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Tag: ruin canyon

Blue Mountain Shadows: Beef Basin to Cedar Mesa

Southern Utah Wanderings | Friday – Friday, October 1-8, 2021

This year for our annual week-long trek into Southern Utah, Jared and I started out in the Beef Basin area and then we explored our way over to Cedar Mesa. It has been a while since either of us had spent much time around Beef Basin and I was also really hoping that we would be able to spend some quality time around the Dark Canyon Plateau and Elk Ridge areas along the way. The trip started out great and we found plenty of new rock art and ruin sites, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us on the second half of this trip and we had to change our plans multiple times because of storms and slick muddy roads. At one point we even stopped to help winch a truck back onto the road that was sliding off. One of the unexpected benefits of the poor weather was that it chased us closer to the Abajo Mountains than we were originally planning to go, and they were in peak falls colors at the time! At the end of the week we found out that President Biden was restoring the original boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, which was fitting since we were sitting in camp within the newly restored boundary. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of this trip, so please enjoy plenty of photos from our journey below.

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Beef Basin Weekend | Saturday

Saturday, October 9, 2010

After a cold night of camping we had some breakfast and started the day out by heading up Beef Basin Wash. The first few miles of this road had been recently graded and it was in good shape, however at the first gate is where the recent maintenance had stopped. As we continued through the gate we noticed that no one had been down this trail since the last storms had come through. When we reached the first wash crossing we were met with some cut banks on both sides. I thought I could drive through the crossing, but soon found out that I was wrong. I managed to get stuck in some deep sand along the wash. It had been a while since the last time I got a vehicle stuck anywhere. With nothing good to winch to, Amanda and I spent the next 45 minutes to an hour digging and stacking rocks. Luckily I was then able to back out of this situation. Once out of the sand, I parked the Jeep and we hiked the rest of the way along the road to the cliff dwelling I had set out to visit.

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