Visiting the new Bear's Ears National Monument - Wow! post7

Our thoughts turn to the way home - we take roads North through the highlands of Bear's Ears National Monument.

Our route in a nutshell: follow FR088 and when it turns into Road 107, keep following it.

It's the boonies and some of the roads have multiple names so I'll write it out:
Take Elk Mountain Road up from Hwy 95, turning onto Gooseberry Road to stay high, winding past vistas and what looked like great dispersed camping to either side, skirting the top edge of Dark Canyon (VERY dangerous when wet!), turning into Bridger Jack road AKA North Cottonwood Road AKA Road 107 (Google calls it the Beef Basin Rd), skirting the top of Salt Creek and finally descending all the way back to Hwy 211 (AKA Park Highway).
Whew! From there it's a short drive to Newspaper Rock and then 1 1/2 hours drive to Moab.

IMPORTANT NOTE on the route: there's a potentially deep creek ford just before you hit Hwy 211.
So if you're doing the route South-to-North like we did, there's a possibility of being trapped at the ford, just a stone's throw from the paved road.

so THAT's where all those shots came from

typical scene on the Elk Mountain Road

Dark Canyon. pop quiz: this photo shows a feature that indicates cattle have been grazed down at the bottom - probably starting many decades ago. what is that feature? go ahead and click for the big version

looking South East into one of the upper drainages of Cottonwood Creek

big gorgeous clouds 

Daddy's taking pictures while driving!!!! (just kidding)

skirting the rim of Salt Canyon (an excellent backpack trip in Canyonlands National Park)

camp. note the old cottonwood on the rim about 15 vertical feet above 

more than meets the eye. #1 see that sand cliff behind? it's about 15 feet high. most of the valley bottom is up at that level - a big flat expanse. #2 see that stuff hung up on the tree, right over the creek? it's flood debris roughly 6 feet above the current creek.

#3 from the rim above you can see an old cottonwood at the upper level (many more huge dead ones out of sight behind the camera) and a bunch of young ones down in the lower area. this pattern is no accident. it's produced by Arroyo Subsidence and you see it all across the West where cattle have been grazed. cattle trample creeks and overgraze the plants that stabilize the banks. floods then rapidly cut down into the creek beds and the entire water table lowers to match. the result is this: where once there was a broad well-watered, fairly flat bottomland, now there's a wide, bone-dry bench above a deep, narrow-cut creek. this is not the natural way things erode. it's unbelievably common, but it's not natural, it's cattle.

So the answer to the Dark Canyon pop quiz is arroyo subsidence - that telltale red line of sand cliffs down at the bottom of the canyon.

the kids love playing in sand. umbrellas just make it better

Did I mention that it poured on us? When it started it was almost comical - each raindrop made a little puff of dust, almost like a tiny explosion. Very Zen. Here's the YouTube video

https://youtu.be/XVbGMkQwUY4

singing in the rain

Newspaper rock. I LOVE modern photography. this panel is insanely hard to photograph because of it's size, minute details, and how close you are to it (and because I don't carry a ladder, I guess). but my iPhone's panorama mode scooped the whole thing in, no problem at all

a detail of the wackiness on this panel. across the top: sheep, flying squirrel, bear prints, bison, bear prints, elk, shaman. deer hoof prints on left side. check out that guy in the middle with power lines squiggling from his head. horses (and wagon wheels - see main pic) are fairly modern.

Our verdict on Bear's Ears: WOW!

Our one suggestion: Think ahead in years and try to imagine one big thing that would make this National Monument a great park...paving the Bridger Jack and Elk Mountain roads. We know that's a controversial thing to say but we believe current political events overwhelmingly support the idea that poor access leads to poor protection (and invites outright attack). Doesn't this park deserve (essentially one) real road? There are lots and lots of dirt roads here and they're all horrors when wet - a person could be stuck for days and days. So we recommend a little pavement...

We're going back in Fall to the lowlands near Comb Ridge. Cooler and no biting flies - sign us up!

Here's a short editorial about Bear's Ears that hits the current-politics-nail on the head: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/5429234-155/op-ed-creation-of-bears-ears-national