RockyMtRebel
July 28th, 2020, 02:58 PM
So, after the Beef Basin-Elephant Hill (Canyonlands Needles District) run on Sep 21, 22, 23 I have decided to continue the overloading experience by looping around to the southwestern part of Canyonlands, the Maze District for another 4 days & 3 nights of desert exploration. My son is planning on coming along and Shane says he's going to join also. I think I'm going to haul my Jeep out and have my son drive it while I drive the Powerwagon. I originally thought this would be a great second vehicle in case nobody else decided to tag along so it's possible I'll decide to leave the Jeep at home but I'll let my son decide since he'll need to drive it. I did ask Ty to take Jay onto his camping permit for Devils Kitchen so that I could add my son and keep Trent, since he was the first one interested. Luckily Ty had an extra vehicle still for his permit so now both permits are full!
Anyways, back to Canyonlands Part 2. After we exit Elephant hill on Wednesday (probably early to mid afternoon I'm guessing) we will gas up and supply up at the Needles outpost and head south and join the Woodenshoe Road route that travels northwest for 50 miles and goes from mountain forests to red desert canyons where it ends at HWY 95 just south of Hite (on the Colorado river). Planning on camping somewhere along Woodenshoe Road near Hite on Wednesday night. Thursday morning I want to get up early and check out Leprachan slot canyons which are about 30 minutes from Hite. There's one gas station in Hite and none anywhere else around, and they don't open until 10am so hiking the slot canyons early and then getting to Hite at 10am to fill up with gas is the plan. Then it's about half hour drive on HWY 95 north to the start of Poison Springs Canyon road, which heads east for 40 miles and meets up with the Flint trail and enters the Maze district of Canyonlands. I reserved a campsite at Sunset Pass, which is near the eastern end of Poison Springs road and I'm guessing we'll take 4-6 hours to get there, depending on how much exploring we do in the canyon (more slot canyons to explore). That puts us at our camp by around 5pm, and then we could run east on Doll House road (difficult trail) and explore some of the amazing Maze district formations and attractions before heading back to camp for the night.
Friday morning we'd head out of camp and head north on the Flint trail (a 100 mile moderate trail that ends a little north of Hanksville and starts outside of Hite) and climb the famous switchbacks up to the Hans Flat area and take sandy but easy roads the rest of the way to Hwy 95 north of Hanksville. It'll probably be mid-day Friday at this point and I originally planned to run Wild Horse Road and Factory Butte and then Cathedral Valley and Segers Hole, but I don't think we'll have enough time to run all of this if we want to be heading back to Colorado on Saturday so we'll probably do one or the other and I'm leaning towards Cathedral Valley and Seger's Hole (100 miles total of easy/moderate) and camp in the middle somewhere and then finish up and head home on Saturday afternoon.
This will be an epic overlanding experience and I can't wait! None of these trails should be as hard as Elephant Hill (and I've heard Elephant Hill is not that hard either) so although it's a lot of miles, we should be able to cover a lot of ground. I'm definitely hoping to get a lot of video and photo footage on this trip.
My permit is full so unless we decide not to take the Jeep we won't have room for anyone else to join us although if someone wanted to and was to get a permit for a different campsite, we could make that work.
Anyways, back to Canyonlands Part 2. After we exit Elephant hill on Wednesday (probably early to mid afternoon I'm guessing) we will gas up and supply up at the Needles outpost and head south and join the Woodenshoe Road route that travels northwest for 50 miles and goes from mountain forests to red desert canyons where it ends at HWY 95 just south of Hite (on the Colorado river). Planning on camping somewhere along Woodenshoe Road near Hite on Wednesday night. Thursday morning I want to get up early and check out Leprachan slot canyons which are about 30 minutes from Hite. There's one gas station in Hite and none anywhere else around, and they don't open until 10am so hiking the slot canyons early and then getting to Hite at 10am to fill up with gas is the plan. Then it's about half hour drive on HWY 95 north to the start of Poison Springs Canyon road, which heads east for 40 miles and meets up with the Flint trail and enters the Maze district of Canyonlands. I reserved a campsite at Sunset Pass, which is near the eastern end of Poison Springs road and I'm guessing we'll take 4-6 hours to get there, depending on how much exploring we do in the canyon (more slot canyons to explore). That puts us at our camp by around 5pm, and then we could run east on Doll House road (difficult trail) and explore some of the amazing Maze district formations and attractions before heading back to camp for the night.
Friday morning we'd head out of camp and head north on the Flint trail (a 100 mile moderate trail that ends a little north of Hanksville and starts outside of Hite) and climb the famous switchbacks up to the Hans Flat area and take sandy but easy roads the rest of the way to Hwy 95 north of Hanksville. It'll probably be mid-day Friday at this point and I originally planned to run Wild Horse Road and Factory Butte and then Cathedral Valley and Segers Hole, but I don't think we'll have enough time to run all of this if we want to be heading back to Colorado on Saturday so we'll probably do one or the other and I'm leaning towards Cathedral Valley and Seger's Hole (100 miles total of easy/moderate) and camp in the middle somewhere and then finish up and head home on Saturday afternoon.
This will be an epic overlanding experience and I can't wait! None of these trails should be as hard as Elephant Hill (and I've heard Elephant Hill is not that hard either) so although it's a lot of miles, we should be able to cover a lot of ground. I'm definitely hoping to get a lot of video and photo footage on this trip.
My permit is full so unless we decide not to take the Jeep we won't have room for anyone else to join us although if someone wanted to and was to get a permit for a different campsite, we could make that work.