Moments in Dirt and Ink

Manti-La Sal National Forest Click for map. I decided next up would be Abajo Peak, the high point of the Abajo Mountains. It was an easy choice. I'd almost tried going for it with my previous loop, but didn't want a 20 mile day. I figured it would add about 6 miles to that loop that turned out to be quite a bit longer than expected. I've got another cobbled together route for this one. I mean, I could just drive up it (depending on the quality of the road), but who wants to do that? Instead, I've traced out some ridges for a cross country route up and then trail and road to come back down. The road, 4WD on my map, actually looks in good shape and is marked by a horizontal number. I think I could drive it until the trail portion and make a much shorter day of it, but then there goes my cross country challenge. I'm kind of set on the ridges now, besides I sort of expect there to maybe be trail that way. Surely the locals like the idea of going up the local h...

Manti-La Sal National Forest Click for map. The roads seem to be increasingly dominated by rough things, at least on the map, so I wasn't sure what I could do. I plotted out a loop of 4WD road and (motorcycle) trail and a little bit of paving from an easily accessible overlook for a get-to-know-the-area exercise and figured I should have more ideas later. The easily accessible overlook is the Harts Draw-Canyonlands Overlook, or so it says on the map. It lacks any road signs to point it out, but once there has a nice set of sighting tubes to point out the landscape. That can't be bad. It includes Canyonlands! A series of tubes for sighting things like Shay Mountain there on the left, which is hard to miss, and a few things down in the canyons to the right. Lots of canyons below, some of them part of Canyonlands National Park. So on to the first little bit of paving before turning onto the first bit of 4WD road. There's plenty of shoulder and the cows ha...