This is really the only way to travel in this country. This cowboy worked for the Daltons, an original pioneer family ranch.
This is the current trail up the slickrock
Tim and Jill's outfit
Doug Eliason on the slickrock
Gray Mesa Dugway
Truck for sale: Cheap! Must take delivery from current location
Halftrack Junction
Moqui Dugway north of Mexican Hat, UT
My friend, Doug Eliason, invited us to accompany his family to Hole in The Rock, where the San Juan Mission Pioneers blasted and picked their way over some of the most incredible obstacles and terrain in the history of the settling of the Western US. See their story @ www.HIRF.ORG. The trail was one I have wanted to take for years to trace -(Albeit in the opposite direction)- the route these intrepid explorers traveled in 1879-80. Doug told me he had been twice before and the trail was no harder than several we have here in So AZ. I loaded up my trailer with the usual cadre of too much equipment and we traveled north. It took us about 9 hours to reach Mexican Hat, UT at 10:00 PM, where we spent the night in the San Juan Inn. Jill and I had stayed there 8 years ago while we were on an anniversary trip to Silverton, CO. The "Inn" was improved over the motel it was then and the price reflected that change. At that hour of the night, we were glad to be settled. We got up very early the next AM and climbed the Moqui Dugway which was an expereince not to be missed. We met our party at Hall's Crossing, gassed up and headed out. We stopped at Halftrack Junction, the final resting place of an old military weapons carrier halftrack. From there, we followed the "New bypass" around the closed Lake Canyon Road down some ugly long slickrock (A pioneer term for the sandstone) and had lunch. Doug stated, "That's the worst of it except for the 'Step' and a little loose stuff right before Gray Mesa." (Don't buy that.) We rocked and rolled over the slickrock for a few miles until we came to the Dugway that the pioneers blasted out to get down from Gray Mesa on the slickrock. That story is worth the read for sure. We passed an idiot who drove his F 250 Ford around the back of an elevated point and got it wedged in a crack a couple hundred feet up on the rock face with a broken axle. I bet he'd take a hundred bucks for it today! We eventually came to the step which was no big deal going down. After the "Step" we began our ascent up the slickrock to Gray Mesa. Let me just say here that was a little hairy. The aforementioned trailer that I was towing kept trying to fall off the narrow boulder--strewn dugway and that was the point I realized only someone with a hole in his head would make the attempt on this trail towing a trailer! I ended up wedged against a boulder on the left side with my right front tire in the air on the downhill side and the trailer doing what gravity does to objects on slopes. I hooked to the back of Mike Stevens' orange Rubicon and winched up the last short section. Once up on top, just before the actual first few feet of Gray Mesa, Mike decided he would play around in a hole with a ledge on it. I said to Jill, "You don't do that kind of stuff this far out in the middle of nowhere. It's just not smart and not a risk worth taking if you don't otherwise have to mount an obstacle to proceed." Just then, "Bang" his axle broke. There we were, 20 miles in, with Mike having to disconnect his rear axle and (Mostly Doug) having to tow/winch him over every obstacle all the way out. He drove home to Northern Utah with front wheel drive only. We never made it to the actual end of the trail and Hole in The Rock. That said, we still had a blast on the trip and enjoyed the company. The weather was generally good and I got to see the dugway, the wagon road, a cliff dwelling, and the incredible expanse of the country those pioneers traversed. Jill and I marvelled at the pioneers' will to keep going through the deep sand and over the immense and innumerable rock obstacles. We discussed the irony that if they had made the attempt to cross the river gorge a few miles north of the "Hole" they could have made the trip a thousand times easier. She said, "They didn't know that. They did the best they could with the information and experience they had." How true that is for all of us. What a mistake it would be to fail to make an attempt until we had all the answers. Which defining and refining experiences would we miss if we quit when it got hard? The road builders heard there was a "Hole" on the West side of the river cliff that could be widened to access, then cross, the Colorado River. They found it and opened it up enough to get wagons 1200 feet down in miraculous ways. Because of that choice, they were stuck going up Cottonwood Canyon on the East side. The river allowed no passage or exit any other way. Because they went up Cottonwood Canyon, they were forced to ascend Gray Mesa, which then looked like a reasonable travel corridor to the East; the direction they needed to go. Since they traversed Gray Mesa, they ran into the thousand foot tall slickrock that they had to descend. Once down, they ran into Grand Gulch and had to go north to the Elk Range (Where they would have been anyway if they had crossed the Colorado River a few miles upstream in the first place.) Their challenges were nowhere near over and the story should be read. My conclusion after seeing it firsthand is these people were models of faithful dedicated pioneers in every sense. There are those who say, "They should never have done this or that," but the real lesson is they did not mistake the process as being more important than the goal. Their process was anything but efficient and was fraught with hardship and pain. My opinion is they will be judged by their faith during the effort; not the process. They understood their offering and testament were their faith and obedience; not their destination or the path.
Truly this was a life--changing experience for me. (Even if scary at times.)
