Day 2: July 7 Friday — Moab to Mineral Point
Highlights: Breakfast at Moab Diner; replace battery in jeep; Schafer Trail lookout; Grand View Point; make our own trail on Mineral Point; camp at lip; gin and tonic; bikini team.
Some of us, suffering jet lag, awoke too early and were milling around by 5:30 a.m. It was a cool low 70’s morning in Moab. We had the traditional first breakfast next door at the Moab Diner, famous (they claim) for their green chili, which has an excellent chili omelette and breakfast burrito. The diner is a pleasant place with friendly service, and is always uncrowded, despite the mobs at Arches Dining Room at the Ramada Inn across the street with its tour buses perpetually jamming the lot.
After breakfast we put the final touches on jeep packing, topping it off with the incredibly intricate bungying. Upon loading the last food items into the car, I noticed, in horror, a jar of generic pancake syrup! Ed did a great job on the liquor, but assigning him the task of purchasing pure maple syrup was obviously a bad move. Terry made a special trip back to the store to remedy this situation, but to our amazement they didn’t have any, so we were forced to gag ourselves with sugar syrup for the rest of the trip. I even found myself stooping to Karo corn syrup.
On a final check of the jeeps before departure, we noticed several problems: one of Pequod’s tires was fairly flat, its cigarette lighter socket wasn’t working (which we needed for the CB radio), one of the gas cans leaked, and Harpoon’s radiator hose leaked. Pequod and Harpoon went back to Slickrock to get these fixed. Rick thought the tire was fine but just low because the previous renter had deflated it and it had been sitting in the lot for several days (which seems to be a correct assumption because we had no subsequent problem). After the hose and lighter were fixed Harpoon drove off, but as we tried to restart Pequod it wouldn’t turn over—the battery was dead. Rick was mystified because the battery was new, but rather than having us wait around to diagnose the problem, he swapped the battery for another new one. That fixed, we crossed our fingers and said our final good-bye to Rick.
By now the three jeeps were spread all around town, but the CBs helped us locate each other near a gas station, where we topped off our tanks and departed Moab, north on U.S. 191, at 11:30 a.m.—one of the earliest kickoffs in Greenshit history. For most of the trip, Terry and I led the way in Pequod with the other two jeeps behind: Lou and Chris in Great White and Ed and Mark in Harpoon. Occasionally Terry and Mark would swap places when Terry needed to get out of the sun, since I preferred not to use the bikini top.
During the ride out of town I was yelled at by someone on the CB to turn off my left turn signal, which wouldn’t reset on its own. “Turn off your turn signal” was to be one of the many recurring themes of this trip. Fortunately there is not much need to signal on jeep trails.
Our first destination was 8 miles north on U.S. 191 and 37 miles west and south on Utah 313 to Grand View Point in Canyonlands National Park, one of the highest places (elevation 6300′) that you can drive to in the eastern half of Canyon Country. Here there is a lookout over the White Rim of the Island in the Sky District, a triangle of land bordered by the Colorado and Green Rivers on the right and left and the Confluence at the point on the bottom. The district has three major levels, the plateau or highlands at 6000′, the middle White Rim level that varies from 5000′ to 4000′, and the bottom river level at 4000′.
Most Greenshit trips begin with a stop at Dead Horse Point State Park overlooking the Colorado River just outside the Island in the Sky District, because it provides a spectacular view of much of central Canyonlands “from the air,” so to speak. Grand View Point, never before visited by Greenshit, is a more lengthy drive south of Dead Horse Point with similar kinds of views, but is of special importance to this crew because several of us had been on the Greenshit ’89 expedition around the 150-mile White Rim Trail, from which we remembered repeatedly looking up at Grand View Point during almost two days of jeeping. Today we’d have the opportunity to see the White Rim Trail from above.
Driving time from Moab to Grand View Point is normally about an hour (it used to be much more until recently, when the last portion within the park was paved), but our side of the road in those last miles had a fresh coating of tar and gravel. Little black rocks flew from the tires, hitting us in the face and sticking to the jeeps. This required driving very slowly British style (on the left), keeping an eagle eye out for oncoming traffic. The traditional method of road resurfacing here clearly does not consider the effect on doorless jeeps.
We saw typical midsummer traffic during this drive: a handful of tourists in their cars and campers. Along the road a little past the left turn to Dead Horse Point where most people go is the entrance to the national park, where we paid our fee of a few dollars. Very soon we came to a pullout for an overview of the impressive switchbacks of Shafer Trail, one of the two dirt roads that take you into the lower levels. This road winds precariously down the canyon wall, 1500′ to the White Rim plateau, where it meets the 4WD White Rim Trail. It is possible for ordinary cars to get some cheap thrills by going down the Shafer Trail and turning left to head back to Moab along the Colorado River on the Potash Road, rather than turning right onto the White Rim Trail. We still have vivid memories of Greenshit ’89 where we encountered a Satellite Sebring, one of those low slung sports cars, that apparently turned right here, at a campsite several hours down the White Rim. We never found out what happened to it.
One thing we noticed immediately upon stopping at the lookout was that the air was unusually dense with biting gnats and little flies similar to New England blackflies. Rick had told us that a few days ago it rained almost an inch in Moab, 10% of their yearly average. This might explain the bugs despite the lack of any perceptible water for miles. Later, we found that the unusually cool weather the last few weeks also contributed to the bugs.
After a few minutes of milling around and taking pictures we continued south on the left side of the tarry road a few more miles until it fell off the end of the world at a parking area. We could see nothing ahead but air. As Terry and I got out of our jeep, he stared behind me and said “Alan?” We had here one of the most amazing coincidences of modern time: parked next to us, getting in his car, was a colleague from Terry’s office! He and his wife were on vacation, driving a rental car and staying in motels. The conversation was brief—I guess it’s hard to come up with something to say when you bump into an acquaintance 2500 miles from home at an obscure overlook in the desert—but I’m sure Terry will work on a clever line for next time, and of course I’ll keep my camera poised.
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The view from Grand View Point a few steps beyond the parking area was stunning. Most of the White Rim Trail was visible, from Walking Rocks where Lou did his famous jumper in ’89 to Murphy’s Hogback, a high point with the nicest campsite on the rim. The numerous 300′ pinnacles and buttes of Monument Basin looked like little needles instead of the massive monoliths we remembered when we were on the trail 1500′ below. From here we could see almost all of Canyonlands National Park. The visibility was pretty good, but it is never perfect in the summer due to haze probably caused by the oppressive 10% humidity. The temperature was in the low 90’s and it was, of course, sunny. Despite the fact that we were still on a paved road the real world already seemed lightyears away.
Lunchtime was fast approaching, so we retraced our steps back north up the tarry road a couple of miles (this time, on the right side) to a developed picnic area. It had lots of tables and was deserted. Here, in the minimal shade of a juniper, we had our first camping lunch: bread, cold cuts, mayonnaise, mustard, tomato, onions, lettuce, and the ubiquitous Pace Picante Sauce (hot). Already I could see that we were in trouble, as we used almost a whole loaf of bread. The bugs continued to molest us through lunch.
Returning further north up the Grand View Point road we passed by a 4WD spur road to an overlook of Murphy’s Hogback a couple of miles west. This might be a nice lookout to visit at some future time, but we were anxious to get to the “real” backcountry that lies in Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, not in the National Park. BLM land is usually the least controlled public land in the U.S., open to numerous uses. Grazing, mining and logging are generally permitted with little more than a permit and small fee, and travel is unrestricted except at certain locations. One can camp anywhere, drive anywhere (even off roads), and shit anywhere. The BLM manages most of the western U.S. and exercises little control over recreational use. Most people, however, (including us) tend to respect the backcountry by minimizing our impact and staying on already traveled jeep trails. Land out here may take decades to revert back to its prior state after a jeep has driven on it just once.
Our strategy for the first three days of the trip was to explore several of the major peninsulas (or “points”) that jut into the Green River’s Labyrinth Canyon along its eastern bank and which provide breathtaking overlooks of the canyon and its side canyons. These points average 10–15 miles long, 600′-1000′ above the river, about 5 miles wide, and are squeezed in between pairs of deep side canyons, the name of the point sometimes taking on the name of the canyon south of it. Beginning with Taylor Canyon on the south that lies within Canyonlands N.P., the sequence is Horsethief Point, Mineral Canyon, Mineral Point, Hell Roaring Canyon, Deadman Point, Spring Canyon, Spring Canyon Point, Tenmile Canyon, and Tenmile Point. Upstream (north) of Tenmile the level of the upper plateau drops to the level of the Green River and Labyrinth Canyon disappears by the time you get to the town of Green River. Our goal was to see as many of these points in three days as practical, beginning with Mineral Point (in fact we only managed to visit two of them). Previous Greenshit expeditions tended to concentrate on trails in the canyons between the points and along the Green River; this time we were staying on high ground to view our past routes from above. There is no way to get from the upper plateau to the river level except by long and tortuous driving down certain side canyons where a 4WD trail switchbacks down the wall. The inaccessibility of its banks makes the Utah portion of the Green River one of the wildest in the country.
Our visit to these particular points above the river was inspired by the little book, The Labyrinth Rims, Access to 50 Green River Overlooks by Jack Bickers, because it described country largely untouched by Greenshit. All our previous trips were based loosely on a series of guidebooks by Fran Barnes, with titles such as Canyon Country Off Road Vehicle Trails — Island Area.
We expected to spend the next three days slowly working our way north, eventually hitting the town of Green River to pick up more supplies. Then we would head back south on the west side of the river for three more days, visiting major points on the opposite side. Finally we would end up in the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. Bickers describes trails much more primitive than those we were used to in the Barnes books—some virtually abandoned or probably existing only in the author’s imagination. Many of Bickers’s trails are not even marked as dotted lines on the fairly new U.S. Geological Survey 7.5′ topographic maps (that’s “USGS 7½ -minute topos”). This presented considerable adventure with much more backcountry navigating than on previous trips.
Heading north on Hwy. 313 a few miles past the spur to Dead Horse Point we turned west onto the dirt Mineral Point Road. Loosely speaking, a road (as Barnes uses the term) has an improved surface (i.e., graded) that is almost always 2WD, and a trail is unimproved and may be 2WD or 4WD. This is confusing because hiking paths are also called “trails,” but I guess that goes along with the markings on the topo maps, which don’t distinguish between jeep trails and foot trails very well. Although it can be risky, it is almost always possible to drive a regular car on a road, but it usually takes at least a high clearance vehicle to do a trail.
Immediately after turning off 313, Terry and I stopped to remove Pequod’s bikini top and to fold down its windshield, a mode of travel the Greenmeister prefers off road. The other jeeps retained their tops and windshields for the whole trip, probably due to some superstition about common sense and sunstroke.
Most of the drive to Mineral Point is over uninteresting flats—the only views are of sandstone mesas and buttes in the distance that get closer to the road after a few miles—and all of the driving is easy 2WD, though bumpy and not suitable for the family sedan. As we neared one of the sandstone walls on our right, the map indicated that we should turn left, but we saw no obvious trail. From Pequod we radioed to the others to stop here while we continued on the main trail a few hundred feet as it turned right parallel to the wall, but this was clearly not our desired trail. In the distance, to our left, I saw a jeep track up a small hill that was pointed in the right direction.
Upon returning to the other jeeps I saw a disturbed portion of ground that departed the main trail to the left, exactly where the others were waiting. It was so faint, that even when we started to drive down it the others thought we were just boogying across the country. Jeep tracks are nearly invisible when they cross hard ground and slickrock, so sometimes it takes experience, intuition, and close map study to find them. But a little further when the trail returned to sand, it was more obvious to see it as two worn tire grooves with a substantial hedge of desert shrubs down the center. Curiously, the trail we originally saw on a hill in the distance that led us this way turned out to be another wrong trail branching off this one. Although we were clearly now on an established trail (or at least previously driven), there were no signs of tread marks on the rock and the vegetation under foot/tire was pretty dense, indicating that nobody had driven this way for many months—perhaps years. In some spots it was nearly invisible, even in the dirt, as it was covered by plants several feet high.
But even this primitive side trail could be done using high clearance 2WD. It remained in this condition for twelve miles from the paved road, almost to the end of the point (according to the mileage indicated by Bickers, though the end was not visible here) when the trail suddenly came a jumble of slickrock flats. This was where the dotted line on the map stopped. I knew the easy part was over—the others probably thought this was the end of the line. Bickers implied that it was possible to drive further to the very end of the point, so I scouted ahead on foot, but I could find no signs of tracks beyond the slickrock. White slickrock with small patches of sand here and there and lots of shrubs dominated the terrain ahead—no more dirt and packed sand. As we later found out, this arrangement—firm sand for most of the trail followed by white slickrock at the end—was typical of these trails to the ends of points. The reason is that the trails start at a higher elevation where there is more dirt, well above the layer of hard white sandstone. As they near the Green River the trails slowly descend a few hundred feet in their 12 miles—a hardly noticeable grade—until they reach the hard, bumpy sandstone layer.
Determined to set up camp at the end of Mineral Point, we switched gears to 4L and slowly ambled over the slickrock, with one person walking ahead to point out the good spots to place tires. Now we were truly jeeping. It would have taken only 15 minutes to walk to the end of the point, but we spent over a half hour twisting our jeeps back and forth between the rocks and vegetation, up and down the bumps, finding a drivable route to the end. There might have been several ways to the end, perhaps better traveled than the one we chose, but when we reached the end where the point got much narrower, it was clear that nobody had been here for months, as signs of vehicle and even foot tracks in the desert do not disappear quickly. I was bothered that we had to demolish some shrubs to get here, since I subscribe to wilderness ethics to disturb fragile desert life as little as possible, but there did not seem to be any choice, and maybe we left enough of a trace so that the next people will take the same trail instead of inventing a new one (if there ever are next people). In any case, I took some solace in the fact that this route was documented by Bickers, so I wasn’t just creating a random new destination on my own.
Though this jeeping was slow, it was not difficult to get the jeeps to the end—almost to the extreme end—except that the extreme end was a 50′x200′ flat area of white slickrock separated from the rest of the point by a two-foot wide chasm ten feet deep. We could step over the chasm easily enough but not drive across it. The flat slickrock at the rim gave us the magnificent overlook of the Green River that we expected—our first of many on the trip—900′ nearly straight down. Several days later in the trip, after the 10th or 20th overlook, we started to get used to this type of view, but this first time we were awed. We could see in both directions for miles down Labyrinth Canyon, as well as the heads of numerous intersecting canyons. There was plenty of opportunity to get queasy in the stomach by crawling to the edge and looking over.
A two-minute walk to the left from that lookout took us to a view down the length of Mineral Canyon, a huge canyon nearly as deep and wide as Labyrinth but bone dry. At the bottom was the dead-end Mineral Canyon Trail that begins at the western end of the White Rim Trail along the Green River (where the White Rim Trail begins its ascent up a little canyon off the end of Horsethief Point), hugs the shore of the Green River, and then turns up Mineral Canyon for several miles. Some vehicles were at a campsite far below near the confluence of Mineral Canyon with the Green River—possibly rafters who had put in or were planning to take out here.
We had wonderful, clear echoes across Labyrinth Canyon, allowing us plenty of time to scream “Greenshit ’95!” before the rebound. I wonder what archaeologists of the future will think when they learn to reconstruct ancient yells by analyzing atomic displacements of molecules in the rock. The Greenshit ritual at each new overlook with a decent depth and breadth is to anoint the canyon with a few rocks, the scientific value of such experiments being well-documented in the literature: measuring the depth by timing the fall, calculating the distance across by timing the echo of the crash, determining whether the allegedly parabolic trajectory of a thrown rock in fact reaches an asymptote before it achieves the Green River, and so on. Interestingly, our depths calculated by dropping rocks were consistently twice the correct answer. Either gravity is weaker in these parts, the light sandstone reaches terminal velocity too soon, or the heat is affecting our mental calculations. Alas, nobody could manage to land a rock in the river, even though it looked like it was almost directly below.
The views of the canyon were incredible, but even more amazing were the lack of bugs compared to our trip so far. This was clearly the place to camp, despite the dearth of shade in this extreme heat. I normally prefer to reuse old campsites rather than make new ones, but there was no sign that anyone had ever been here. In any case, since we were camping on slickrock our impact would be barely noticeable to the next scrutinizer (years from now). This campsite, as well as the campsites we chose the next five days, appeared virgin and I hope we left them that way.
We decided that a dinner table giving us a mere 180° view of the horizon with the sunset over the mountains behind the canyon was tantamount to a booth next to the dumpster in the alley behind a bar in the slums. To do it right, our first campsite needed at least a 270° view, both horizontally and vertically, so it had to be right at the edge of the rock overhanging the river. Instead of setting up in a safe area by the jeeps 30′ away, we set up our tables and stove within ten feet of the lip. We didn’t have to worry too much about things blowing off the cliff, because there was an on-cliff breeze, but this choice did force us to leap the two-foot gap hundreds of times as we milled around between the jeeps and the tables. I guess I trusted people not to accidentally step off the lip of the Labyrinth, but this small crevasse in the middle of our campsite concerned me, as I knew that a little first night inebriation might ensue. It did not ease my mind that Ed, while yet sober, tripped on his Tevas his second time across, christening the rock with some skin and blood. Ed blamed this on a subtle flaw in Teva design, though you might liken his excuse to that of a tennis player searching for a hole in his racket after being aced. But we survived the evening with no additional injuries (except to the brain cells). The only incident was dropping one plastic fork down the 10-foot chasm while ferrying dishes from the dining room to the dishwasher, which Mark retrieved with an easy climb.
During the bumpy ride here Ed and Mark complained about gas fumes, a persistent problem on Greenshit trips. This time, we traced it to one of the gas cans with either a missing gasket or faulty cap. We manufactured a replacement gasket with duct tape. This gasket held for several days, after which we added a supplementary layer of tape.
Our first meal was Ed’s barbecued chicken with couscous. There was plenty of firewood for the grill, which we set up in a sandy spot between some sheltering rocks. We debated at length how much wood and time was needed to make good coals, with Mark and me calling for more time while Lou wanted to incinerate the chicken in ten-foot flames. While waiting forever for the fire to burn down, with the sun blazing in our faces, we drank a gallon of Terry’s gin and tonic with fresh lime, using the whole bottle of gin, and then followed it up with several glasses of Chablis. The innovation of cheap wine in cardboard boxes with interior collapsible bladders is a major boon to jeeping. The containers are nearly indestructible and will burn. Several of us took refreshing showers as the food cooked, using one of our two Sun Showers strung from a tree, so we were all gussied up for the Swedish Bikini Team, whenever they arrived.
I’ve heard it argued that you don’t get hungry in the heat, but we certainly ate well. Maybe it’s because we felt compelled to finish everything we prepared, considering the effort to drag it to the wilderness and cook it. I’ve also heard endless warnings to avoid alcohol in the heat, but that didn’t stop us from consuming liberal quantities of whiskey and cognac, in addition to the gin and wine. It was a very relaxed meal in extraordinary surroundings with perfect weather. The temperature had moderated from a high of 104° to 88° and when dinner was over we still had a blazing campfire that we didn’t need (another nonenvironmentally conscious thing to do).
By dusk we were mellow to the max. We had enough presence of mind to complete all the camp chores, one of the most important being to decide how many beers to put out for overnight cooling. A blinding 7/8-full moon appeared, prompting another nerdy debate about how many more days it would take to get full. The weather was so nice that we laid out our sleeping bags on plastic on the ground, in random flat spots around the site. Some trusting people set up closer to the edge than others. Since I’m the chicken when it comes to sleeping dangerously, I was proud of myself for setting up within 15′ of the lip: I found a shallow depression in the rock (technically called a pothole) that was just my size from which I could not possibly roll out, and I don’t think I’m a sleep walker. Since we were all still low on sleep, and our bodies were not yet adjusted to mountain time, it was not hard to doze off soon after dark. (OK, the booze probably helped, too.)