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Show Safari Trail Massive Gemini Bridaes Lie in Broken Backcountry Safari jeepers will have the opportunity this year to visit Gemini Bridges if they choose to follow Urb Linehan, who will be leading the group to these massive twin spans. The arches were discovered some years ago by a Moab backcountry tour guide and are located in a wild canyon system that is near Moab, yet in country so broken and difficult to penetrate that very few are familar with it. The route heads north out of Moab on U.S. 163 and leaves the highway just south of the Dead Horse Point cutoff. For a while the trail travels on top of a big dirt embankment that was built to protect the parallel railroad Big Cut from flash flood runoff. Then it heads for a grotesquely eroded cliff of dark red Cutler and Moenkopi deposits, climbing steeply above the highway and railroad rail-road cut. After the stiff climb, the trail tops out and turn into Little Canyon, offering a magnificent view to the east of Arches National Park' and Moab Valley with the La Sal mountains in the distance. Drivers get their exercise at the wheel as they wind through Little Canyon. Soon the trail climbs another steep grade, leaving the canyon behind. Here they can look back at the gigantic Gooney Bird that stands tall on the canyon floor. Here the route begins to wind crazily through broken mesas and the Safari group will take two branch trails. One leads to the top of the giant bridges, the other into the remote canyon that the bridges span. The trail to the bridges' top travels through rough but fairly easy mesa-top terrain. The trail branch that leads to the canyon bottom, descends slowly into a deceptively shallow canyon system. Soon a long but thin natural bridge is visible with another tiny, but interesting, bridge just behind it. The view down into this unnamed branch of Day Canyon is breathtaking. More winding and .ilting driving is in store for the jeepers before they turn around from the Gemini Bridges to follow the same m route out. However, by now the time is late afternoon, and the I. a Sals. Liltle Canyon and Moab Valley take on different characteristics as the lowering sun casts long d , shadows across the t a, j terrain. 6 brh |