didn't need it to warm up as much to get going.  We took Milton to the Poison Spider trailhead, out along the Potash Road.  This is a very popular jeep road and the parking lot was packed with OHV trailers.  We had thought we would just make our way up the jeep road, avoiding the motorheads as best we could but the trailhead kiosk indicated dinosaur tracks and petroglyphs along the start of the Longbow Arch trail.  We started there.

Never get tired of that sky

My boys, up ahead

The dinosaur tracks and petroglyphs are on a marked trail/scramble up above the Potash Road.  The first set of tracks is on a boulder and the second tracksite is up along the base of the cliffs, after the rock art panels.  These tracks were so cool: there are multiple animal types and you could see the individual toe prints!

Colorado River behind me

From there, we picked up the green-blazed trail to Longbow Arch.  Wonderfully, once out of the busy trailhead, we didn't see anyone on this out-and-back trail.  It starts out with a bit of a scramble up some slickrock, augmented with some rebar ladder steps; Milton, off-leash at this point, needed a bit of encouragement before scrabbling his way up this bit.  The trail then continued up a pretty drainage before getting onto a level of slickrock and opening up.

All of us in one shot

The trail alternately crossed slickrock domes and sandy washes.  Milton ranged around, chasing the few lizards that had warmed up enough to scurry.  He had to have us pull some cactus spines out of his paws a couple of times but did that diminish his enthusiasm?  No, it did not!

Longbow Arch 

Boys below the arch

The trail turned east and climbed up to the arch in the cold shade of the slickrock cliffs.  When we were coming back down from the arch, we saw a couple of jeeps and some people on foot high above us, so we figured that the Poison Spider jeep road must climb up there.  We retraced our steps a ways and then jumped on the jeep road where it came close to the hiking trail.

This is nothin'

We followed the jeep road to above the Waterfall feature.  Where we got on, it was dirt and sand with some rock ledge sections; at the Waterfall, it was all rock, climbing the slickrock domes over step-ups that I couldn't imagine anyone driving over.  Even when we watched vehicles come through, it was still difficult to believe.  We saw jeeps, dirt bikes, a couple of RZRs (not a huge RZR fan: they're way noisier than the jeeps) and - incredibly - a Ram 2500 pickup truck that looked WAY too big but which seemed to be making it through.

Views everywhere 

Amazing view of the Behind the Rocks area

We hiked up to where we had spotted people above Longbow Arch, had a snack, and then walked all the way out along the jeep road.  Down towards the river, the road is deteriorating, loose and rubbly from all the OHV traffic.  The trailhead was still full so we drove back up the Potash Road a little ways to where we could find some parking, across from the rock art and climbers.  As we changed out of our boots, had a snack and snuck some beers, we chatted with a number of folks, including a nice older couple from California who wanted to meet Milton and three people from Florida who asked if they could pet our dog before they had even closed the doors on their rental jeep.  Milton makes friends wherever he goes.

Poison Spider switchbacks

After cleaning up at home, we went to Woody's.  This time we made friends without our dog: Katie the dirt biker, who lived in a Sprinter van; and Mark and Morgan from Pinedale, Wyoming, who lived in a 65 sq. ft. Trillium trailer.

Looking for his next new friend

Hike stats:  6.79 miles; 2:28 moving time/3:33 total time; 1,090' elevation

Another shot of Behind the Rocks