Day 10: July 15 Saturday — Maze Overlook to Doll House

Highlights: Chris and Terry do jumper near camp; dangling legs off 15′ overhang at Horse Canyon; tar deposits; Land of Standing Rocks; Doll House campsite; brake parts fall out of rear drum; beer supply calamity.

Today was to be a full day. The plan was simple: drive to the next campsite, the Doll House, a mere 42 miles away. But it is the slowest 42 miles in the park. On Greenshit ’94 this route took us eight hours with a stop for lunch. The Doll House is only six miles from the Maze Overlook as the crow files, but these miles are directly across the Maze and you can’t get there from here.

We awoke to another 58° morning and everything outside was again wet with dew, including rocks and vegetation. With all my years of desert experience, I had difficulty accepting this. But the sky was clear and the dew evaporated rapidly as the sun rose.

On packing up Ed noticed that the tent was littered with feathers: his sleeping back had a tear. Once again, duct tape to the rescue.

By 8:30 we were packed and ready to leave camp, but first I wanted to take a picture of someone leaping across the Brimhall Point pinnacles, five minutes away. Everyone else walked along the top while I walked a few feet down on the trail below for the proper photo angle. Chris agreed to do the jump to the first pinnacle, only about a three-foot gap, but a fall to certain death if he missed. Unlike the rest of us old fogies, Chris was not intimidated by the consequence of missing a trivial jump. However even Chris was not happy that I made him do it twice because I messed up with the camera the first time. Terry duplicated Chris’s feat, proving that even old fogies can overcome common sense. Getting to the other pinnacles further out at this point would have been nice, too, except the next gap was over ten feet that not even Chris would do.

After a four mile drive out of camp, as we rounded Elaterite Butte, the trail came almost to the edge of a canyon with an amazing overhung lip. This is one finger of one arm of the massive Horse Canyon. The 20- foot overhang was perfectly flat on top and had a sloped underside, tapering from a beefy 15 feet thick near the wall to only a few inches at the outer edge. The overhang persisted in this shape for over fifty feet along the canyon wall. Since the jeep trail gets so close, the park service had placed rocks to keep the jeeps away from the very edge, where they would surely break off the end of the flake and go crashing several hundred feet to the bottom. A person it would hold, because otherwise we would see bodies littering the ground below. The shape made it possible to sit comfortably on the edge with feet hanging in space, or to lie on your stomach and stick your head over, achieving vertigo as you peer straight down.

Several miles further down the trail we stopped the jeeps in the wash where we expected the tar deposits. They were a hundred feet downstream, exactly where the ranger indicated. The tar looked and felt like the kind used to seal cracks in roads. It occurred in several small patches a few feet across, and looked like it had been oozing slowly, though it was pretty solid right now because it was not very warm out. We could see tar bubbles here and there, indicating some kind of internal pressure. When it gets warm, we were told that the tar flows much more freely. When we put a cigarette lighter to it, it melted and dripped.

Next we came to that last horrible crossing of Big Water Canyon, the one that I scouted on my feet in the storm. It was completely dry except for some damp sand, and with the shining sun and the warm weather it looked thoroughly harmless. I took pictures of jeeps driving across, so that I could have “before” and “after” shots. Soon we “plunged” into the half mile drive directly in the wash. Again, bone dry and harmless.

While the going back was easy and mostly dry, we encountered our first mud of the trip. Periodically one tire or the other would plunge into a mud pool, splattering the side of the jeep and sometimes us. Because of our huge tires the little mud guards extending from the fender did not protect us very well. The only way to avoid splashing ourselves was to creep through the puddles, and because the mud stuck so firmly to the tires we had to continue slowly for a time after each puddle until the mud wore off. This made for very slow going.

After a couple of hours from camp we came to the steep slope off the peninsula that we descended two days ago after completing the Flint Trail switchbacks. The trail looked like a wall straight up, even with a jeep on it. I don’t know the angle of the slope, but I bet it is the steepest in the park for its length. We then drove on top of the peninsula almost back to the base of the switchbacks, but instead of heading up the Orange Cliffs we turned left at an intersection for an interesting five-mile traverse on a high ledge part way up the Orange Cliffs. Views of the Land of Standing Rocks from points along this ledge were spectacular. On this ledge we were just above Teapot Rock, famous for the “worst road in the park” at its base that we’re about to travel.

Eventually a side trail dropped steeply off the ledge onto Waterhole Flat, a vast grassy prairie. We could have driven 50 m.p.h. on smooth, gulliless dirt tracks, except for the frequent mud puddles. I was jealous of Great White, as its mud guards were slightly bigger, so that Chris and Lou never got personally assaulted. They couldn’t understand why we kept slowing down.

We stopped under a pinion pine on the flats for lunch, where we marveled at the mud caked on our legs and arms. The contrast between the light red mud globules and Mark’s dark tan skin was especially becoming. Tonight is definitely a shower night. From the lunch spot we saw Sunset Pass with Gunsight Butte at its center. You can see this pass from as far away as the cliffs above Moab, and depending on where you are you can catch the sun setting behind the butte, as if you were looking down the site of a rifle aimed at the sun.

After lunch we looped back towards Teapot Rock, this time from below. We discussed why it didn’t look like any teapot we ever saw. Greenshit #2 encountered one of its more memorable storms camping below Teapot Rock, where 50 m.p.h. winds came with no warning, ripping our tent off its stakes and blowing down our stove. We sat for hours, terrified, inside our tent, while lightning repeatedly struck within a few feet and raging washes flooded every depression around us.

After lunch we immediately arrived at that famous “worst road,” a five-mile section that takes experienced drivers over an hour. The trail traverses a ledge of extremely bumpy and irregular white slickrock, huddling the slope on our left, with numerous arms of Teapot Canyon on the right. It is slow and looks terrible to drive, but it’s not as hard as it looks. There are few spots where you would bottom out, and despite frequent dropoffs into Teapot Canyon just inches from your wheels, it is easy to stay out of trouble. Beginners usually spend a long time on each little bump, scouting the trail, deciding whether to go left or right, whether to put a wheel on a rock or between the rocks, etc., but I’ve found that you can drive almost anywhere that looks sensible and it works if you go slow enough. Consequently I took the lead in Pequod and just drove the whole thing without hesitation, while the others kept stopping, walking the trail, yelling at each other, and sometimes building little ramps.

After the arduous stretch around Teapot Canyon there is a drive of an hour on bumpy, but much easier terrain around Red Cove, with the cute Mother and Child pinnacles at its far end. The trail then descends slightly off the white slickrock onto much smoother red rock and sand, where it enters the Land of Standing Rocks. This is open, flat country about ten miles across that sprouts the pinnacles that we first saw from the Maze Overlook. Our trail winds its way right up to several of the interesting ones: The Wall (complete with a window), Lizard Rock, Standing Rock, and Chimney Rock as well as several sizeable unnamed rocks. These 300′ spires and fins of red sandstone rise for no apparent reason from a perfectly level plain. Immediately to the north of the standing rocks is the Maze, and by knowing exactly where to look on the other side of the Maze we could see the pinnacles at Brimhall Point near our campsite last night. They are only four miles away, yet it took us almost a day of rough, circuitous driving to get here.

As we drove by a campsite near one of the standing rocks Lou complained that his brake warning light was flashing much more frequently and the sound in his rear end was getting a lot worse, so we pulled over for a diagnosis. Some thought the noise was a rear wheel bearing, but I doubted this because the sound changed as you applied the brakes, and it would have been too much of a coincidence for the bearing to go at the same time as the brakes. We decided that there was no reason not to continue driving the remaining three or four miles to the campsite. Whether it was a bearing or brake, another eight miles round trip would not make much difference.

The Doll House is an area with hundreds of pinnacles averaging 150′ high, clustered near the edge of Cataract Canyon. Some pinnacles are touching each other to make a wall, while some are separated by cool dark lanes permanently in shadow. Many, if not most of the pinnacles have balanced rocks on top. The last half mile of trail winds among the towering pinnacles. At the end of the trail are two beautiful campsites, Doll House #1 and #2, where the pinnacles form walls on three sides and it’s always cool. The sites are large, but the walls make for a cozy feeling, as if you are in a large room. The “wallpaper” is a cheery blend of horizontal red and white stripes.

This is an extremely complex landscape where hikers can get seriously lost if they don’t keep track of their location. I know, because this almost happened to us on Greenshit ’84 as we wandered aimlessly, looking for the campsite, nearly dying of thirst. The Doll House terminates abruptly at the rim of Cataract Canyon to the west. At the bottom of the canyon, 1200′ below, is Spanish Bottom, a mile long grassy plain at the level of the Colorado River.

We saw a sport/utility vehicle parked in a little lot at the trailhead to Spanish Bottom, just outside the campsite. Both campsites were deserted, so we moved into site #1, instead of our reserved site #2, at the ranger’s suggestion. Immediately we could feel the cool air from the shady west wall. When choosing a campsite, it is much better to have a wall to your west than your east, unless you are departing in the morning, because a west wall gets only morning sun, so it doesn’t heat up as much, and it provides shade when you need it most in the afternoon. The wall to our east radiated a good amount of heat now, and retained it even after it came into the shadow, but this was hardly noticeable unless we stood right next to it. On the third side of our campsite the wall was only partial. We could climb over it and get views of a good part of the Doll House area, as well as Cataract Canyon, a glimpse of the Colorado River, the opposite rim of the canyon, and the landscape beyond as far as the La Sal Mountains.

Our first business was to diagnose the problem with Great White. We jacked it up and took off the tire. The brake drum came off easily while a pile of loose parts fell out into the sand: springs, cams, wire, and unidentifiable gouged chunks of metal. Half the brake parts were gone, and the drum was seriously scored. Thankfully, the wheel cylinder and brake pads were still intact, held together by the one remaining spring, so brake fluid was not gushing out. But the brake was useless as a brake, and, alas, for the first time this trip, it didn’t look like duct tape would help. Our only recourse was to clean up the mess, put the parts in a baggie, and gingerly replace the drum in the hopes that the pads would stay in place without locking up the wheel.

I was not particularly concerned about this problem, as rear brakes we could do without. The only time the rear brake is crucial is when backing down a steep hill—something we didn’t need to do the remainder of this trip. Front brakes do 90% of the work when jeeping, and if they fail the clutch makes a great emergency brake, if you remember to shift into first gear.

Since this was our last campsite of the trip we seriously unpacked the jeeps to take an inventory of our supplies. There was plenty of gas, water and food, but we were devastated to find only 21 beers, less than four per person for the rest of tonight and the next two days. We all already had at least one beer at the campsite, and some had two, so we decided that those who had a second beer would be entitled to only three more, while the rest got four. This was the first time on the trip we explicitly rationed beers. Some people thought that we should have bought more beer—13 cases was not enough. But Ed argued, more correctly I thought, that it wouldn’t have mattered. No matter how much beer we bought, we’d be down to 21 by this time. This is clearly a variation of the Peter Principle. My personal strategy for dealing with this deficiency was to plan on having three of my beers tomorrow and the last one the next day, half way out on the drive to civilization. To enforce this stringent quota, Lou, sitting in his chair with his feet up on the cooler, appointed himself the Beer Guardian. “If you want a beer, you have to go through me.”

There was still plenty of wine, though, and we had overdone it on the food, so we ate and drank a lot that night. Chris made some chocolate pudding for dessert, and he used it with some leftover spaghetti to make chocolate-covered spaghetti. Next to that sardine sandwich, this was probably his most memorable food experience of the trip.

After dark this was a great spot for a laser light show on the wall. Lou and Chris slept in their tent, but the rest of us slept outside in cool, bug-free conditions.