White Rim Road, Canyonlands NP - Two Days - June 18 & 19, 2015

My long awaited vacation started last week as my son and I headed out from Orange County, CA to Denver, CO for my father-in-law's 80th birthday party. We left on Wednesday after his last final exam and drove to Cedar City, UT. The next day, we headed to Canyonlands National park to check off one of my bucket list items - the White Rim Trail. Before reaching Canyonlands though I had heard of a couple of popular petroglyphs that I wanted to see: Head of Sinbad and Black Dragon. The petroglyphs in this area of Utah are supposedly some of the only native drawings of extraterrestrial and prehistoric life as the pictures look definitely alien like and the dragon looks like a pterodactyl.

The road to the Head of Sinbad is off of I-70 and was pretty well marked with signs.

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We came upon a reddish-brown pond called "State Pond" on the map. This was the last time our mtn bikes would be clean. I knew they were going to get dirty and dusty but I didn't want them on the roof since I couldn't see them and I wanted to minimize the wind resistance and noise.

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The Head of Sinbad is within Locomotive Rock (shown below). There were a few different trails to select from and no signs and we ended up finding some other petroglyphs that were partially destroyed from weather. I had a picture of the Head of Sinbad from a hiking book so I knew these weren't it but it was still a shame to see art destroyed.

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We backtracked and ended up finding the actual drawings of the Head of Sinbad. The ink was much darker than the previous ones. The drawings were about 10-15 feet high and appeared very alien-like.

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This is the Head of Sinbad.

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After that we headed back to the I-70 and found some cows along with some fairly large sections of water on the trail left over from the last rain. Unfortunately we had to stick to the muddy road and our mtn bikes got a helpful serving of fresh Utah mud.

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The exit to Black Dragon Wash is just after passing the huge "ship" rock at Mile Marker 147.

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This is the entrance of Black Dragon Wash.

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The infamous pterodactyl-like dragon petroglyph. This and other drawings are about 70 feet up the wall so a zoom lens is very beneficial unless you like to climb on loose shale.

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From there we headed to Canyonlands and filled up our truck and extra gas can in Green River as there were no gas stops from Green River to Moab and we'd be doing over 120 miles of slow-going 4WDing. These interesting foods were on the side of a gas station in Green River. Yum?

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We chose to run the White Rim Trail in a counter-clockwise direction and started from Mineral Bottom. The switchbacks at the start were really cool! There was a truck pulling a trailer of canoes up the trail so we decided to wait for him to reach the top.

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We spotted a Jeep coming up too. After that, we didn't see anyone else until the next day (Friday).

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After descending the switchbacks we came to the start of the White Rim Trail and the entrance to Canyonlands NP near Point Bottom. Note there are two bikes on the back at the beginning of this trip. That wouldn't be the case at the end.

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There is no room for error on this section of the road near Saddle Horse Bottom. I strongly recommend National Geographic's Trails Illustrated map of Canyonlands. It was informative and had loads of info about the trail.

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We reserved a campsite at Hardscrabble which had a large tree and plenty of shade. I wasn't able to put up my $45 awning that I made since the spot was overly windy and plus we already had shade. I did use the PVC poles to set up our solar shower though.

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Later in the afternoon after relaxing a little bit and unloading the truck, we drove further down the WRT to the Fort Bottom Ruins trail which leads to an old Indian tower and an abandoned cabin. The WRT proceeded upwards from the Hardscrabble campsites along a narrow shelf road that was moderately rocky. My son shot a picture of the sun's rays shooting directly onto our campsite below.

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My wingman.

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We parked the 4Runner at the base of this huge rock, which is called called Bighorn Mesa. The trail head said the trail was 1.5 miles but it sure felt like 3 miles as it ascended and descended many hills and traversed narrow ledges.

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That's the tower ruins on top.

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We also spotted the weathered cabin near the valley floor of Fort Bottom. We didn't hike to it as the camera's zoom lens worked well enough and it was already starting to get dark.

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After 30 minutes of hiking, we reached the tower ruins. There was supposed to be a log book but we didn't see anything.

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It's recommended that you don't touch or step inside so I only extended my arm inside and shot a picture of Bighorn Mesa through one of the spaces in the wall.

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When we got back to camp just before darkness came, we were in for a surprise. We were met with hundreds of mosquitoes! We searched frantically for the OFF bug spray while being eaten alive. We thankfully packed our mosquito nets for our heads but the rest of our bodies suffered until the OFF was found. What we found out was the bug spray worked terrific on the mosquitos but the horse flies in the area could care less. So we cooked dinner in 90 deg heat, ate through our head nets, took showers, and then jumped into bed. By keeping a light on outside of the tent, we were able to sneak into our tent without a single insect coming inside.

The next day, the flies and mosquitoes were gone and we packed up for our larger leg of the White Rim Trail (over 70 miles). This is a photo looking towards Potato Bottom Basin. This section was a moderately rocky downhill but it was easy in low range.

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Besides stopping to take pictures every few minutes of the beautiful scenery, we had to stop and make adjustments to the bikes on the back. The trail was so bumpy throughout the entire length you were never really able to get above the park's recommend speed limit of 15 mph. More than a few times, my home-made bike rack's two arms (which held up the bikes' frames) were bending downwards from the force of the bikes bouncing downwards. I kept having to bend the steel arms back upwards and I was worried that they'd fatigue and break permanently. As you'll see later in the trip, after the rear most bike fell off for the 3rd time, I finally removed it and threw it in the truck. By only having one bike on the rack, the moment arm was much shorter and didn't cause anymore bends in arms. Anyway, on with the show.

This is along the edge of Soda Springs Basin with Candlestick Tower in the back.

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I even braved sitting on the edge to warm my toes as the wind blowing up the wall was a brisk 90 degrees.

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This gives you a sense of how close the cliff edges are to the trail at times.

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This was the most difficult section of the trail called Murphy Hogback. It wasn't difficult at all for our stock 4Runner. Our stock tires also handled the loose rocks easily. The view from the top of the Soda Springs Basin was incredible!

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As I noted, the trail was really, really bumpy. None of the books that I had, including Charlie Wells' Moab book, noted that the trail was bumpy for the entire length. At one point in the corner of my eye I noticed my son holding onto a bag of pretzels with two arms as if he was holding onto a first born. I told him not to move and grabbed my iPhone. As soon as I grabbed it he knew what I was going to take a picture of and started cracking up. This is my son. Protect the food at all costs!

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This is Monument Basin I believe.

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This is where my patience ran out on my poor bike rack and I decided to put the other bike in the back of the 4Runner.

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Washer Woman Arch and Monster Tower

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Airport Tower is just above the Airport campsites.

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Musselman Arch was pretty thin; only about 4 feet thick.

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We were nearing the end when the road became much easier and we started seeing more vehicles. The Shafer Trail portion of the WRT was really impressive and the views from the top were breathtaking!

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Well, that was it. We left at 9:30am from our campsite and exited Shafer Trail at about 3:30pm. I think it took us about 8 hours to complete in total (counting the day before) and it was something I'll remember forever. If someone asks me to do it again, I'm not bringing mtn bikes and I think I'll air down my tires more to reduce the aggravating bumpiness. I was running 25 psi and think 20 psi may have made it more comfortable.

Anyway, all told, we saw 6 other 4WD vehicles, no motorcycles, and no mtn bikers. I thought we'd see more since the temperature really wasn't that hot. It sure was nice travelling along the numerous narrow shelf roads and not having to back up for someone else. Whenever we did see another vehicle, which was going in the opposite direction, there was always a place to get around each other.

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Before heading to Moab for a late lunch, we decided to travel along Long Canyon Road which included a huge fallen boulder that you drive under. The road had hardly any bumps and we finished it in about an hour.

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The entrance to Pucker Pass.

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There was some nice shade under here.

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We think this is Jug Handle Arch but we're not positive.

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After that, we hit up Moab for a very late lunch at Zax' pizza parlor for all-you-can-eat pizza. My son didn't eat as much as I thought he'd eat. Apparently he had eaten too many pretzels.

Great report, thanks for sharing.

I've done a few trips to Moab and Canyonlands but not a lot of wheeling there. The wheeling adventures were only day trips. I've spent more time out on multi-day mountain bike trips that included White Rim and a couple other areas you mentioned. Beautiful country.

Thanks for posting up! I HAVE to get out there!

BA man! Looks like a great trail! Nice pictures too. Gotta get out there sometime.

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