No doubt about it, fall is my favorite season. Yes, summer has its long days and winter has skiing and spring has flowers, but fall is the best. It's cool in the mornings, pleasant during the day and chilly overnight. The air is clear and the colors bold. A lot of the tourists go home. In Moab, autumn marks the return to silly season of course - spring and fall being prime desert time - but we manage to get away from the crowds.
This past weekend was beautiful down there - it didn't even get up to 90F, which was just delightful, and it cooled off enough when the sun went down that we were able to drag the firepit out and light it up. We didn't take the MTBs with us this time, instead opting for foot travel; our first hike left a pouty Milton at home because we were going into Arches National Park the back way.
On our very first time around the Bar B trail at the Moab Brand MTB trails, we came across a gate into ANP: hikers only, back country rules apply. From the gate, an old jeep road headed south/southeast. We decided we should come back and explore it some day. This past weekend brought that day. We parked in the large dirt lot off the highway between the ANP entrance and the Moab Brand trails. This is where the Killer B MTB trail comes down and that is the trail we hiked up. I feel very confident in saying that we will never, ever ride our MTBs on that trail. It is super-steep, rocky and loose underfoot. On the plus side, you gain elevation very quickly.
Killer B connects to Bar B and we went into the park through that gate. We followed the old double-track until it just disappeared near some slickrock. Then, spotting some very sporadic cairns and random footprints in the sand, we kept heading in a southerly direction until we cliffed out overlooking the park road. We startled a couple of big mule deer, clearly not expecting to see any humans in those parts.
From there, we kept to the rock and in washes as best we could, checking out the view across Courthouse Wash. Since we were up on the cliff tops, we weren't going to be able to make our way down to the road; when we started, we imagined making a loop out of it, coming out the main entrance and walking back up to the car via the paved bike path. It was not to be, which was fine because the views were fantastic and we didn't have to share them with anyone.
We wandered around for a while, then found our way back to the end of that old road. It's not my place to tell the Park Service what to do but if you're going to go to the trouble to have a back country gate into the park, it would be a good idea to have a "Trail Ends" sign or perhaps maintain a few cairns to keep people on the right path. That gate has got to be one of the least used entrances to the park, however, so I guess they're not too worried about rampaging hordes. Those deer shouldn't worry about being disturbed too often.
Hike stats: 7.43 miles; 2:50 hours/2.6 m.p.h. moving; 3:08/2.4 overall; 1,060' elevation (and that was all on Killer B, I reckon
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