Canyonlands National Park, Utah
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Slickrock Trail Canyonlands National Park, Utah |
October 16, 2019
Having just done the great little Cave Spring Loop, it still is too early to head for the campsite. There is another short trail at the end of the park road.
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I have not even bothered to don hiking boots for this occasion, because my street shoes seem to handle slickrock just fine as long as the route isn't rough.
Starting out
The little guy won't make it up by himself
The La Sal Mountains are back there
In fact, that mountain range has been gracing my photographs for the last six days.
Making their own route
The Island in the Sky District to the north
This area is chock-full of potholes. After a good rain, walking around here would be delightful.
Nothing but rock now
Even more so than over at Jeep Arch, the proliferation of redundant cairns is driving me a bit crazy. Note that in the following photograph, there are five markers in essentially a straight line, plus a stray off to the left. At least three of them are superfluous.
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Here's another one:
Serious overkill
What certain do-gooders haven't figured out is that hikers simply don't need (and
don't want) to be nurse-maided every step of the way. If they cannot figure
out, for example, that it is better to walk around an obstacle than over it, then they
have no business being out here anyway without supervision.
This cairn does have some artistic merit
Bypassing the tricky section on the way back
§: As stated, this hike could be absolutely delightful in the springtime
a day or two after a rain. At this time of year, though, it merely is something
to pass the time.
So I did something; I kicked down several dozen cairns — a personal
record. It isn't fun, but somebody has to do it. If only the public could
better appreciate that these areas are not city playgrounds, and that nobody is interested
in seeing their misbegotten 'handiwork'. When needed, route-markers are
invaluable, of course; in fact, I utilize them all the time. But enough are enough.
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