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Show A Jeep Safari Trail . . . Dry fAesa Offers Splendid Overlook Of River Canyon Added to available Safari Sa-fari trails this year is a triangular shaped plateau pla-teau to the southeast of Arches National Park that is bound on one side by Cache Valley, on another an-other by Salt Wash and on the third side by the mighty Colorado Hiver gorge. Leading this trail will be Charles McMur-ray McMur-ray . The route to Dry Mesa Me-sa heads north out of Moab on U.S. 163 to the entrance of Arches National Na-tional Park, then enters Arches and stays on the paved park road to the Delicate Arch turnol'f. Shortly, the dirt road forks toward a Delicate Arch viewpoit. Just before be-fore this viewpoint, a jeep trail angles off to enter Cache Valley. Within a half mile this trail leav es the park, but continues up the colorful valley, often in the winding dry-wash dry-wash bottom. The trail leaves the wash toward the eastern end of Cache Valley and climbs steeply among giant gi-ant sandstone monoliths. Just beyond another dry-wash dry-wash crossing, the trail heads up (3$C& hill, a very rough and challenging chal-lenging grade that takes tak-es the trail to the top of Dry Mesa. Once there, the trail parallels the rim of Cache Valley for a mile or so before angling across ac-ross rolling slickrock and sandflats country toward the distant Colorado River Ri-ver gorge. Along the way. the Windows Section of Arches National Park is clearly visible to the west, and the gigantic "cat's eyes" of the North and South Windows can be seen for miles on the skyline. The noon stop will be at a lofty vantage point overl(K)king the Colorado Colo-rado Hiver not far downriver down-river from the mouth of picturesque Castle Valley. Val-ley. The trail continues roughly parallel to the river gorge. A short spur trail goes toanother magnificent mag-nificent overlook, where a short rim hike on the slickrock will lead to a spectacular view up the length of Castle Valley Val-ley and up the Colorado Hiver gorge for several sever-al milp; f mm a vnnl.TPP point 1300 feet above the river level. Within a few more rough miles through broken, bro-ken, colorful mesa-top country, the trail closes the loop at the top of (S$C& Hill. The return route retraces the outbound out-bound route from this point back. The Dry Mesa trail offers of-fers a variety of off-road driving, from fairly easy wash-bottom and sand-flats sand-flats terrain, to moderately moder-ately rough sand and slick rock, to one short very rough, poor - traction, piece of trail. Those with limited off-road driving experience should avoid this trail because of that one bad hill. |