Somewhere in the backcountry outside Escalante, a small Utah town of drive-by diners and dust devils, and down a cramped slot canyon, adventure guide Rick Green is exploring a strange frontier so wild and unknown that it remains one of the most mysterious places on Earth.
The ravine descends 100 feet from a mountainous platform of land to the desert floor, narrowing in width from about a hundred feet to just 1 foot, twisting and turning before entering a labyrinth of unexplored canyons where the rock is a veined orange color. , the color of a The best sunset. Everything around is charged with calm.
When the temperature reaches 40°C and the canyon relieves the sweltering heat, Green continues, aided by a helmet, harness, climbing rope, rappelling rings and carabiners that allow him to descend further into the hidden valley. Beyond that, there are few exits.
“For a long time, no one was interested in this position,” said Green, co-owner of Excursions of Escalante. “This is where America’s last mountain range, the Henrys, was named. This is where the last named rivers are located. the last position in America to be explored in the 1870s. Everybody goes through it because it’s so dangerous. “
Today, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is among the most dangerous and inaccessible tracts of land in the United States. It is a concertina, rolling plateaus, ridges, cliffs, and complex escarpments that have never been fully conquered or comprehended by any American, Native American or not. It’s larger than some U. S. states, like Delaware and Rhode Island, for example.
And most importantly, for cartographers, it’s the last mapped position in the continental United States.
This corner of southern Utah has rugged, rugged terrain (Lightphoto/Getty Images)
Today, Green estimates that there are many slotted and slippery rock canyons here that have never been seen by human eyes, let alone explored. However, he makes a living by inspecting some thirty of the most available locations to better understand this wild corner of southern Utah. “Grand Staircase-Escalante allows canyoners like me to get up in the morning,” he said. “We have the maximum. The maximum concentration. And, the most productive of all, the most charming too. “
Seen from space, the national monument is a colossal giant’s stairway, leading from the Colorado Plateau to the Grand Canyon. Up close, it is an ancient maze of jagged walls and looming mesas. On paper, another revelation awaits. It covers a 1.87-million-acre footprint of American public lands and spans five bio-zones – from low-lying desert to coniferous forest – and absorbs the historical territories of the Anasazi and Fremont peoples.
First designated by Bill Clinton in 1996, the national monument is also an ongoing political concern. Former U. S. President Trump took steps to open the barrier to development, cutting its length in half, but President Biden reversed course in October 2021 and issued a presidential proclamation converting the barriers and reinstating his preservation order.
The original decree explains the reason for the designation: “This high, rugged, and remote region, where ambitious plateaus and multicolored cliffs stretch to distances that defy human perspective, is the last position in the continental United States to be mapped. “”The monument has a long and dignified human history: it is a position where you can see how nature shapes human endeavors in the American West, where distance and aridity have opposed our dreams and courage. “
Cottonwood Canyon Road takes travelers through narrow canyons, herbaceous stone arches, and rocky landscapes (Diana Robinson Photography/Getty Images)
To lend credence to the claim, there are old accounts from the late 1880s that pioneers first laid out a trail from Escalante to what is now Fortymile Spring with the goal of making a shortcut to the San Juan River, but were slowed by extremely rugged terrain. . Proof, the proclamation states, that no place in America was harder to beat.
The most compelling chronicle appears in the book A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks Through Angus M Woodbury. A group of hardy scouts was sent to survey and protect the more rugged spaces of the Kaiparowits Plateau in what is now part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, but returned disappointed that they had failed.
“They were sent to Salt Lake City to ask for help, which was granted in the form of a legal credit to open a crossing,” the account reads.
For Adé Nelson, administrator of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the land remains an enigma and a geographic puzzle that will likely never be fully solved. “Due to the rugged and rugged terrain, some parts of the monument are absolutely inaccessible and will probably never be fully mapped,” he explained.
Today, those canyon lands are a frontier in a completely different sense of the word. The researchers call it the “Monument to Science” because the domain has a huge open-air laboratory where scientists use each and every corner to better perceive our environment, our history, and our planet’s past. Cretaceous oyster and clam shells, far from any ocean, are scattered high on the ridges of the interior mountains. Petrified crocodiles and three-toed Tyrannosaurus Rex footprints are waiting to be discovered. Like a landscape-scale herbal history museum, it’s filled with bones and relics.
The national monument’s toxic, mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys were formed by the erosion of softer rocks, leaving a plume protected from wind and water (Posnov/Getty Images)
This unique context has led to a wealth of studies in the 27 years since the monument was named, ranging from reading how the monument’s geology provides insight into the hydrology of Mars, to the unearthing of some of the oldest marsupial fossils ever identified and the discovery of many previously unknown dinosaur species. adding the oldest mosasaur in North America: a 94-million-year-old marine reptile called Sarabosaurus dahli discovered in June 2023.
“On average, each year a new species is officially identified through paleontological surveys conducted at the monument,” said Megan Crandall, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, which manages all U. S. public lands, adding to the National Monument. The tyrannosaurus discovered in the 2020 Kaiparowits Formation is so gigantic that scientists struggled to figure out how to split the specimen to send it off. “
Furthermore, in a topography as labyrinthine as this, one would expect to find little evidence of human profession, and yet the landscape is home to scattered examples of ancient petroglyphs, classical campsites, cemeteries, and granaries. American culture and folklore. In fact, in the Navajo language, the region’s mountain column is still called DziłBizhiʼ Ádiní (“The Mountain Whose Name Is Missing”).
Stories like this are now being revealed at the Anasazi National Park Museum, which borders the national monument in the high-altitude city of Boulder. Most notably, around 162,000 artifacts have been discovered so far at the site where the Anasazi, also known as the ancestral peoples of the American West, survived until 200 BC. C.
The trail to Lower Calf Creek Falls takes you through stunning scenery to a refreshing swimming hole (Credit: Scott Smith/Getty Images)
“The Anasazi really lived here, on the edge of nowhere,” said park superintendent Jamie Skidmore, who now dedicates his time to giving voice to the ghosts of the past. “It has always been complicated due to lack of water and food. It is not unexpected that this ancient network finally fled due to hardship and drought. “
Today, tourism is helping to shift perspectives, and the landscape is slowly being prised open. Much of the monument remains inaccessible except on foot and a handful of trails can be found via an interactive map managed by the Bureau of Land Management’s partner organisation, Grand Canyon Trust. Slot canyons like Peek-a-boo and Spooky and trails leading to places such as Lower Calf Creek Falls and Willis Creek Narrows are where heartbeats fill heads and jaws hit the floor.
“These lands are a source of inspiration and learning for some and a source of peace, resilience and unity for others,” said Harry Barber, director of the Paria River District, a Bureau of Land Management worksite in southern Utah. Every morning you can find me somewhere in the monument, running or cycling regularly. I’m going there to sharpen my brain saw for the next day. As I stand on the road, I see others, of whom I can only suspect. there for the same reasons. “
The earth is still a master, that’s obvious. And yet, it can also give unfortunate lessons to travelers who aren’t prepared for it. Telephone policy through the monument is scarce or non-existent. Junipers and pines cut off their own branches due to excessive heat. Flash flood deaths in slotted canyons are not uncommon.
It’s a reminder that adventure — elemental, never-ending, unpredictable — never goes away at America’s wildest national monument.
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