Author: Steve Corbato

In early September, I had the good fortune to represent Oregonians For Wild Utah at this year’s SUWA Grassroots Leaders Retreat in southeastern Utah. There I had the chance to interact with over forty other activists from around the country, subject matter experts, and SUWA regional organizers. We were based for four days and three nights outside the town of Boulder, midway between the high alpine forests of Boulder Mountain and the depths of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). This trip represented my first return to this uniquely beautiful area in over two decades.

What made the overall experience particularly encouraging for me was the active participation and raw enthusiasm of so many younger activists, including a number drawn from the Latino/a community in Utah. The densely packed program interspersed lectures with time spent in the field, including hikes along the Burr Trail east of Boulder and in the Escalante River Canyons. At a recently restored site previously damaged by vehicle use and carelessly built campfires, we learned about the multiple positive impacts of the volunteer-driven stewardship program from SUWA’s Jeremy Lynch and a BLM wilderness ranger who works closely with these visiting groups.

Back at camp, we learned interactively about the diverse species of bats inhabiting the GSENM from Dr. Jackie Grant, who now leads the Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners and previously was a biology professor at Southern Utah University. Dr. Emmanuel Santa-Martinez of Salt Lake Community College taught us about the breadth and importance of pollinators in the ecosystem. Finally, we heard a truly inspiring presentation by SUWA board member Tara Benally, a member of the Hopi Tribe and a long-time resident of the Navajo Reservation. Tara provided a moving description of her life growing up on Tribal lands, a historical perspective of the many injustices committed against the Tribes over the last two centuries, and her efforts organizing Tribal members on the Colorado Plateau around electoral participation and wilderness.

I came away from this retreat re-energized to work in Oregon to help protect the wild lands of southern Utah and the rest of the Colorado Plateau. In particular, I hope to return to this area next summer on a stewardship trip and to get more first-hand experience with this beautiful and in Tara’s words, “time immemorial” landscape. I am grateful to SUWA and in particular, to our West Coast organizer Jenny Holmes for this opportunity

Steve Corbató, Oregonians For Wild Utah – December 1, 2024

By Phil Bard, OFWU steering group member (October 19, 2024)

All photos © by Phil Bard Photography 2024.

Two years after moving west from the East Coast in 1975, I took my first trip to the Colorado Plateau. It was a life altering visit, I came home energized by the complexity of the landscape and the seemingly endless possibilities it held for exploring the plateau’s phenomenal geology. Although I was only an amateur photographer, I dragged a camera everywhere. Now, after retiring from a career as a commercial shooter, I’m still hauling my gear along every time my partner Alice and I head to the redrock, still making new discoveries in this unique part of the world.

Hiking Coyote Gulch in Escalante in 1981 using “state of the art” backpacking gear

For the last several years we’ve taken off for a month in spring and also in the fall, staying in the Four Corners area and spending as much time as possible in both familiar and never before visited wild places. Though there are many unprotected and partially protected areas in this region, some of the ones that are safely locked away from commercial exploitation, that is, the National Parks, still call us back despite the fact they are often crowded. They are magnetic to a camera lens but its a bit harder to find a new image there compared to in less traveled places. I try nonetheless. We manage to find trails with fewer visitors, the Needles District in Canyonlands being one of our favs. There are few amenities there and many of the trails are long, strenuous and not particularly suitable for the light hiker.

On the Peekaboo Trail, Canyonlands

Sandstone towers and hoodoos above Big Spring Canyon, Canyonlands

Our go-to is the hike to Chesler Park. Once out there its usual to see only a handful of others, and the huge ring of Cedar Mesa Sandstone pillars is majestic as it dominates the grassy meadow that lies within.

Towers and Cirrus formation, Chesler Park, Canyonlands

This year we managed to spend a couple days in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, somewhere I’ve wanted to go for years. The 45,000 acre area is co-managed by the BLM and the Navaho Nation (most is public land, except for a few Navaho-owned parcels). The most visited and accessible portion is at the western boundary, 40 miles south of Farmington, New Mexico and down a three-mile gravel road from main highway. A one-mile hike up the broad wash takes you into a land of carved valleys populated by thousands of hoodoos, which parade merrily about everywhere you look. Its one of the most photogenic places I’ve ever been to, and there are usually very few other visitors so you feel like you have it all to yourself.

Bisti Badlands

Bisti Hoodoos

Highlights include petrified logs, shale and sandstone towers and a group of weird, rounded hoodoos called the Alien Egg Hatchery. My preferred areas, however, are amongst the surreal mud flows and scattered boulders that present endless possibilities for photographic abstracts.

Hardened mud and boulder field

We are back home in Portland now, but sad to be away from the plateau. Our photos will have to get us through the winter until the next time we point the car towards the southwest.

By Gloria Gardiner, OFWU Steering Committee (all photos by the author)

For many years, I have hiked and photographed public lands in Utah and participated in land stewardship projects in the Pacific Northwest. On Saturday and Sunday, May 4-5 of this year, I participated in a SUWA stewardship weekend in southeastern Utah.

Of the nine volunteers, most were from Utah. One was from the Denver area, and I came from Portland. Our project leader was from SUWA, and a BLM backcountry ranger selected the projects and worked with us all weekend. The overall objectives were (a) to delineate the boundaries of BLM’s Coal Canyon Wilderness Study Area (WSA), and (b) to discourage illegal motor vehicle use inside the WSA. The work sites were about an hour east of Moab, Utah, and north of Interstate 70 in the Book Cliffs, the longest continuous rock escarpment in the world.

We began work on Saturday at a particular wash that comes out of a canyon in the WSA. It channels floodwaters, but it also attracts illegal off-highway vehicles (OHV) to travel into the WSA. On Saturday, with the BLM ranger’s direction, assistance, tools, and materials, we built a flood fence across the wash. This simple fence used wood posts, a steel cable connecting the posts, and wooden 2×4’s hanging from the cable but not touching the ground. The fence blocks most vehicular access while allowing flood waters to go down the wash. We finished this project in one day.

The ranger went back to Moab, and the rest of us set up a primitive camp for the night. I lay in my tent on my ancient Therma-Rest inflatable pad, covered by my down sleeping bag, and looked up at the cottonwood trees and desert sky. It was completely quiet. Our SUWA project leader provided dinner on Saturday night and coffee the next morning.

It took only part of Sunday to complete the other projects. First, we put wooden legs on a metal BLM sign and erected it at the WSA boundary.

Next, we disguised evidence of illegal motor vehicle usage in several places. We used boulders, dead juniper limbs, and duff from under living juniper trees. We shoveled and raked dirt to remove tire tracks.

Then we went our separate ways.

I stayed three more days in Moab to hike the East Rim and West Rim loop in Dead Horse Point State Park and the Murphy Trail in Canyonlands National Park’s Island in the Sky unit. I also drove the scenic La Sal Mountain Loop Road. Driving south of Moab in a counter-clockwise direction, the road descends from the snow-capped La Sal Mountains into Castle Valley, with red rock formations that rival those in Arches National Park. A left turn onto Utah Route 128 follows the Colorado River canyon west back to Moab. Here are a few of my photographs.

Dead Horse Point State Park

Island in the Sky District, Canyonlands National Park

La Sal Mountains

Route 128, Colorado River

Castle Valley

Thanks to all who joined us on May 22 for an informative webinar discussing Bears Ears National Monument with Judi Brawer and Dr. Lauren Henson. Their combined slide deck is posted here.

If you missed the webinar or just would like to view it again, our friends at SUWA have made the video recording available here.

As a reminder, the Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comment on its draft Resource Management Plan for Bears Ears through June 11. Public comments can be submitted via this web site (choose Participate Now on the left taskbar).

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Please hold the time at 6:00 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, May 22, for a special webinar to learn more about the newly restored Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah and the status of the Bureau of Land Management’s draft resource management plan for these wild and sacred lands.

Wildlands attorney Judi Brawer of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and Tribal ecologist Lauren Henson will join us to provide an in-depth overview of the planning process and the opportunity – now open through June 11 – for the public to provide public comment on this draft plan to the BLM. 

Under the Presidential proclamation restoring Bears Ears, five regional Tribes – the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni – play a special role in the management of the monument. During this webinar, we will learn more about the perspectives of the Bears Ears Commission from Dr. Lauren Henson.

Lauren leads the Bears Ears Cultural Resources Subcommittee for Land Management and facilitates communication among Tribal departments, Traditional Practitioners, Cultural Advisors, and Leadership within and between Tribes involved in the co-management of Bears Ears National Monument. Lauren also works to provide opportunities for communities to re-connect with the land and organizes conservation programs for Elders and Youth at Bears Ears. As a wildlife biologist with experience weaving western science and Indigenous knowledge to inform land stewardship, Lauren is committed to collaborative management that recognizes, respects, and advances Traditional knowledge.

Please join us Wednesday, May 22 for an interesting and timely discussion. Advance registration is requested.

This event is co-sponsored by Oregonians for Wild Utah and Washington Friends of Wild Utah.

Wednesday, May 22, 2024, 6:00 p.m. PDT

Click here to register for this Zoom webinar

[This post has been updated to reflect Dr. Lauren Henson’s participation in the webinar.]

Photography credits (3): Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior (public domain images)

By Theo Coxe of Eugene, Oregon

My first experience with Southern Utah began in 1984 as I bicycled over Soldier Summit in a July snowstorm, en route from Seattle to Santa Fe. A day later, I pedaled up to the Arches Campground in 100 degree heat, where I spent the day reading Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang in the shade of a Juniper tree. I fell in love with the vastness of the skies, the color of the rocks and even the stifling heat.

 Five years later, when the school where I worked in Seattle expanded its outdoor education program, I helped develop and run a program that took middle school children to Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Canyonlands National Parks, and to other public lands and State Parks. We studied geology, climate and weather, ancient cultures, current issues, water use, leave no trace wilderness travel, leadership skills and geology among other subjects, in the richest classroom in the world.

 Twenty-three times between 1989 and my retirement in 2017, I was able to experience the wonder of Weeping Rock through new eyes with yet another group of students, and each year, they amazed me with their insight, their artwork, the essays and poetry they wrote, their ability to adjust to life where we had to be mindful of the other beings who relied on the spring from which we drew our water.

 Some 250 students took part in our Southwest program and many, citing their experiences in Utah, have gone into outdoor leadership, wilderness medicine, environmental sciences and other educational fields. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to use my position as an educator to help students find ways to make the world a better place.

 I am the teacher of athletes,

 He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own, proves the width of my own,

 He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

                     -Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

By Annette Rose of Eugene, Oregon

I was in my 50’s when I first stepped into a canoe.  I figured it was something I could do out in Nature and still sit down.  Through the University of Utah I enrolled in a three-day canoe trip on Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone.  My next class outing went across Lake Powell to Moki Canyon.  What really got me hooked on canoeing was a four-day excursion in Utah’s Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River.  The 120-mile stretch of the Green River from the Utah town of the same name wanders through Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons to the confluence with the Colorado.  It is one of the premier flat-water stretches of river in the United States, accessible to novice and expert alike — to solo travelers as well as families.  Canoeists need not rough it.  A good deal more gear will fit in a canoe than a backpack; comfort items like tables, chairs, roomy tents;  a cooler for fresh food and drink; as much water as needed for 3-8 days or so. 

Hiking up Labyrinth’s side canyons you might encounter signs of ancient cultures, such as granaries and petroglyphs.  Or you might see rock inscriptions and art by early trappers and river explorers; and sadly, some 20^th century vandalism.  Along some of the bends in the river are old mining roads, left over from the days of uranium mining, some of which travel right beside the river bank.  These dirt roads and trails were later appropriated by jeeps and ORVs [Off-Road Vehicles] for recreation, a practice which has accelerated.  Off-road use scars the landscape, chokes the air with dust; disturbs sacred cultural sites, delicate desert soil, riparian vegetation, wildlife, and the quiet and solitude of the canyon.

Under the Bureau of Land Management’s lackluster management of the Labyrinth area, ORVs were allowed to travel nearly anywhere.  That is, until recently.  Pressured by SUWA, other environmental groups, and indigenous peoples, the BLM’s new Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges travel management plan now prohibits motorized vehicles in the side canyons and along the river.  It enables river travel in a natural setting, without dust and the noise of motorized vehicles reverberating off the canyon walls.  This BLM map shows the newly closed trails in red.

Now you can travel down the river as Nature intended.  The river begins among low sandy hills, gradually cuts deeper into the rock until you find yourself in a hallway of red sandstone, capped by blue sky, fringed with green foliage, meandering across the Colorado plateau.  The canyon is a place of profound solitude and peace.  Proceeding down river, the sounds of geese, herons and ravens echo off the rock walls.  Imagine, after a challenging day on the river struggling against brisk upstream winds you’ve established the perfect campsite.  Tent erected, dinner over, sitting in a comfortable chair, you contemplate the river.  Perhaps a deer walks down to the river to drink, or a pair of river otters swims up to a nearby bank.  As the sun sets, the canyon walls begin to glow golden orange, the sky shades  to purple, and at night the ink-black heavens glitter with infinite stars.

Slickrock and Dark Skies: Two Views of Utah Wilderness

Please join us for a free webinar in early December to explore the unique aspects of Utah wilderness with experts Steve Hinch and Lisa Stoner. This event is co-sponsored by Oregonians for Wild Utah and Washington Friends of Wild Utah with support from SUWA.

Tuesday, December 5, 2023, 7:00–8:00 p.m. PST (advance Zoom registration required)

Steve Hinch, a recognized photographer and author on wilderness topics, has explored and recorded the lands of the American Southwest, including southern Utah, for forty years. His most recent, award-winning book is The Slickrock Desert: Journeys of Discovery in an Endangered American Wilderness, Steve considered his frequent expeditions into the wilderness as a necessary counterpoint to his earlier life as a senior executive in Silicon Valley.

Lisa Stoner serves as the coordinator for the Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range Dark Sky Cooperatives at Utah State University. Lisa focuses on outreach, educational programs, partnerships, and technical support to elevate the importance of sustaining naturally dark skies across the Western United States. She received her master’s degree in range ecology from USU.

Please join us on Tuesday, December 5, to delve into these topics around Utah wilderness. You can register in advance via this Zoom page.

Photo credits: Stephen W. Hinch (image of Mesa Arch at top), Nicki Hinch (photo of Steve in Zion NP), and David Wells (night sky image in Arches NP).

By Gloria Gardiner, Steering Committee member

Growing up in Philadelphia, “nature” was what I saw during my father’s annual vacation from work, when we took the station wagon to visit my favorite aunt and uncle in Vermont. At that time, Vermont had, or was rumored to have, more cows than people. Highlights of our road trips were the forested Green Mountains, the winding, two-lane roads, the wooden covered bridges, the classic red barns, the 19^th century grain mills, the refrigerators and stoves on the front porches of rural houses and the rusted cars and pick-ups in the back, the grazing Holstein dairy cows, swimming in Lake Champlain, and the University of Vermont Morgan Horse farm.

I probably became aware of the American Southwest as a child by watching black and white Westerns on TV. My first live view was the summer after my freshman year of college, when my then-boyfriend and I drove across the country and visited my brother, who was in school in Berkeley. The route we took didn’t include Utah’s Red Rock Country, unknown to me at the time. Mile after mile of driving on an arrow-straight highway, surrounded by sand with almost no vegetation, made me drowsy. The car ran off the highway into a ditch in Nevada. A friendly, paunchy Sheriff’s Deputy with a bottle of whiskey in the glove box took us to the nearest town of Battle Mountain. We spent a week there waiting for parts for a Datsun. This was 1971.

In the 1990s, a long-time friend and I began exploring national parks in Utah during our vacations from work. We car camped, hiked, and photographed. We were hooked. Over the years, we visited national parks and monuments, BLM lands, and state parks in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Nevada, and California. Southern Utah was our favorite place. Somewhere along the way, I found SUWA and became a member.

The American West is spectacularly beautiful, and I love much of it, but there is something special about southern Utah. That’s why, after he received a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer, my friend and I drove to Moab for the last time to hike and photograph in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and BLM lands on the Colorado River. Like Oregon and Washington’s Columbia River Gorge, which was protected from rampant urban and commercial development by the 1986 National Scenic Area Act, Utah’s Red Rock Country must be protected and preserved for all of us and for the future by Congressional passage of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.

If you missed the very illuminating webinar last month by Jack Stauss of the Glen Canyon Institute or if you just want to watch it again, a recording is now available here.

(If you’re viewing this on our home page, you’ll need to click through to the blog post to access the video link)

A poster from our co-chair Kelsey Kagan…