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Show f "V ' ' . . . ' ;' " ,!.'-' ' ., .' '"U A " V,;v 'I j . . :''''-.;;!sV '':,''..--i ' ' ' ' :; v"rj ' f : ' . ' v-:v. ',i h : . ;. . - . ' l. 1 .,-V-ir, . . 1 'v- " . --"iff'-:- ' v" -;1 ; v" v - " . v;V-,n " ''-.; v . .3 InTan caves abound in the higher reaches of Lavender Canyon wffh many ruins still intact wid difficult to reach. Lavender Canyon's features Worthv of Parle Protection . m by Dick Wilson Lavender Canyon is a proposed pro-posed addition of Canyon-. Canyon-. . lands National Park and if included in the park will retain re-tain its present primitive state. I recently took my family for a two-day dune buggy campout into the sandy wash-a highway of sand-leading into the heads of the canyon. ' V ' "'V'flo'tfhe Needles ' Six- N ff y Shooter Peaks VAuthors V preferred route ( rv vugout y Ranch Cedar Mesa : , Caterpillar News- rS Arch 5f Paper ' V f Rock J ' VCleft Arch ff,"u ffA i : ... w The cave pictured above had five lexceltent, well-preserved rums Inside. (T-l Staff Photos) "The most difficult thing about Lavender is finding your way into its mouth," said Mitch Williams just before be-fore we left Moab . Mitch had been there the week be fore and said we would probably be able to follow his tracks. There are three trails that lead into the canyon from the road to the Needles. Just past the Dugout Ranch a-bout a-bout one mile is seen a jeep trail going over to old mining min-ing buildings. This trail is recommended by some, but is longer than the other two. The next trail is another mile or so to the north and it swings to the south side of the feature called the Island. Is-land. This route goes along the downstream side of fields and is inaccessible during irrigation time. My wife and I returned that way but would have been hopelessly hope-lessly lost in eight-foot high weeds if Mitch hadn't broken brok-en the trail the week before. ' Most Convenient Route ' The third access up frOU Dugout Ranch is the one we found to be most convenient for getting into Lavender Canyon and was the one recommended rec-ommended by Robert Redd, owner of the Dugout Ranch. Recent work had been done on this, Redd told us, and was a much better route than the other two. With all three routes it is necessary to drop into the bed of sand about three miles up the canyon. After passing curious-looking Caterpiller Arch we turned off the main channel into the first canyon to the north, passing several more arches on the way. Almost at the head of the canyon, the walls pinch close to the bed of sand. Quicksand is present and this caused us to not go farther. We camped near a large amphitheater amp-hitheater in the bottom of the wash enjoying completely complete-ly the total isolation that we knew was ours. 1 Miniature Landscape One of the arches we found in that side canyon of Lavender was a miniature Landscape arch of Devil's Garden fame. Another one higher up in the canyon resembled re-sembled a catwalk on the side of a train which had one end attached delicately to a wall. The following morning we dune bugged through marsh -mallowy beds of sand, narrowly nar-rowly avoiding being trapped trap-ped by quicksand, back into in-to the main wash. Other arches ar-ches were seen on up to Clift ' Arch which is the largest one known in Lavender Laven-der with a height of 80 ft., and a span of 130 feet. I noted a total of 10 arches in Lavender and the one side canyon I visited. I'm satisfied sat-isfied there are more and I won't be satisfied till I've returned re-turned to do some more hiking. hik-ing. i Need Protection One of the reasons for including in-cluding Lavender in the proposed pro-posed addition to the park are numerous ruins that are hidden away in caves. In-lians In-lians of eight centuries ago found Lavender to be a friendly spot to raise a family fam-ily with good springs of fresh water available. Their ruins testify to their existence exist-ence and are in a marvelous state of existance owing partly to their isolaion and partly to hard climbs necessary nec-essary to get into the caves. |