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The Search for Goblin Gulch

Canyons of the Black Ridge: Trailing the Ghosts and Gnomes of Goblin Gulch
Tuesday, May 5, 2020

When Will Minor started to hunt for a small band of strayed Angora goats he little dreamed he soon would have cause to forget them. As he entered a tiny canyon he suddenly came face to face with the weirdest collection of natural forms he ever had seen. The soft white sandstone of the canyon walls was covered with faces and figures—some animal, some human, some resembling modernistic sculpture and others like nightmarish creatures which only a writer of horror fiction could conceive.

– Desert Magazine, May 1944

Last week while I was going down the rabbit hole of searching online for more information about Will Minor and the High Trail, I came across an old magazine article that was written by him called Trailing the Ghosts and Gnomes of Goblin Gulch. This article was featured in the May, 1944 issue of Desert Magazine and was about a place he found many stone faces weathered from soft white sandstone just below Black Ridge that he called Goblin Gulch. I had never heard or seen anything about this location before, but the article and photos really piqued my interest and I knew I would have to try to find this forgotten place hidden within the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness!

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The High Trail of Flume Creek Canyon

Canyons of the Black Ridge Wilderness
Tuesday, April 28, 2020

The ledge varies in width, 10 to 20 feet at the wider places, less than 30 inches at the narrowest. Yet this precarious shelf is a well-traveled road… Over the High Trail, great bands of sheep, herds of white-faced cattle, packers and camp movers, with their strings of loaded pack horses, pass on their migrations between the Black Ridge country and the lowlands along the Colorado River.

-Will C. Minor

This evening after work I headed back into the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness in search of a historic route known as the High Trail which is located in upper Flume Creek Canyon. After visiting Will Minor Arch on a bench above Mee Canyon last weekend I was interested to find out more about who Will Minor was, so I did a little searching to see what I could dig up. I didn’t find much information online, but I did come across this article from the Daily Sentinel written by Bob Silbernagel in 2013. My interest was very piqued as I read about the High Trail and I knew instantly that I had to go looking for this route! Using the two photos from the article as reference and Google Earth, I was quickly able to figure out what I thought was the location of the trail in upper Flume Creek Canyon, and I wanted to get out there as quickly as I could to find out if I was correct!

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The Arches of Mee Canyon

Canyons of the Black Ridge Wilderness | 1,000th Trip Report
Saturday & Sunday, April 25-26, 2020

Before I get started, I just wanted to note that this Trip Report marks an important milestone in the history of ADVENTR.co. This is the 1,000th Trip Report that I have posted to this blog! As much as I would have loved to have gone somewhere further from home for this special occasion, it is what it is, and with the current restrictions in place for the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to stay close to home this time. When this year began, I had no idea I’d end up spending so much time exploring these areas closer to home, and I have really been enjoying getting to know the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness area a little better these past few weeks!

It’s been just about a month since our last backpacking trip into Lower Muley Twist Canyon, and I was ready to get out for another one. We try to get out on at least one backpacking trip each month, minus winter, and we didn’t want to let April get away from us, so we kept it close to home and went on an easier overnight trip into the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness area. This weekend we went in search of half a dozen or so arches that are located on a bench above Mee Canyon, similar to the location of the more popular Rattlesnake Canyon Arches that are found nearby.

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Canyons of the Black Ridge: The Pollock Windows

Between the Forks of Pollock Canyon
Thursday, April 23, 2020

If the current COVID-19 pandemic had not completely changed everyone’s lives these past few weeks, then Diane and I would have left right after work today for another three day backpacking trip into The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. But since that is obviously not happening anymore, I decided instead to head out after work on another local adventure so that I could finally visit The Windows of Pollock Canyon in the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness. This is another one of those hikes that has been on my to-do list for a long time, and while I have seen the Pollock Windows from below in the East Fork of Pollock Canyon before, I’ve always wanted to hike to them for a closer look. Even though the sky was pretty much overcast for much of the day in the Grand Valley, the weather forecast was calling for it to clear up a little bit in the evening, so I was hoping for a nice sunset while I was out!

The Kokopelli Trail to Salt Creek

McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area
Tuesday, April 21, 2020

This evening Diane and I headed over to the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area near Rabbit Valley so we could spend the evening hiking a short section of the Kokopelli Trail. Although I have driven, hiked and even biked much of the Kokopelli Trail over the years, there are still a few sections of singletrack that I have missed. Today I thought it would be fun to hike one of those sections which descends down to Salt Creek from near the end of the Sidewinder Road on the west side. The trail then crosses a bridge over Salt Creek and connects up to the Troy Built Trail on the other side of the canyon.

Tag: mcinnis canyons national conservation area

The Search for Goblin Gulch

The High Trail of Flume Creek Canyon

The Arches of Mee Canyon

Canyons of the Black Ridge: The Pollock Windows

The Kokopelli Trail to Salt Creek