H came up with Sunday's hike: up the Poison Spider Mesa and out to Little Arch, the not-so-small arch visible high on the cliff wall. We had noticed people in that arch several months ago, when we were parked at the Moab Rim trailhead across the river; it would be a long-ish hike but there is access from atop the mesa. When we got to the trailhead around 10 (once again), there were a couple of other cars there, dog walkers and a young family checking out the dinosaur tracks. It was sunny and cool, just perfect for hiking on a trail with absolutely no shade.
We'd last been up there about a year ago, long enough that I'd forgotten what a grind it is to get from the river up to the mesa. The 4x4 road is steep, loose and chunky - on the plus side, it doesn't take very long to get up. Once you get up there, the sandy road is mostly easy walking; then you have to climb again over the off-road obstacles like the Waterfall and the Wedgie. Once we got past the viewpoint where we'd turned around last time, we were on the section of trail known as "High Speed Mesa," some sandy corners and straightaways across the top of the mesa. Again, easy walking and we covered ground quickly. In that area we found a small memorial to Mary Jane Francis, a little girl who died there in 1896, apparently from a poisonous spider - which incident gave the mesa its name. The site was covered in coins (riders leave them for luck) and also, for some reason, lots of rubber duckies.
We went right at the intersection where the Golden Spike road/trail came in, staying on the Poison Spider road, and then kept right again when the road split for a loop. From there, it was really just a short spur out across the sandstone domes to the cliff edge and Little Arch. The views were most excellent: the Moab Rim trail and Stairmaster, the Rim trail heading out towards Hidden Valley, down river along Kane Creek Road, out towards Corona Arch and Jeep Arch (the arches weren't visible but we knew where they were, sort of) and the Gemini Bridges area.
Little Arch itself is not so small. It's a good sized aperture in the cliff wall, with a tree-filled well behind it, catching all the rain run-off. It didn't seem to us that you could climb down to the arch without ropes of some sort, so we contented ourselves with admiring the view from above. Because of the cliff, Milton had to be on his leash and H kept well back from the edge as well.
We retraced our route to go out, until about the last half hour when we opted to descend via the Longbow Arch trail instead of the loose, chunky switchbacks of the road. This hikers-only trail comes out amid the dinosaur tracksite and cut off about five minutes of time for us. The parking lot was mostly full when we got back, with seemingly more trailers than we had seen off-road vehicles for: we'd seen five hikers/runners, three jeeps, four dirtbikes (three of them electric) and seven side-by-sides. Milton, unfazed by his experience with Sally the day before, tried to make friends with a couple of other parking lot dogs. He had better luck with some of the dirtbikers and hikers, who appreciated his charms better.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment