Utah Road Trip: Needles District of Canyonlands NP (Days 8 and 9 of 10)

Day 8

Indian Creek area

The drive in to the Needles District passes through an area called Indian Creek (managed by BLM).  I had heard of "Indian Creek" as being a world famous climbing area for years but never realized where it was exactly.  This was a pleasant surprise discovery.  

In Utah, signs that say "Open Range" apparently mean something. I saw cows on the road four times total this trip. This was easily the biggest group.

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Needles District

"Roadside Ruin" (that's actually what the park service calls this old granary)

Looking east from the Squaw Flat campground.

Looking west from the Squaw Flat campground towards the features that give "The Needles District" its name.

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Day 9: Big Needles Loop Hike

The first night, I camped in the Squaw Flat campground which conveniently is free and almost entirely empty in the winter. I'd wanted to do a 1-2 night trip backpacking trip but (1) getting stuck in snow the first few days had cost a lot of time, and (2) I didn't want to carry several gallons of water.  It looked like there would probably be enough snow around to melt for drinking water but I figured I could shave 6 miles off of the full 27 mile loop in my original plan and do the whole thing in one day.  

A caltopo map of the area including the path I took is here.  

These mushrooms were everywhere. The white caprock above the soft, red slickrock is resistant to erosion which leaves these pillars. The surface all of Island in the Sky is the same as this white caprock.

About a mile in I had to change the memory card in my camera.  I was  wearing mittens and due to loss of dexterity, during the swap I dropped the full memory card (with all my pictures on it) off a ~10 foot ledge.  I tried to watch where it went but it was quickly out of sight. I knew it had to be in about a 10'x10' area on the ground so I spent about an hour looking for it. The area was covered in cedar needles and  light wasn't great.  Eventually I decided that I had to move on since I was losing daylight.  I only had about 7 hours till sunset which would be exactly what I needed if I kept up an average pace of 3 miles/hour the whole day.  I marked the location on my gps and wrote "here" the ledge face with a soft rock figuring I could come back the next morning or later that night.

About a third of the hike was walking on top of rock surfaces like this. Luckily they were nearly completely dry.

The "trails" are well marked with cairns which I actually appreciated for the first time. If you ignored them it was pretty easy to get stuck in a dead end like this.

Looking west towards the La Sal Mountains.

I drank a 1 L of water before I left, and took 2 L of water, and 0.6 L of gatorade with me for the day.  If necessary, I could collect water from the snow melt that was left in "pot holes" in the rock surface (see picture below).  I brought a small water filter (and chlorine dioxide tablets as backup) but was not looking forward to filtering the silt/sand out.  Hopefully 1 gallon for the day would be enough and I wouldn't have to do this.  It was fairly cold and I wasn't losing much water to sweat so this worked out ok.

possible water sources in these "pot holes".

For scale, those trees are about 15-20 feet tall.

This was the only rock like this I saw the whole day (gray color, texture etc).

I wonder what was different in this particular creek bottom?

These were about 100 feet tall

Zoom of center-right pillar. Looks like an angry monkey-squirrel right?

The approach to the "Joint Trail". These giant pillars reminded me of the Lost Creek Wilderness in Colorado.

The joint trail follows a long crack/slot for about 1/4 mile.  It was definitely a fun change of scenery.

A googled aerial photo of the joint trail (one of the slots towards the bottom) that dumps you out into the Chesler Park area.

The final approach to the "Joint Trail"

This slot was over 1/4 mile long!

By the time I got back to the area where I'd lost the memory card it was completely dark.  I looked for it for another hour and just when I was about to give up, I caught the shiny reflection of the copper electrodes with my headlight.  It was a great way to end the day.  

The note I scratched on the rock where I'd lost the memory card that morning. (FYI, I was able to rub this off with snow/dirt).