Winter Wandering
Near Moab, Utah

Story & Photos by Tony Huegel

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Even in four-wheel drive, I felt the tires slip on the tortuous dirt road scratched into a canyon wall in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, near the town of Moab. That was unsettling, given the killer drop-off to my left, but not surprising, since it was late January.

Signs at the top of the Shafer Trail Road, a vertiginous series of switchbacks, had correctly warned that there would be icy spots on the 1,400’ plunge to the White Rim, a mantle of pale rock formed of primordial coastal sands. The vista across the deeply incised desert, where the higher rock of dusky reds and browns was frosted by snow, is a dangerous distraction anytime, but especially under these conditions. So I saved my sightseeing for a pullout.

Then, I gazed across a geologic story told in a stairstep landscape of canyons, cliffs, terraces, buttes, mesas and benchlands that rise from the meandering chasm of the Colorado River. How easy it is easy, I thought, to say "three hundred million years," the span of time revealed here by the erosive power of water, wind and time. But even when confronted with the evidence, one cannot comprehend it. So I focused instead on a comprehensible number: 60, as in degrees, the temperature of this unusually warm winter day.

I had explored the unpaved backways through Utah’s canyon country many times before. But I’d always visited in spring, when jeepers take over Moab in their annual hajj, the Easter Jeep Safari; and fall, which I think is best. In summer, temperatures can reach triple digits and thunderstorms can unleash dangerous flash floods. That left me wondering about winter, the off-season.

I’d heard that winter, when the arches, spires, hoodoos and monoliths wear a lace of snow, is a quiet and uniquely beautiful time. Campgrounds that book solid in spring are barely occupied, although night comes early. Moab’s motels offer bargain prices, but many restaurants and shops are closed. Average high temperatures range from 30 to 50 degrees F., lows 0 to 20, and the skies are often gray. Ice and snow can cause hazardous driving conditions in the backcountry, but there, amid one of the world’s most exotic wildlands, solitude, beauty and adventure abound.

Anticipating a day in the glistening La Sal Mountains, which rise to 12,721’ at the summit of Mount Peale, I had loaded my cross-country skis onto the roof rack. Responses to my advance inquiries suggested that the weather would be dry and daytime highs springlike. So I brought my mountain bike, too.

I arrived in Moab at twilight, and already the town of 4,100 souls seemed to be asleep. Once an isolated Mormon settlement in a red-rock valley underlain by shifting salt formations, Moab’s economy has made the switch from ranching and uranium mining to outdoor recreation and tourism. Today, it’s a surprisingly cosmopolitan little town that serves as base camp for forays to nearby Canyonlands and Arches national parks, the Colorado River, Dead Horse Point State Park, exquisite expanses of slickrock desert and canyons, and the piney La Sals. River rafters, jeepers, mountain bikers and hikers have all discovered the region, where river canyons rival the Grand Canyon in scale and grandeur.

My first morning dawned overcast and glum, yet the day held promise. I took Highway 191 north from town, then followed Highway 313 onto Island in the Sky, a mesa that rises 2,000’ above the Colorado and Green rivers.

I began the exhilarating descent on snowy Shafer Trail Road just beyond the entrance to Canyonlands National Park, which charges no entrance fee in winter. Far below I could see the junction of Potash Road, which winds for 30 spectacular miles to Highway 191 just north of Moab, and White Rim Road, my destination for the day.

White Rim Road, arguably America’s most spectacular backcountry byway, makes a remote 100-mile loop below Island in the Sky, from the benches above the Colorado River to the banks of the Green. I’d driven it a number of times before, both in segments and over several days. I’d driven it in a single day, too, but that made the experience akin to an IMAX drive-in.

I’d come this time to hike, bike, ski, drive, get it all in within a few days, yet when I reached the White Rim I pulled onto an overlook and just dawdled. With my legs dangling from a ledge a thousand feet above the Colorado, I looked down into the deep river gorge at the serpentine meander that coils around a promontory called the Goose Neck, and gazed upon a chronicle of creation.

There is the brownish Jurassic-age Navajo Sandstone, left by what may have been the greatest desert the Earth has ever known; the hard, ledgy Kayenta Formation, formed of river deposits and marked by the footprints of dinosaurs; the massive crimson walls of Wingate Sandstone, made of still more Jurassic desert sands; the uranium-bearing Chinle Formation, varicolored sandstones and siltstones where petrified wood and volcanic ash abound; and the Moenkopi Formation, in which ripple marks record the ebb and flow of a Triassic sea.

After a while I pedaled my bike farther down the road. When I reached Musselman Arch, a long ground-level span at the edge of a cliff, a couple was parked there, watching the shadows move through the intricately carved canyon below. I continued on for another mile or so, watching for desert bighorn sheep, but by then it was getting late. I drove back to Moab via Potash Road, through gullies and ravines and along benches high above the river.

My second day was sunny and warm, so I decided to take the easy 1.5-mile hike to Delicate Arch, possibly the most famous feature in Arches National Park, maybe even all of Utah. It was about 3 p.m. when I reached the arch, which stands 45 feet high and 33 feet wide. By then the amber light of late afternoon was illuminating not only the very symbol of the Beehive State, but also the La Sals, which dominate the skyline beyond it. For an hour, maybe more, I had one of Utah’s most popular attractions to myself, a rare privilege indeed.

I was booked for two nights at the Mt. Peale Country Inn, a snug bed and breakfast on Highway 46 in the La Sals, near the Colorado state border. There, I felt worlds away from the red-rock desert where I’d spent my first two days, but the inn is only 45 minutes from the color-banded rock of Canyonlands’ Needles District and 35 minutes from Moab.

The inn is run by Teague Eskelsen and Lisa Ballantyne. On my first day there Teague and I explored a terraced canyon by four-wheel drive. Then she convinced me to forgo my skis and try her style of wintertime footwear, snowshoes, high in the La Sals. I would have done better on skis.

The next morning, falling snow made the day look like what it was, the third day of February, although down in the red canyons it remained the threshold of summer. After fueling up on homemade waffles, I headed to the Needles District, Canyonlands’ southern sector, named for its countless sandstone spires and pinnacles. Near the visitor center I embarked on the Colorado River Overlook Road, an easy dirt track for the first six miles. After that it became very rough, so I parked and pedaled the remaining mile or so, arriving at a dizzying drop-off near the confluence of the Colorado and the Green.

Back on the asphalt, on my return to Moab, I stopped at Newspaper Rock, where Native Americans as long ago as 2,000 years created elaborate petroglyphs, artful figures pecked onto the rock. They could be greetings, prayers, maybe just one ancient person’s caricature of another, but no one knows. Time was running out on my visit, so after a few minutes I left them for the next person to ponder and drove off, satisfied that at least winter in this wonderland was a mystery no more.

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