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Feb.
4, 2002: The 2002 Winter Olympic Games centered attention on
Salt Lake City, but travelers to Utah seeking solitude, not ski
slopes, needn't fret. They should just head south instead, to Utah’s
Colorado Plateau country, a geological wonderland of slickrock
canyons, natural arches, multihued rock formations, and blessedly
few low-season tourists.
It’s
easy to lose the crowds in the canyonlands, especially during winter.
You can get lost there yourself, as well. In fact, folks have been
having navigational issues in southern Utah for centuries.
Long
ago underwater, the Colorado Plateau was forced upward by faults
some 15 million years ago, to heights broaching 10,000 feet. Eons
of erosion followed, carving the topography that lures cyclists,
rock hounds, and shutterbugs today.
Through
the heart of it winds Utah’s Highway 12, a 120-mile
scenic byway that wiggles about an alphabet soup’s worth of
federal lands, linking Bryce Canyon and Capital Reef National Parks.
Tour Highway 12 for its eye-popping scenery, and rich legacy of
accidental detours and odd disappearances.
East
to Bryce
After
checking on road conditions (Highway 12 is paved, but most secondary
roads are unimproved), head east from the junction of US 89. Bright
orange rocks signal Red Canyon ahead.
You
might feel you’ve found yourself in an old Warner Brothers’
cartoon among Red Canyon’s jutting red rock formations and
Ponderosa Pines, elegantly whitecapped.
Snow
lends striking contrast to color country, a fact illustrated emphatically
at Bryce Canyon, Highway 12’s top tourist draw. At 36,000
acres, the park isn’t huge, but its sweeping views span expansive
chunks of the Colorado Plateau.
For
18 miles along a forested ridge, a dozen-odd pullouts overlook Bryce’s
main attractions: thousands of orange-pink rock spires rising like
weathered sentinels from the canyon floor below. Gazing at the maze,
you’ll see why Ebenezer Bryce dubbed his namesake park, “A
hell of a place to lose a cow.”
Explore
the backcountry on complimentary snowshoes, available at Bryce’s
Visitor’s Center (435-834-5322). Outside the park, Scenic Rim
Trail Rides (800-679-5859) runs special wintertime “Photography
Hunts for Wildlife” horseback tours. Saddle up to shoot bobcats,
bald eagles, cougars or elk.
Base
camp at Ruby’s Inn (800-468-8660), the premiere, one-stop
visitors village at the park entrance; or nearby in Tropic, where
Ebenezer’s original cabin stands proudly beside the Bryce Pioneer
Village (435-679-8546).
East
of Tropic, abandoned homesteads pepper the road, reminders of Mormon
villages long ago turned to ghost. Old telegraph poles parallel
the highway, and scenic backways lead deeper into the wild.
Few
venture down Cottonwood Canyon Road toward Kodachrome State Park
(435-679-8562), a stunning collection of petrified rock spires and
arches that lost its anonymity after being outed by National Geographic
photographers in a 1949 article.
Amenities
wait in Escalante, Highway 12’s midpoint town. Escalante
Interagency Office provides weather updates, and armfuls of literature
on adjacent Dixie National Forest, nearby Glen Canyon, and Utah’s
newest parkland, the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument (GSE).
Six
years ago, when President Clinton signed the GSE into law, he didn’t
exactly endear himself to many Utahns. Rather, he lit a political
brouhaha that raised local hackles, and state’s rights issues,
to boot. Angry citizens complained of a federal land grab, and Senator
Orrin Hatch allegedly said there’d be hell to pay.
“Things
have calmed down a bit,” says Janalee Bernardo of the Escalante
Interagency Office’s visitor’s center. These days more
come to visit the GSE’s three regions: Kaiparowitz Plateau,
Escalante Canyons, and the Grand Staircase. And quite a few inquire
on the curious case of Everett Ruess.
Missing
Persons, Waylaid Paths
To
call Ruess an idealistic understates the depth of his journey. Leaving
his California home, he traveled throughout canyon country on foot
in the early 1930s, seeking remote places, on his quest for beauty:
“I
prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled star to a
roof,” Ruess wrote to his brother Waldo, in his last letter
ever received, in 1934. “The obscure and difficult trail, leading
into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deeper peace of
the wild to the discontent bred by cities.”
In
November 1934, Ruess set out from Escalante toward Arizona for the
winter, and vanished without a trace. A search team the following
spring found Ruess’s two burros, but no sign of his pack, diaries,
belongings - or bones. He was 20 years old.
Nobody
really knows what happened to him,” Bernardo says. Ruess’
legend has grown recently, with a film and several articles heightening
his profile. Many Escalante pilgrims arrive at least in part due
to Everett, Bernardo says. “It’s just the mystery of it
all. People are intrigued.”
What
befell Everett Ruess? Several theories prevail. Some say he went
native, dropping out for good; others claim suicide, citing his
romantic, wistful letters. Several accidents have been suggested:
he slipped from a cliff, drowned in the river, or wandered too deep
into the labyrinth and get lost. Others believe he was murdered.
(You’d
need scuba gear, and then some, to locate Ruess’ final camp
these days; it’s now buried beneath the waters of Lake Powell,
created by Glen Canyon Dam in 1964.)
On
his fateful departure, Ruess followed Hole-in-the-Rock Road,
a trail blazed by an earlier set of pioneers, who also got sidetracked
in the GSE.
In
1879, a caravan of Mormon pioneers set out across the southeastern
badlands, with 60 families, 83 wagons, and more than 1,000 heads
of cattle in tow. They’d prepared for a six-week journey that
wound up lasting six months.
After
forging 50 miles across harsh desert terrain, the found themselves
stuck atop a cliff staring down half a mile at the churning Colorado
River below.
Undeterred,
they went forth, and in a marvel of engineering, blasted a precarious
path down the slickrock that enabled the party to cross safely.
You can still see the wagon notches carved in the rocks at the southern
terminus of Hole-In-The-Rock Road.
Back
on Highway 12, you’ll enter the GSE’s Escalante Canyons,
passing Phipps’s Death Hollow, named for the unfortunate chap
who lost his life when a ranching buddy killed him, apparently over
a woman.
The
Ancient Ones
Trailheads
branch from the pullout where Highway 12 crosses Escalante River,
the last major river discovered in the west. A short hike leads
to cliff-side petroglyphs and adobe structures, remnants of the
long-lost Anasazi people, who inhabited the Colorado Plateau for
a millennium before disappearing around the 12th Century.
Anthropologists
debate the Anasazi fate: drought, warfare, changing climates, nomadic
callings. Judge for yourself at Anasazi State Park (435-335-7308),
an excavated habitation and replica pueblo located in remote Boulder,
the last western town in the U.S. to have received mail by muleback.
Boulder
also provides backcountry access to Capital Reef via the Burr
Trail, 90-odd trout lakes, hiking and skiing, and Great Western
Trail crossings, for those itching to through-hike to Canada.
Escalante
Canyon Outfitters (888-326-4453) runs Burr Trail day hikes throughout
the Olympics. There’s little medal hype at Boulder Mountain
Lodge (800-556-3446), an upscale, eco-friendly lodge that’s
calling itself an “Olympic-Free Zone.”
North
of Boulder, a roadside kiosk says it all: views stretch “As
Far As the Eye Can See.” To the Southeast stand the rugged
Henry Mountains, Capital Reef, and Navajo Mountain, marking Arizona
in the distance.
Capital
Reef (435-425-3791) inverses the Bryce Canyon experience: rather
than gazing down upon canyons and crevices, at Capital Reef you’ll
crane your neck upward at a giant wrinkle in the earth that stretches
for 100 miles.
Wander
pioneer-era apple orchards in Fruita, the successful Mormon
village-turned-park headquarters. Follow the park’s scenic
route deep along the Waterpocket Fold, where ancient pictographs
co-habitate in rock with cowboyglyphs rendered by 19th-century travelers
(who sure had it easier than the Hole-In-The-Rock gang.)
After
Capital Reef, your options open up. Head east to Arches, south for
Lake Powell, or simply turn around and drive Highway 12 again. For
once you lose yourself in Utah’s canyonlands, you might not
want to be found for a while.
–
Jay Cooke is a San Francisco-based travel, food, and culture writer.
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