Visiting the new Bear's Ears National Monument - Wow! post1

Bear's Ears is a new national Monument created from BLM and National Forest lands in SE Utah.

We've been to Comb Ridge and environs (lower right in the monument) a bunch of times over the years for the fantastic dayhiking with Anasazi ruin and petroglyph hunting during the day followed by wonderful dispersed camping at night. This trip, we wanted to see more of the Cedar Mesa/Bear's Ears Buttes area and then circle back through the mountains to the North through terrain we'd never seen before.

This is not your typical National Monument. It goes from the lush Abajo Mountains which are over 10,000ft tall (just left of Monticello on the map above), all the way down to 4,000ft (lower left corner) where the San Juan river meets lake Powell. In between those extremes is a huge swath of Utah Juniper and Pinion Pine high desert forest that's liberally sprinkled with Anasazi ruins and petroglyphs that you can explore. The best known area for ruins is the Cedar Mesa area (lower middle) which gets so hot in Summer that they close the ranger station at Kane Gulch. BTW there are no Cedars. Once upon a time, someone mistook the Junipers for Cedar...

Roads and weather must be monitored very carefully here. There are basically just two paved roads and the dirt roads ARE IMPASSABLE WHEN WET because they're primarily clay. They get incredibly slick and soft when wet. On the high road that skirts Dark Canyon, any vehicle could EASILY slip off the road and right over a big cliff. Being desert, things dry fast, but travelers need to be ready to stay put wherever they are - carrying water, food and shelter is a must. OK, enough introduction.

MAX was full. we really need to get down bags for the kids - that gigantic round thing is the sleeping bags and pads for all of us. turns out we could have used the next cooler size down. we left the house with 20.5 gallons of water in big jugs and a solar shower. the wine box contained a laptop and everything needed to fill Deuce of Spades orders midway on the trip.

9 hours later we were at camp. that big long cliff back there is Comb Ridge - a favorite hike and explore destination.

We had no idea we'd be camping right next to ruins when we targeted the camp's location from the maps.
For us it was confirmation of our route finding methods: 1) find obscure 4WD road
2) follow road
3) camp at viewpoint.

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dramatic section of Comb Ridge

Juniper versus Cedar

a Juniper

a Cedar

Admittedly the leaves are similar...