We had spent a beautiful day in Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park.  Though cold, the weather was clear, with a stiff wind, and we were graced with stunning views of canyons, amazing rock formations, the river, and sky. We took a leisurely 4 hours to drive about 19 miles along the White Rim Trail, stopping frequently along the way to investigate points of interest before arriving at our designated campsite, Airport Campground, Site A. Situated on a section of the trail where the plateau is several hundred yards wide, from cliffs above you to cliff drop-off, it is a wide swath of open space. There are certainly no trees, in fact there is little vegetation at all, just sand, crypto-biotic soil (don’t break the crust!), and an expanse of red rock and sky.  The cliffs tower behind you, but Site A is still a few hundred yards from their base, not tucked in against them by any means. The mostly flat plateau spreads out before you, stretching to the cliff edge before falling to piles of broken rock, tumbling toward the Colorado River. As we pulled into our campsite we decided, hungry as we were, to set up the tent first, while we still had a bit of failing light to see by. 

We had our single-wall Black Diamond Guiding Light tent with us; light enough to take backpacking (5 lbs.) when carrying all the gear for our family of six, and big enough for all six of us to sleep in (50 sq. ft.); a lovely, wonderful, expensive tent ($600+).  This wasn’t our first time along the White Rim Trail, knowing that the ground is next to impossible to drive a stake into (hard sand and rock) we came prepared with 10-inch steel stakes and a small sledgehammer to drive them into the ground with. We figured it was better to have them hold and not be able to get them back out, then not get them into the ground in the first place. As my husband was setting up the tent the wind that had been strong all day became even stronger. From conversations with the rangers the next day the winds were sustained at 35-40 mph.

Our three oldest children kept themselves busy playing with rocks (how simple it all can be, sometimes) while our baby played in the tent as my husband took the sledgehammer and drove stakes into the ground at all four corners of the tent, then found four basketball-sized rocks which he placed at each corner, respectively, as even more support in keeping the stakes securely placed. After a long day in the car our baby decided that she just wouldn’t be happy unless I was holding her, but since I needed to help my husband guy out the tent (more rope, more stakes, more security and strength) I decided to put her back in the car, letting her play in the back of our 4-Runner with some toys as we finished getting the tent set up. I put our third child in the car too, to keep her company and keep him out of the way of all the rope. Our two oldest continued to play around the campsite, full of imaginary games that adults can no longer fathom.

Less than ten minutes after we’d put our two youngest in the car, as my husband and I were just going to guy out the tent, having gotten all the rope and stakes ready, a huge gust of wind came up, knocked me down (and our two oldest kids), rolled the rocks, ripped the stakes out of the ground, threw our tent 50 feet up in the air, and sent it sailing for the cliff before we could even blink. It never even touched the ground, just a faint yellow against an almost black sky. We threw the rest of the gear and the other two kids in the car and drove for the cliff edge, hoping…I don’t know what.

We inched the car to within a few feet of the cliff edge in the suddenly very dark night, it was about 7:00 pm.  We took our flashlights and shone them over the cliff edge into the gorge below, searching for a brilliant glimmer of reflective tape from the tent. All our light fell into darkness, disappeared into a crumble of giant boulders that had tumbled into the river gorge. Our tent never rolled, it never even touched the ground, it was ripped from its security and sailed away on a wind that tore through Airport campground with the strength of a plane, sent it soaring into a black night, over the cliff and likely over the Colorado before we even had a chance. Talking with the rangers the next day we learned that although they didn’t have a wind gauge to certify the strength of the wind that night, from their experience, some of the gusts were 70+ mph, strong enough to take our tent away.

With the kids in their car seats my husband and I stood on the edge of the cliff, backlit by the headlights of our car, processing what had just happened, mourning it in a way.  We learned that the first thought both of us had had was, “We can’t return THAT to REI” (they have a great return policy, but you do need the actual item); just one of those weird things you think when you’re in shock. Of course, more frightening, was the second thought we’d had, “Our baby’s nothing-weight wouldn’t have stopped that tent,” followed quickly by a sense of a true tragedy narrowly averted, so glad that we had put her back in the car. With the tent gone, on the dark cliff edge, it felt like all our plans for future trips, for the experiences which stand out to us as the moments which make our lives full and joyful had just been blown away with that tent.

After more than half an hour of scanning for it among the boulders below the cliff we got back in the car, weighing the choice of sleeping in the car that night or driving out in the dark. We’ve all slept out under the stars at night but with no shelter from the driving wind on this desolate section of the trail, we finally decided to just head home. We had no way to camp that night, no way to camp the second night of our planned trip, and no chance of finding the tent the next day, it was already beyond our reach and the winds weren’t letting up yet, so it would just keep on traveling.

Then past 7:30 we finally fed the kids (luckily, having planned on car camping for three days, we had tons of food with us, easy to break out of the cooler and pass back to be eaten in the car as we drove).  My husband took the wheel, backed up away from the cliff edge, and pointed our car back the way we had come not long before, when the sun was still shining and the hope of good adventures still ahead.

If you’ve read the first article on this trip then you know that the trail is not smooth and easy, but it is instead rough, at times quite steep, often running narrowly along the very edge of the cliff. The prospect of driving it in the dark, in a wind storm, was not a pleasant one, but seemed the best of two bad options.  We drove slowly, carefully, more slowly than we had on the way in, but with no stopping for sightseeing—if for no other reason than the fact that the night was dark and deep and we couldn’t see anything anyway. Our once panoramic views were limited, narrowed to the scope of our high-beams. We drove along, listening to the crunch of our tires over rock, climbing to the top of a slope and not being able to see the decline on the other side, headlights pointing to the sky still, coming around a corner and suddenly seeing nothing, as the light fell over the cliff edge into empty space, no rock to reflect the light back to us, an expanse of darkness, with nothing to illuminate, the road curving tightly to the side and our headlights not curving with it yet.  From time to time we lost the road, progressing slowly, trying to decide where the track should be, finding ourselves 50 feet too far to one side or the other, having to back-track to get back where we should be.

By the time we finally got back to the paved section of Potash Road, into Moab, more than 2 hours later (to go less than 30 miles total), it seemed that the soft, steady hum of tire over pavement had rarely sounded so good.  With 3.5 hours left of driving to get back home we just went straight on, kids slowly falling asleep, one by one, in the dark car.  We pulled up to our house at 1:00 am, carried little sleeping bodies up to bed, and went to bed ourselves.

 This is not the first time an adventure has gone awry, but it had such a sense of monumentality to us, we had looked forward to it for almost a month, planned, and prepared, and enjoyed that first day so fully.  It was such a sudden, irredeemable turn of events.  We echoed Captain John Macomb’s comment about the area, from 1860, “I cannot conceive of a more worthless and impractable region than the one we now found ourselves in” (sic). But that frustration is part of loss, we know that we’ll look back on this trip, later, and appreciate what was great about it, be glad that the tragedy was only in time and money (to buy a new tent) and not in life. We’re already planning our next two weekend camping adventures, and can’t wait for our replacement Guiding Light to arrive in a few days. We’ll be coming back to the White Rim Trail another time.

Two final thoughts: if you are in hurricane force winds either sleep in the car, leaving the tent packed away, or tie it to your car; and if you’re traveling through southern Utah and see a Guiding Light roll by, grab it and send me an email.

FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR

In Memoriam: To a much loved Black Diamond tent, our Guiding Light, in more ways than one. Your single-wall and ultralight floor were all we needed to sleep safe and sound; you kept us dry and gave us the space we needed. We will always remember the way your pretty yellow walls filtered the light, surrounding us in a cheerful glow, like a sweet embrace. Travel onward, into adventures where we cannot follow.