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Show Safari Special ... . , Poison Spider Mesa gives you a great view Moab bank executive, Chuck McMurray sheds his suit and tie and dons his trail-boss duds again this year to lead the Safari trip to Poison Spider Mesa. Poison Spider Mesa lies in the backcountry of rounded sandstone domes, dom-es, arches, dune sand and dry gulches. This route has been extremely popular popu-lar the past few years among Safari participants. Those who line up behind Chuck Saturday will head out of Moab on U.S. 163 and travel west on Utah 279 for about six miles. The jeep run climbs up from the paved road, passing a display of petrified dinosaur tracks and Indian petroglyphs. Alternating between level rock strata and stream courses, the trail at one point crosses a huge mass of rock which Safari drivers must pass over. Magnificent scenes of the Colorado River, the stone fins of Behind-the-Rocks, the spectacular mouth of Kane Creek Canyon and the distant LaSal Mountains Moun-tains pleasantly, confront the travelers along the way. After finally topping out on the high mesa, the run then winds its way across slickrock and sandflats where Indian chipping grounds of countless chert and agate shards may be seen. The trail crosses a broad, flat sandy tableland table-land and then drops into an area where uplifted strata drastically tilts the mesa. From these sand dunes and slickrock, a spur trail leads to "Little Arch," a natural bridge spanning a water course, and another spur ends near the cliffs that loom above Atlas Minerals Corporation's Cor-poration's uranium refining refin-ing plant in Moab Valley. This site affords an excellent view of the valley and several outstanding out-standing features of Arches Arch-es National Park can be seen. The return loop of Poison Spider Mesa run eoon rejoins the main trail toward Moab by the same route, leaving the splendor splen-dor of this backcountry far behind. The Poison Spider M trip is only moder'aw ' difficult, and scenic , ' wards are tremendous ' |