Wilderness

For the last 2 weeks I’ve made it out to Barrel Roll, a popular mountain biking and hiking trail in the Santa Clara Desert Reserve. The views are great, the rolling terrain is studded with barrel cactuses , the wildflowers are in bloom, the prickly pears are on the verge of flowering, and all of the scrub is fresh with verdant spring foliage.

The most exciting thing about each ride, however, is that each has yielded a venomous reptile. Last week it was a thick, angry rattlesnake, and this week it was a gila monster. I stopped for a father and son duo of riders coming down the opposite direction on the trail, and as we passed each other, the father said, “I just saw a really big lizard, and it’s in that crevice now.” I peered in there, and found the beady lizard in its redoubt.

Besides exotic venomous reptiles and the desert foliage, this trail also offers sweeping views of the area’s rugged terrain, a tableau in vivid reds, calming tan, and deep blue.

Over the next few weeks the prickly pears will be in full bloom, and the desert tortoises should be out. It’s a great time to go.

Barrel Roll Trail, along with several other great routes for cyclists and desert lovers, takes off from the Cove Wash Trailhead in the Santa Clara Desert Reserve. To get there, take the intersection of Bluff and Sunset in Saint George, follow it for about 6 miles to a spot just before the Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara. To the west there’s a small bridge over the Santa Clara River. Take this bridge and follow the dirt road for a couple of rough miles to the trailhead.

I’m working on the next hiking guide with David Day, and adding information on Negro Bill Canyon, which is still a Wilderness Study Area, and the object of some controversy in 1979, as local Burghers bulldozed the newly-erected BLM barricade and started the short-lived “Sagebrush Rebellion.” Soon after, a federal court order put a stop to the local rebellion, and hikers have enjoyed this riparian redoubt and its stunning Morning Glory Natural Bridge for the last 3 decades. Its year-round stream is a tributary of the Colorado.

Why wasn’t this WSA added to last year’s Omnibus Public Lands Act? It would be nice to have a clear explanation. Anyway, the BLM has a nice graphic on the WSAs around Moab, so here it is. The 5 areas north of I-70 are in the Book Cliffs.

In the song “Nothing but Flowers” The Talking heads sing about a world that goes back to nature:

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers

In the United States, we haven’t seen civilization go back to its pristine state, but there has been a steady effort for the last 4-plus decades to lock down the wild areas we still have. Wilderness became official with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as  ”an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Some general rules follow:

1. In general, the area looks to be under the control of nature, with little or no human imprint
2. Opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation
3. At least 5,000 acres of wild land
4. Ecological, geological or other features of scientific, education, scenic or historical value

The Act made provisions for a system of Wilderness Areas, and over the years many of these areas have been added to. These areas are great for hikers and especially for backpackers who, like Greta Garbo, “vundto be alooone,” and want to make sure that the areas they love stay untrammeled.

In early 2009, Utah’s wilderness got a huge boost when President Obama signed a package of public lands bills that added about 125,00 acres of wilderness to Utah in 15 different areas (another 125,000 were designated, but they were already part of Zion National Park, so that doesn’t really count). Most of these new areas are in southwest Utah, around Zion National Park and the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. Senator Bennet and Congressman Matheson both supported the bill.

Zion National Park has been set aside as a national monument since the 1920s, but in 2009 it was also designated as a Wilderness Area, comprising 124,406 acres. Wilderness was also extended around the edges of the park with the following 9 Wilderness Areas (map), all managed by the BLM:

• Beartrap Canyon , just 40 acres on the east Kolob section of the park
• Laverkin Creek, 445 acres on the northeast of Kolob
• Taylor Creek, a 32-acre speck just to the west of Laverkin Creek Wilderness
• Red Butte, 1,537 acres south of the Kolob area
• Blackridge, 13,015 acres to the southwest of Kolob
• Canaan Mountain, 44,531 acres to the south of the park
• Deep Creek North 3,284 acres north of Deep Creek
• Deep Creek, 4,262 acres north of the Park’s main area
• Goose Creek, a 98-acre spot just north of the park and west of Deep Creek.

The Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, a 62,000-acre triangle north of Saint George, and established in 1996, added the following 3 new wilderness areas, also managed by the BLM:

• Cottonwood Canyon, 11,712 acres on the east of the Reserve, BLM
• Cottonwood Forest, 2,624 acres at the foot of the Pine Valley Mountains, and northeast of Cottonwood Canyon. Forest Service
• Red Mountain Wilderness, 18,729 acres on the west side of the Reserve, and adjacent to Snow Canyon  State Park, covering the top and sides of the Red Mountain mesa

In southwest Utah, in the hills north of Beaver Dam Wash and west of Enterprise, there are three new areas adjacent to each other, and all managed by the BLM:

• Doc’s Pass, 17,294 acres
• Slaughter Creek, 3,901 acres
• Cougar Canyon 10,409 acres

Utah already had 15 wilderness areas, which have been added or extended for the past 45 years:

• Beaver Dam Mountains
• Black Ridge Canyons
• Box-Death Hollow
• Cedar Mountain
• Deseret Peak
• High Uintas (with 456,705 acres, the largest by far in the state)
• Lone Peak
• Mount Naomi
• Mount Nebo
• Mount Olympus
• Mount Timpanogos
• Paria Canyon
• Pine Valley Mountains
• Twin Peaks
• Wellsville Mountains

There’s one more political issue to watch here: Utah’s Red Rock Wilderness Act proposes 9.4 million acres as wilderness. As of late 2009 Representative Maurice Hinchey  (D-NY) sent a letter to the Department of the Interior, signed by 88 other members of Congress. Utah’s congressmen do not support this bill, and have an alternate proposal with about 1.6 million acres.