Canyonlands National Park: Taylor Canyon Loop
Part One, Route Outline and Preparation
Of all times of year, I decided to spend 3 days in late November backpacking in Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, UT. For those who have never been there, it is a remote area in eastern Utah with a wide expanse of canyons of various types and swaths of desert. The Colorado and Green Rivers converge in the heart of it, dividing it into three districts. The largest, The Island in the Sky, is most readily accessible from Moab, and features a mix of high desert and deep canyons. Needles, about 60 miles south of Moab, is known for its spires of sandstone and sedimentary rock. The Maze is accessible from the town of Green River and is the most remote, rugged, and dangerous part of the park in terms of hiking hazards and inaccessibility for rescue teams.
Moab has been one of my favorite outdoor destinations for quite some time, and this area is a large part of the reason. Arches National Park gets more attention, but Canyonlands offers more opportunities for outdoor expeditions, dark skies for stargazing, and sheer volume of territory. As it is also a lower-profile national park, it also tends to have fewer crowds, especially in the late Fall and Winter months. But it offers no fewer wonders than others in the Rocky Mountain region. Additionally, there is an array of land parcels under the Bureau of Land Management that offer additional camping and hiking activities. One I have spent some time with is Hamburger Rock, near the entrance of the Needles District.
With three days free and a weather forecast that was cold, but dry and clear, I chose to do the Taylor Canyon loop in the Island in the Sky District. Not a designated route per se, it combines sections of four trails: the Alcove Spring trail, the Taylor Canyon jeep road, Upheaval Canyon, and the southern clockwise half of the Syncline Trail.
You can check out the route at AllTrails. At 19.4 miles, with a 1200 foot elevation loss at the beginning and a similar gain at the end, this is a challenging route. I decided to break it up into 4 legs over 3 days, for each of the sections of trail.
One challenge in preparation was the gear kit. As there are no reliable water sources on the route (the Green River does not count as usable water source, for reasons I’ll get to in the article for Day 2), that means packing in at least 6 liters of water. The nighttime temperatures were also predicted to get into the low 20s F to upper teens, so having good cold weather gear for the nighttime was essential. These two additions to my normal backpack added an extra 15-20 pounds, bringing the total pack weight to around 60 pounds. Still within my ability, but definitely more than my normal limit for pack weight. As I am a budget hiker and backpacker, I didn’t spring for big-ticket items from companies such as Big Agnes, which would have weighed less but cost far more than I have spent on my gear kit. Others with deeper pockets could replicate my gear kit with a possible weight savings of 10-15 pounds. However, that is what the gym is for.
Next time: Part 2, Alcove Spring to Moses and Zeus
