My first experience with Southern Utah began in 1984 as I bicycled over Soldier Summit in a July snowstorm, en route from Seattle to Santa Fe. A day later, I pedaled up to the Arches Campground in 100 degree heat, where I spent the day reading Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang in the shade of a Juniper tree. I fell in love with the vastness of the skies, the color of the rocks and even the stifling heat.
Five years later, when the school where I worked in Seattle expanded its outdoor education program, I helped develop and run a program that took middle school children to Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Canyonlands National Parks, and to other public lands and State Parks. We studied geology, climate and weather, ancient cultures, current issues, water use, leave no trace wilderness travel, leadership skills and geology among other subjects, in the richest classroom in the world.
Twenty-three times between 1989 and my retirement in 2017, I was able to experience the wonder of Weeping Rock through new eyes with yet another group of students, and each year, they amazed me with their insight, their artwork, the essays and poetry they wrote, their ability to adjust to life where we had to be mindful of the other beings who relied on the spring from which we drew our water.
Some 250 students took part in our Southwest program and many, citing their experiences in Utah, have gone into outdoor leadership, wilderness medicine, environmental sciences and other educational fields. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to use my position as an educator to help students find ways to make the world a better place.
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own, proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
I was in my 50’s when I first stepped into a canoe. I figured it was something I could do out in Nature and still sit down. Through the University of Utah I enrolled in a three-day canoe trip on Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone. My next class outing went across Lake Powell to Moki Canyon. What really got me hooked on canoeing was a four-day excursion in Utah’s Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River. The 120-mile stretch of the Green River from the Utah town of the same name wanders through Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons to the confluence with the Colorado. It is one of the premier flat-water stretches of river in the United States, accessible to novice and expert alike — to solo travelers as well as families. Canoeists need not rough it. A good deal more gear will fit in a canoe than a backpack; comfort items like tables, chairs, roomy tents; a cooler for fresh food and drink; as much water as needed for 3-8 days or so.
Hiking up Labyrinth’s side canyons you might encounter signs of ancient cultures, such as granaries and petroglyphs. Or you might see rock inscriptions and art by early trappers and river explorers; and sadly, some 20th century vandalism. Along some of the bends in the river are old mining roads, left over from the days of uranium mining, some of which travel right beside the river bank. These dirt roads and trails were later appropriated by jeeps and ORVs [Off-Road Vehicles] for recreation, a practice which has accelerated. Off-road use scars the landscape, chokes the air with dust; disturbs sacred cultural sites, delicate desert soil, riparian vegetation, wildlife, and the quiet and solitude of the canyon.
Under the Bureau of Land Management’s lackluster management of the Labyrinth area, ORVs were allowed to travel nearly anywhere. That is, until recently. Pressured by SUWA, other environmental groups, and indigenous peoples, the BLM’s new Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges travel management plan now prohibits motorized vehicles in the side canyons and along the river. It enables river travel in a natural setting, without dust and the noise of motorized vehicles reverberating off the canyon walls. This BLM map shows the newly closed trails in red.
Now you can travel down the river as Nature intended. The river begins among low sandy hills, gradually cuts deeper into the rock until you find yourself in a hallway of red sandstone, capped by blue sky, fringed with green foliage, meandering across the Colorado plateau. The canyon is a place of profound solitude and peace. Proceeding down river, the sounds of geese, herons and ravens echo off the rock walls. Imagine, after a challenging day on the river struggling against brisk upstream winds you’ve established the perfect campsite. Tent erected, dinner over, sitting in a comfortable chair, you contemplate the river. Perhaps a deer walks down to the river to drink, or a pair of river otters swims up to a nearby bank. As the sun sets, the canyon walls begin to glow golden orange, the sky shades to purple, and at night the ink-black heavens glitter with infinite stars.
Slickrock and Dark Skies: Two Views of Utah Wilderness
Please join us for a free webinar in early December to explore the unique aspects of Utah wilderness with experts Steve Hinch and Lisa Stoner. This event is co-sponsored by Oregonians for Wild Utah and Washington Friends of Wild Utah with support from SUWA.
Steve Hinch, a recognized photographer and author on wilderness topics, has explored and recorded the lands of the American Southwest, including southern Utah, for forty years. His most recent, award-winning book is The Slickrock Desert: Journeys of Discovery in an Endangered American Wilderness, Steve considered his frequent expeditions into the wilderness as a necessary counterpoint to his earlier life as a senior executive in Silicon Valley.
Lisa Stoner serves as the coordinator for the Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range Dark Sky Cooperatives at Utah State University. Lisa focuses on outreach, educational programs, partnerships, and technical support to elevate the importance of sustaining naturally dark skies across the Western United States. She received her master’s degree in range ecology from USU.
Please join us on Tuesday, December 5, to delve into these topics around Utah wilderness. You can register in advance via this Zoom page.
Photo credits: Stephen W. Hinch (image of Mesa Arch at top), Nicki Hinch (photo of Steve in Zion NP), and David Wells (night sky image in Arches NP).
Growing up in Philadelphia, “nature” was what I saw during my father’s annual vacation from work, when we took the station wagon to visit my favorite aunt and uncle in Vermont. At that time, Vermont had, or was rumored to have, more cows than people. Highlights of our road trips were the forested Green Mountains, the winding, two-lane roads, the wooden covered bridges, the classic red barns, the 19th century grain mills, the refrigerators and stoves on the front porches of rural houses and the rusted cars and pick-ups in the back, the grazing Holstein dairy cows, swimming in Lake Champlain, and the University of Vermont Morgan Horse farm.
I probably became aware of the American Southwest as a child by watching black and white Westerns on TV. My first live view was the summer after my freshman year of college, when my then-boyfriend and I drove across the country and visited my brother, who was in school in Berkeley. The route we took didn’t include Utah’s Red Rock Country, unknown to me at the time. Mile after mile of driving on an arrow-straight highway, surrounded by sand with almost no vegetation, made me drowsy. The car ran off the highway into a ditch in Nevada. A friendly, paunchy Sheriff’s Deputy with a bottle of whiskey in the glove box took us to the nearest town of Battle Mountain. We spent a week there waiting for parts for a Datsun. This was 1971.
In the 1990s, a long-time friend and I began exploring national parks in Utah during our vacations from work. We car camped, hiked, and photographed. We were hooked. Over the years, we visited national parks and monuments, BLM lands, and state parks in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Nevada, and California. Southern Utah was our favorite place. Somewhere along the way, I found SUWA and became a member.
The American West is spectacularly beautiful, and I love much of it, but there is something special about southern Utah. That’s why, after he received a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer, my friend and I drove to Moab for the last time to hike and photograph in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and BLM lands on the Colorado River. Like Oregon and Washington’s Columbia River Gorge, which was protected from rampant urban and commercial development by the 1986 National Scenic Area Act, Utah’s Red Rock Country must be protected and preserved for all of us and for the future by Congressional passage of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.
If you missed the very illuminating webinar last month by Jack Stauss of the Glen Canyon Institute or if you just want to watch it again, a recording is now available here.
(If you’re viewing this on our home page, you’ll need to click through to the blog post to access the video link)
To attend this webinar, please register in advance via this Zoom link.
The “mega drought” impacting the Southwest is a tragedy, a travesty, and–in one way–a dream come true. The tragedy is the devastation being wrecked on the soil, plant. and animal ecosystems which have limited ability to adapt quickly enough to withstand the temperatures and water loss that are making an obviously harsh climate even harsher. The travesty is that humans are acting as if they can either wait out the problem or engineer solutions that will maintain existing lifestyles and economic systems that depend on watered fields, pastures, and lawns and embrace continued population growth.
The dream come true of the drought is a not-so-tiny sliver lining called Glen Canyon. With the flooding of Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam in the 60’s, hundreds of miles of canyons, cultural sites, and riparian ecosystems were drowned. It has been called “America’s most regretted environmental mistake” and the failure to prevent it shifted the strategies and tactics of the environmental movement. Like some others, I only became aware of what was being lost while the waters were rising. For decades I have fantasized over the monkey-wrenching that could destroy the dam and resurrect Glen Canyon.
The drought is bringing Glen Canyon back. The forces of nature are far greater than the huge plug of concrete. Lake Powell is at less than 30% capacity and may soon drop below the level at which the dam can produce electricity. The 200-mile-long reservoir of Lake Powell is dropping in elevation, but more significantly it is shrinking in size. As it shrinks, tributaries that were flooded for miles under the dead waters of the full reservoir are re-emerging.
The river is returning as portions of the Colorado River in Cataract Canyon and now increasingly downstream settle back into their historic channels. Rapids and riffles once again let water play where it had lain stuporous in the reservoir. Even more dramatic, however, are the hundreds of side canyons being exposed by the shrinking footprint of the reservoir. Even the sediment layers that had dropped out where stream flows hit the stagnant water of the reservoir are being swept clean in flash floods.
This amazing change is not going unnoticed. The Glen Canyon Institute, among others, is convening scientific field work to document this unique geological event that is occurring in the human time frame. The restoration of riparian vegetation, scouring of sediments, and re-emergence of cultural and historical treasures are occurring in a mere blink of geologic time.
Want to learn more about this encouraging development? Oregonians for Wild Utah and Washington Friends of Wild Utah, together with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, are hosting a webcast – Return of the River: The Story of Glen Canyon – featuring Jack Stauss, Outreach Director of the Glen Canyon Institute, on Wednesday, May 25 from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. PDT. Jack will share about one of the largest unplanned ecological restorations in the world.
To attend, please register in advance via this Zoom link.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the meeting.
We hope that you will join us to hear this exciting story on May 25th!
About the presenter
Jack grew up in rural Vermont. He moved to Utah in 2008 and fell in love with its open space and community. His passion for the red rock and Glen Canyon comes from years of higher education and experiential learning. In 2016, he finished his graduate work at the University of Utah in Environmental Humanities where he focused on public lands and environmental communication. Jack has previously interned with Save Our Canyons and the Salzburg Global Seminar. He has worked for the Glen Canyon Institute since 2016 and now serves as its outreach director.
Jack Stauss
About Janet Welch
Janet grew up in Phoenix and her love for the wilderness was kindled at a young age in the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Having spent her adult life living near the Canadian border, that passion for the plateau takes her back there nearly as often as to the seas and mountains much closer to home. Her lifelong dream of seeing Glen Canyon might yet come true
Image from Glen Canyon InstituteImage from Glen Canyon InstituteImage by Janet Welch
Oregon is now the fourteenth state with a “friends of” Utah wilderness group formed under the umbrella of the Utah Wilderness Coalition led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The mission of this broad coalition is to advocate for the passage of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act (ARRWA), which would protect 8.2 million acres of wilderness quality, public land in Utah. The ARRWA already has the support of three of our Representatives and both Senators. The goals of these state-based affinity groups are to bring more visibility to local support for Utah wilderness, to cultivate new leadership, and to build connections among participants. A steering group composed of several Oregonians sharing an affinity for Utah wilderness has been hard at work with SUWA’s Washington/Oregon coordinator, Jenny Holmes, this year – mostly via Zoom in deference to the pandemic – to lay the groundwork for this grassroots group.
Our initial efforts have been focused on building relationships with the Oregon Congressional delegation and encouraging continued support for ARRWA as well as building awareness of several emerging issues threatening the public lands in southern Utah and elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau. Once the pandemic abates, we’ll look to establish regular presences at local environmental events, to further support SUWA, and to plan an autumn work trip for group members to southern Utah.
For more information on our plans, we now have an initial web site posted at https://www.oregoniansforwildutah.org and a Facebook presence under the group Oregonians For Wild Utah.
If you’re interested in joining us or even getting involved in setting our direction with the steering group, please email us at info@oregoniansforwildutah.org.
Thanks for considering!
-Kelsey Kagan and Steve Corbató, interim co-chairs
P.S. If your group or school class (middle school through graduate school) is looking for an informational program via Zoom this fall, SUWA is providing Wild Utah presentations spanning from 20 minutes to an hour. Please contact Jenny Holmes at waor@suwa.org to schedule.
What attracted me to this cause of protecting Utah wilderness from an Oregon base?
I’m not a native of either Utah or Oregon, but for reasons of family and career (as well as slot canyons and deep powder), I’ve spent more of my life in Utah than anywhere else. My view of Utah wilderness has a scientific basis at its core. My father was a geologist who taught at summer field camps in the Sanpete Valley and points south. He introduced me at the age of ten to the wilds of the Waterpocket Fold and Comb Ridge. I have memories of Moab in the early 1970’s as a dusty small town reeling from the end of the uranium boom and with no hint of the future tourism onslaught. As a budding astrophysicist, I later helped build and operate scientific instruments that leveraged the isolation, dark skies, and favorable atmosphere of the West Desert. This experience gave me an appreciation of the regularity of beautiful fault block mountain ranges, amazingly swift pronghorn antelopes and night skies of the Great Basin as well as incongruous sand dunes, remnants of the much larger Ice Age lakes. Later as a university administrator, I had the opportunity to visit research field stations in southern Utah where I learned about the fragility of the ecosystems on the Colorado Plateau, the associated impacts of climate change, and the ingenuity and perseverance of the Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan peoples who preceded us. As a parent, I had the chance to take my son into Dark Canyon and around the Bears Ears and the San Rafael Reef among other places.
So many of the public lands in Utah that we are striving to protect through permanent wilderness designation are truly globally unique through a combination of their rugged, timeless viewscapes and the underlying geology, ecology, paleontology and archeology. I understand the political landscape of Utah and federal lands policy well enough to know that this fundamental uniqueness and ensuing intrinsic value are often underappreciated by both local and federal decision makers. The lands of the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin will persist long beyond our species’ time on this planet. I feel it that is our responsibility to work to preserve and to protect them for future generations to appreciate in their amazing natural state.
Notch Peak Wilderness Study Area (BLM), House Range, Millard County
