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Show lie Canyon Starts Out Being Big f By Dick Wilson ' .tr of a pilot fall- --'3 a- airplane with-: with-: y-aiiu'e and walk-:y walk-:y alive? Well, this ' -s of the camera h :-r.p's oil 500-foot -i iri still lives 1 3 Cir.yon and all canyons that go , ; with it was my des- :jz for this week's ce in Moab country Tii somewhat nippy . r.:w frosted the La . xiks, lx;t a lot of : trail-.? with jeep or i is just beginning. : the sar.d packed and B t;: a number of lovely ::.s can be safely r.e-.tid r.e-.tid without the dan-tf dan-tf quicksand, "t: turr.off to Little '- Is one mile north l-tsfc-'s Grand Canyon --ia Engineering, te It. which provides a descent into Moab ""- north of town, 'id to Little Canyon -' driven with a four -i drrve rig but at ' a portion of the '7 can be enjoyed 0 1 high center pickup wstoly a Volkswagen : -"-o, if taken at a rHow the Terrace turning west from 160 ten miles - of Moab a level road "i the terrace of red . excavated from the i Cut. Fellow this ter- 1 atil the road aban dons it for higher ground. Soon the road is found to climb hijh above the higli-w.iy higli-w.iy a:i heading in . a southerly direction parallel paral-lel to the railroad and highway. Every time I visit this area. I get a thrill out of the scenery that lies exposed ex-posed at the head of Little Conyoti. Even from Highway High-way l;j0 the extreme, loud shouting redness of the cliffs can be observed. From the head of Little Canyon the jagged view is like looking down the blood-red throat of an angry an-gry animal. Typical of Moenxopi You try to describe this redness that is so peculiar to the Moenkopi formation. forma-tion. We can give the color ntimes that even housewives house-wives can't pronounce. But the best way I can discuss this color is by calling it foenkopi red. People who know Moenkopi Moen-kopi will know what I mean. Those who don't know the Moenkopi have never really seen red. I've heard of professors in a Hawaiian college failing art students for paintings of the Moab country saying, say-ing, "no such colors exist in nature!" But there it is just six miles north of Moab, blazing red with gorgeous variations and above this pe-rchs the opening op-ening into Little Canyon. If your eyes are trained in the ways of nature and jeep I 'A1 trail H ' 'V A5CHES : iV 1 WJ NATL. - ;Ws -WV. J -kk 1 vGOLD BAR i I CANYON X z J C.CTy . J geologj-, you will notica something out of ' order when you first enter Little Lit-tle Canyon. Right otf the bat, it is a full-fledged canyon it doesn't start as a piddling, little gulch then enlarge and develop as it descends. Just the contrary. It's wide to . begin be-gin with, then narrows into small chasms' before joining the Colorado river on the Potash Road. Right Sizeable Wash It appears to me that Little Canyon was growing grow-ing into a. right - sizeable wash, when all out of nowhere, no-where, a giant. . coLlapse (forming Moab Canyon and Spanish Valley) cut her right in two." That Little Lit-tle Canyon predates Moab Canyon is the only explanation ex-planation I've heard that answers the riddle of the immediately fully formed canyon at its beginning! The road through Little Canyon is excellent for family jeeping. About two miles from its head is an interesting one mile side trip to the east. I was rewarded re-warded on a late evening ride in this side, dead-end canyon with views of small arches, alcoves and huge amphitheaters" in the high cliffs. At the end of the box canyon stands a tapered tap-ered minaret, towering over a superb campsite. Water is absent here but otherwise it is perfect for camnine. A large wash enters from the right as one proceeds pro-ceeds deeper into Little Canyon. This, following upstream, is another box canyon of which Little Canyon is noted. A dugway going out of the canyon cuts to the right but I followed tha tracks in the dry bed going go-ing downstream. Within a half mile another dugway leads out of the canyon co the left. From this point can be seen directly to the south a prominent formation for-mation that resembles a flat-backed camel at a parking meter. Maze of Canyons This route soon took me into a maze of little canyons. can-yons. The trail hopped from one slickrock ledge to another. The total landscape land-scape is a cream color gashed and riddled with crevices. Soon the jeep trail wound itself over and through mounds of slick-rock. slick-rock. Then 'along a ledge and over areas of flat rock an acre or two in extent The acres became football fields, then slickrock highways. high-ways. After about two miles of road not unlike the Elephant Ele-phant Hill route into the Needles, I paused at the edge of Gold Bar Canyon ! which also empties into the Colorado river on the Itash Road. Gold Bar is a sensible canyon it starts little, not like Utile that starts big! Soon at the head of Gold Bar Canyon Can-yon I was amazed to find great ledges of the Kay-enta Kay-enta formation defying gravity as they jutted into the canyons. A Great View But the greatest view is from' the edge of the cliff overlooking Moab Canyon, on which it is. possible to drive a jeep.' Looking down I saw a model railroad and matchbox cars racing up and down narrow highway. 1000 feet below was' Highway 160. Th3 jeep trail had come out on the cliff that fonns the west wall one mile north of Arches Monument headquarters. head-quarters. I've yet to find a better panorama of the Arches than from here. This is where the camera cam-era enters the picture or rather leaves. I had " cocked it, braced it with a rock, set the timer before be-fore jumping into view of the lens. I don't necessarily necessar-ily like to take these trips alone I like subjects other , than myself for the pictures, and from the re-sultsof re-sultsof this trip I'm inclined in-clined to think the camera cam-era does too! On Its Side The small amount of vibration vi-bration caused by the automatic au-tomatic timer set the camera cam-era on its side. I looked toward the camera just in time to see it disappear into a crevice. For some 90 minutes I searched that crevice which narrowed at its bottom to four inches, just wide enough to admit ad-mit the camera., I sorrowfully sorrow-fully gave up and turned myself down the trail to report the loss to the Times-Independent. When I got back into Little canyon an nour later, la-ter, Who should I not like to paeet, but did? It was Mr. Times - Independent himself, Sam Taylor and his wife, Adrien. Little Canyon is one of the Taylors' Tay-lors' favorite jeeping spots but I say that they arrived ar-rived that day because Sam felt in his subconscious subcon-scious that one of his pet cameras was in danger. The Taylors were in Moenkopi, Moen-kopi, red hunting clothes so I cleared out fast. I left my vehicle by the railroad, tracks two miles north of Arches Monument Monu-ment headquarters and climbed the step-like slopes slop-es of. the west wall. The black crack through which my camera dropped show.--up well from the highway. At the base of the cliff I found the strap of the camera and figured the rest remained wedged in the crack 500 feet above. But on the second ledge down, I spotted the camera. cam-era. I hadn't expected it in one piece. I scrambled over to it and picked it up like some injured animal. How surprised I was to find only a few scratches and nicks! But surprises abound in the Moab country. The rocks are red, but they give easy landings (sometimes!)! |
