We had considered taking a bike ride today, but the weather looks fine and possibly is rainy tomorrow so we prioritize and decide to drive up to Natural Bridges for a hike. This is a can’t miss stop, and a chance for me to relive another memorable day from my past: my ride from Blanding to Cedar Mesa thirty years ago, when I detoured to Natural Bridges and took a strenuous hike in the middle of a 65 mile, 5,000’ day.
It’s an hour’s drive up to Natural Bridges, including the tortuous climb up Moki Dugway - a severely contorted unpaved road that climbs 1,100 feet in three miles as it twists its way straight up a precipitous cliff. On the day after the linked one above, I rode down Moki Dugway - very slowly, with one foot out of the stirrups to catch myself in case I started sliding on the gravel. It’s a long ways down, and not the place for a mishap.
Northbound on Route 261. The highway climbs up that cliff ahead somewhere, but from the distance it’s hard to see how. Those cliffs form an unbroken 10 mile barrier.
At the end of the pavement. This is the third or fourth such warning sign we’ve passed in the last half mile. The speed limit is 15 mph, and down to 5 mph on the curves.
On the climb. It’s hard to tell from here, but we’re climbing at a steady 5-10% grade. No guardrails, loose gravel, a straight down drop-off on the open side, the potential for a car coming around the next curve and crowding you near the edge. Interesting driving, and an interesting descent on a thin-tired, fully loaded bicycle too.
Here’s how things looked from the summit 30 years ago. That sign no longer exists. A few years back I found another old photo of it on the internet. It was barely readable, after years of use for target practice.
Back on pavement again we get an outstanding view of Bears Ears, one of our newest national monuments. Obama established it in 2016 just before leaving office, and ‘the former guy’ reduced it by 85% a year later. Hopefully Biden will restore it to something like its original size before it gets ravaged by the resource extractors.
Here’s how I described my hike in Natural Bridges 30 years ago:
Natural Bridges is indescribable. I spent about five hours here, hiking a loop that includes Sipapu and Kachina bridges. Both are spectacular, but so is the entire region. The hiking trail follows White Creek, the stream that created the bridges - it meanders through stunningly beautiful cliffs and overhangs, all of which are gloriously hued sandstone. The trail itself is delightful - it is very lightly maintained, being no more than a streamside dirt path. It constantly shifts sides of the stream, requiring careful rockhopping to avoid slipping into the milk-chocolate hued water. I didn't meet another person on the entire hike on the trail, and only two couples at Kachina Bridge. A very remarkable experience.
Not much has changed in 30 years, it looks like. It’s still an extraordinary hike, and still offers much the same experience. Like the first time, we didn’t encounter another person once we hit the valley floor until we climbed out at the other end about three hours later. There were a few differences though:
I had company. It’s such a rare experience, and it’s great to be able to share it with the other half of the team. And, it helped to have a second set of eyes to watch for the often obscurely placed cairns that mark the routes.
We had our Garmins along this time, which helped with navigation. Last time I lost the turnoff at the midpoint and had to cut the hike short, missing the second half of the trail and the third natural bridge.
I’m carrying a much better camera this time. One disappointment on my first hike was returning home and finding that nearly all of the photos were badly overexposed.
My body, and especially my knees are thirty years older. I could never do that bicycle ride and then throw this hike into the middle today.
The map below shows the route for the hike and gives a good perspective on the park’s contours and the location of the three natural bridges. Sipapu is at the top, Owachomo is at the bottom, and Kachina is at the midpoint on the left. The loop is the full circuit, and about 10 miles long. Starting from the Sipapu lookout parking lot, it drops to the base of White Creek canyon and follows it past all three bridges. At Owachamo Bridge it climbs back to the top and then returns across the Mesa to the starting point. There is also a trail from the top the bottom at to Kachina Bridge, so it’s possible to cut the hike in half and see only two of the bridges by hiking either the northern or southern half.
The trail down to Sipapu bridge is fairly challenging, intermixing trail, staircases, step ladders, and open stretches crossing slickrock. You really have to pay attention the entire way, and there are few guardrails or safely protections. We saw only a few other folks at the top half of the descent, hiking down to the impressive viewpoints at about the halfway point to the bottom. Beyond that though we had the canyon to ourselves and didn’t see another person until we climbed out again almost four hours later.
Overlooking the canyon from the viewpoint at the Sipapu parking lot.
Beginning the descent. Note that we started out with hiking poles but soon collapsed them and stowed them away as being more of a safety hazard than help.
This descent was just a bit unnerving, especially for Rocky who’s anxious about descending stairs backwards. I went first, took both of the poles, and guided her feet down.
Looking back up at the ladder. Above it and to the right are sections of pipe railing anchored into the rock to help you safely down the steeper stretches. I wouldn’t want to make this descent on a wet day.
Descending further though, you get a much better view. It is huge - with a span of 255 feet it is the sixth largest natural bridge in the world, and the longest one that you can still hike beneath now that the Rainbow Bridge is no longer accessible to the public.
Two views of Sipapu Bridge. On the right, from today’s hike; on the left, from 1991. We had a framed enlargement of this shot on the wall of our home for 25 years. I’m pretty sure it made the cut and is stashed away in our storage unit.
Once on the bottom, the hike becomes less technically challenging. It’s pretty much just a walk along a stream bed here, with the main challenges being to not miss the trail and to not get neck strain from gazing up in astonishment.
After a couple of miles of this we come to Kachina, the second of the three bridges. This is the only time since reaching the canyon floor that we saw another person, but they were way up on the rim looking down.
Once on the bottom, walking is much easier. We’re following the stream bed through the canyon for the next five miles, mostly walking on red dirt or sandy paths.
A view up to the rim, just north of the Kachina Bridge. Actually, we briefly thought that gap near the rim must be the second bridge, and were disappointed. Silly.
After the Kachina Bridge there’s a short uphill scramble before leveling off again. This is the spot where I missed my directions 30 years ago, and just climbed up to the rim here, It’s just as well, because I might have run out of daylight had I completed the whole hike.
Today though we have a GPS to guide us and a second set of eyes to spot trail indicators. We aren’t worried about getting lost, but we are getting attentive to the time. We want to get off the trail and back to the drive down Moki Dugway before sundown. We keep a fairly brisk pace for the next two miles through the canyon until we reach Owachomo Bridge.
There are spots where it would be easy to lose the trail if you’re not paying close attention. And there are spots where it might turn treacherous if you do lose it.
Following the canyon, wondering when we’ll round the bend and the third bridge will appear. If you look at the map, you’ll see that there are many bends and we can never see very far in any direction.
If the geology wasn’t so stunning, we could have had an interesting post that focused on vegetation. The canyon is lined with junipers, cottonwoods, willows and cacti.
It’s hard to discsrn the scale here, but that rock up there is immense - several hundred feet wide, at least. I wonder if it isn’t the anchor to a former bridge that wore through and collapsed long ago.
We make it back to the top of the mesa at 4:30. I’ve been telling Rachael that this part of the hike will be an easy and fairly uninteresting walk, so with only two miles left to get back to the car and sunset at 7:30 we feel good about the time.
I’ve misremembered though. The walk along the top is the most challenging part of the trail since the descent to Sipapu back at the start of the hike. It seems like we’re constantly climbing or dropping, often stepping steeply up to or down from a rocky ledge. It’s slow going and the hardest two miles of the entire hike, and not what the team needed after being softened up by the previous eight miles. It’s a relief when we finally reach the car right at 6.
The day is just dimming when we reach the bottom of Moki Dugway and hit pavement once more. A few miles later I’m startled by a free range cow standing just off the shoulder of the road, its tail swishing. In the fading light I almost don’t see her until we’re right beside. It would be an especially poor time to have a wreck or breakdown because it’s so remote. In nearly an hour of driving we don’t see a single other car until we’re back on the main highway a mile from the motel.
Gregory GarceauAt the end of a long hike comes a ladder,
I'm sure nothing could make Rocky gladder,
But for scenery so nice,
It's such a small price,
I guess a little ladder won't matter. Reply to this comment 3 years ago
