We took our chances and drove down to the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park, geared out for a three-day, two-night experience along the White Rim Trail—a 100 mile 4-wheel drive and mountain bike trail overlooking the Colorado River, considered by many to be the most scenic 4-wheel drive trail in the country.

Located about 45 miles north-west of Moab, Island in the Sky in Canyonlands is the northernmost section of Canyonlands National Park. It is named for its geologic structure, essentially a huge plateau, dropping away in cliffs almost all the way around it. Its rim varies from several hundred yards wide to only several feet: the White Rim. It then drops away in another cascade of cliffs to the Colorado River gorge below. The White Rim Trail snakes its way along this interruption in the cliffs, taking you past some of the most breathtaking overlooks and pinnacle formations in Southern Utah.  As Frank Waters said in The Colorado, “Geology here forever dominates life and gives it its ultimate meaning.”

We drove down late in the morning, arriving at the ranger station a little after noon. Because the nature of the plateau means that spaces for camping are limited, you have to have reservations for specific campsites (in busy seasons, especially spring and fall, they fill up and you should make your reservations months in advance). Backcountry camping is not allowed along the White Rim Trail. You may wonder why, at only 100 miles long, you would even need to plan on camping along the White Rim Trail. This is not 100 miles of freeway, this is 100 miles of sand and rock; at times flat; at times steep; at times a series of switchbacks that you wonder if your car can turn through; often right along the cliff edge, the road only wide enough for one car at a time. It is 100 miles of teeth rattling with momentarily smooth spots; smooth enough that when you can speed up to 10 miles an hour you feel a sigh of relief.

After talking with the ranger who had been out along the trail a few days before our arrival, we planned our route, which needed some adjusting because the snow conditions on two of the passes were too treacherous for us to drive them (both north-facing sections which simply don’t get the exposure to allow the snow to melt as quickly as it does on the rest of the trail). We limited our trip to the eastern half of the trail, but had to drive in from an access road near Moab. At the ranger station we picked up the small book “A Naturalist’s Guide to the White Rim Trail,” by Williams and Fagan. I recommend it to anyone. It was only $10.00 and remarkably concise and well-informed, describing the geology and the history of the trail in a candid way, step by step, as you drive it.

The Potash Road from Moab into the White Rim Trail may have an unglamorous name, but with the Colorado River to your left and red rock walls and mountains to your right, the scenery is beautiful. The first 13 miles or so are paved and full of turnouts for primitive rock art, arches, and short trails. If you look at the red rock to your right as you drive you’ll find lots of rock climbing routes, well used enough that you can spot the routes by the chalk left behind by the climbers. The last 11 miles of Potash Road are unpaved and this is where the road climbs up out of the river canyon and makes its way to the White Rim plateau. Going in the winter practically ensures solitude. 

As we drove into the park from Potash Road we passed the only people we ever saw, a group of mountain bikers camping in Shafer Campground, with a truck to carry their gear and water (there is no water available along the trail—so bring plenty). Leaving them and the rest of humanity behind us we began our slow trek along the trail, taking it all in as we went.

Aside from the fact that the height of the cliffs towering behind you and the depth of the cliffs before you are in themselves remarkable and somewhat daunting, the views of the river at every turn are stunning. It would be impossible to catalogue each turn, to remark on each vista which opened before us, but the fun of the road was itself something to take note of: at times smooth through sand, and other times slowly crawling over slabs of broken rock, often skirting the cliff edge, coming around a turn which, looking back at, we quickly realized put the road on a lip of rock which overhangs the undercut cliff below it by several feet—our car was on a seemingly unsupported and impossibly thin shelf of rock! These are the images which make grandparents shudder for the sake of innocent grandchildren, snug in their car seats. But the road is obviously safe enough. It hasn’t fallen apart yet, and it’s still open for travel—so trust in the strength of millennia. It will take more than a weekend for that rock to weather away and weaken.

The Colorado River outlook, about 9 miles along the trail, was fantastic. We drove our car right out to the edge, on a slab of rock only 3 feet from the drop-off. After driving across rolling swaths of rock, the world drops away to this ribbon of green, the river a silty tan with trees flanking both its banks, life in the desert, growing along side its only reliable source of nutrients. The cliffs cut back and forth across from the overlook, emphasizing the time this river has had to cut down through the sandstone, digging in and flowing on.

Less than a half mile past the river overlook is a site that you have to stop at, no matter how much of a hurry you may think that you are in—Musselman Arch. You may think, “Oh, I’ve seen arches before, I mean, there is a national park nearby which is essentially dedicated to them…” but you haven’t likely experienced an arch in the same way that you can experience Musselman Arch. At about 80 feet long, and perhaps 4 feet wide, it is a good sized arch, certainly, but that isn’t the only reason it is worth checking out. This arch is flat across the top, on the same level as the plateau, connecting to the plateau at both ends. The cliff drops away around it, falling into piles of rubble, rocks long and not so long ago which have broken off from the underside of the arch, the field of rubble tumbling down toward the river below you, to the south.

The questions you must ask yourself are, “How many times have I walked across an arch?” and “Can I handle the height?” Though it is illegal to ride a bike across it, you are welcome to walk out onto it, all the way across it even. Just remember that as you walk out to it you hop across a little crack, perhaps 1-2 inches wide, but that crack represents a break from the plateau, you are on a pinnacle now, supporting the span of this sculptural rock.Walking out onto it and across it was exciting, it is a view and a position which you rarely have the opportunity to enjoy, and even with 20 mile an hour winds coming across the plateau on that cold yet clear day, I savored the shift in perspective.  With the world dropping away all around me, it feels as though I might as well be walking out into nothing, this narrow rock spanning the air, already broken off from the concrete world I knew of the plateau, close but separate from that reassuring stability.

As we continued our drive along the trail we stopped at one section where arms of the plateau reach out toward the canyon, breaking up into pillars which step out from the plateau and seem to march away, narrow, more weathered at the bottom, sculpted into broader chunks of less weathered rock at the top.  My husband hopped across gaps of several inches to get to the top of one, three pillars removed from the plateau itself, a hunk of rock impossibly supported by a spindle of sandstone beneath it.  Again, worth it for the sake of the shift in perspective it brings with it.  Not the sort of place we would let our kids go out on without being tied to one of us, and with the wind as steady and strong as it was, we had them watch Dad from the car.

Our last significant stop before arriving at our campsite was a four-mile jaunt down Lathrop Canyon, a trail that makes use of switchbacks and steep climbs to drop down to the Colorado River gorge, winding its way out to the river through dry washes which wouldn’t be very safe in the rain, prone to flash floods, but which are sandy and smooth in the dry seasons. Lathrop Canyon goes right out to the river. There are picnic tables, but no camping is allowed along the river.  It was a great spot to get everyone out of the car to clamber around the riverbank, climb on the red rock, and enjoy the wind through the trees.  After so many views overlooking the river it was refreshing to come down to it, walk through the ribbon of trees at its edge, and enjoy it up close as it hurried past.

When we had played by the river long enough that we were getting hungry we decided to go back along Lathrop Canyon, climb back up to the plateau, and drive the last mile to our campsite, Airport Campground. All in all we hadn’t had far to go that first night, only about 19 miles along the trail, but we took our time, taking more than four hours to make our way there, enjoying it as we went along. 

John Wesley Powell summed up this land pretty nicely in 1871 as he was exploring it, when he said, “Wherever we look there is but a wilderness of rocks, deep gorges where the rivers are lost below cliffs and towers and pinnacles and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds.”  Powell’s vista from 1871 is largely the same remarkable, extraordinary panorama which waits to be seen even now. But perfection has an ephemeral quality, and upon arriving at our campground, it slipped away, on a wind.  Check out the dark side of the story in my next article, “A Dark Wind in Island in the Sky.”

FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR: Our camera.  Since the trip is for the scenery, and it seems silly to list our car as our favorite piece of gear (she knows we love her), then our means of taking that scenery back with us, of capturing those breathtaking views, is the next best thing on the list.