Nathan Gilbert

Bears Ears, May 2017

2 min read 472 words

This National Monument is back in the news; yet again reduced in size. There are lots of people better able to articulate why this is bad and not good than me. I've only been to the monument a single time so far. It's a beautiful place with deep meaning for many people.

The monument was originally proclaimed on December 28, 2016, so our visit was around 5 months after its creation. From what I remember there wasn't really a visitor center or even a permanent sign at the entrance, but more of a cardboard "hey there's a monument here!" type of thing.

We spent several days in the region, visiting Natural Bridges National Monument as well as driving down the Moki Dugway switchbacks to the Valley of the Gods. The switchbacks offer amazing views over the landscape and are fun to drive down. Like many of these switchback roads, they look more intimidating in photos than they look when you're actually driving down (or up) them. That said, be careful, a little mistake goes a long ways here. We stopped quickly at Goosenecks State Park which has an amazing overlook of the San Juan river winding through desert canyons.

Mule Canyon Kiva is another easy stop in this area. You can spend a day or several days in (the once and future) Bears Ears. There's lot of exposed hiking in Bears Ears with little cover from the sun, so plan for that, but you get to see a lot of natural and historical beauty throughout the monument. Driving by the "Ears" is a great memory of this visit. Natural Bridges has one great hike that takes most of the day, you get to see many different arches. The hike is an out-and-back style, we luckily got a ride back to the trailhead from an Australian man which saved us a lot of time (and effort, of which we'd already extended much of that day on the hike.)

Early sunlight on a red sandstone rim dropping to a green river bottom, with flat-topped buttes along the horizon.
The morning sun makes the red rocks pop.
The sun just clearing a low mesa, its glare spread over a river bend in the canyon bottom, seen from a ledge of stepped red sandstone.
Sunrise on the morning we went to Bears Ears.
Flat slabs of red sandstone at the edge of an overlook, with the river and layered mesas beyond them in low morning light.
A dark SUV parked on a dirt pullout below a long red butte, its cliffs lit by early sun under a cloudless sky.
Long shadows of two people stretching across red desert ground toward a wall of eroded, banded cliffs.
A masonry entrance sign reading "Natural Bridges National Monument" with the Park Service arrowhead emblem, junipers behind it beside an empty road.
Always get a picture of the sign. There wasn't even one for Bears Ears at this time.
Stone-and-mortar rooms built under a wide sandstone overhang, the rock arching above them streaked in orange and cream bands like flames.
House on Fire in good light
A canyon slope thick with juniper and pinyon, pale sandstone outcrops breaking through near the rim under a deep blue sky.
Love a Pinyon/Juniper forest.
The far wall of a green canyon, blocky sandstone ledges and shallow alcoves rising above scattered junipers.
It's challenging to find Utah Junipers for sale in any nursery here if you can believe it.
Looking up at a cliff dwelling tucked beneath a curving sandstone roof, small dark doorways set in a row along its masonry wall.
House on Fire on the return in the shade.
A circular stone kiva dug below ground level, its mortared walls and interior benches sheltered by a modern post-and-beam roof.
Mule Canyon Kiva
A brown road sign reading "Moki Dugway", plastered edge to edge with stickers, standing in desert scrub.
The Moki Dugway sign, under its usual coat of stickers.
The gravel shoulder at the top of the cliff, sagebrush and broken sandstone in front of a hazy desert plain far below.
Approaching Moki Dugway.
A dirt road running along the rim with a yellow arrow sign at its edge, the desert basin opening up beyond.
The top of Moki Dugway switchbacks.
A long banded cliff running across the frame, its red and white layers dropping to a brushy talus slope and the flats beyond.
The edge of a high mesa seen from a sandstone ledge, with a pale desert plain stretching to the horizon below the cliffs.
A view from the clifftop down to the road switchbacking through red badlands and running off toward distant buttes.
You don't like the desert if these types of viewpoints don't give you goosebumps.
A narrow road running straight across the red desert floor toward far-off mesas, seen from high above with brush in the foreground.
To the Valley of the Gods.
Looking almost straight down at the dirt switchbacks of the Moki Dugway, with a vehicle small on one of the bends.
A hairpin bend of the gravel road far below, cut into steep red and grey layered rock.
The road threading down a red slope and out across a hazy desert plain, sagebrush in the foreground at the clifftop.
A blocky sandstone promontory at the left, with the desert plain and distant buttes stretching out past it under a clear sky.
A muddy river winding in tight loops through a deep, sharply layered grey canyon cut into an otherwise flat desert.
The San Juan river.
The river doubling back on itself around a long fin of banded rock, hundreds of feet below the canyon rim.
Goosenecks State Park
Two arms of the same river running either side of a narrow rock peninsula, deep in the layered canyon below a flat red overlook.
Two flat-topped red buttes standing side by side above a forested ridge under a clear blue sky.
The Bears Ears
The pair of Bears Ears buttes on the horizon, seen across a foreground of pinyon, juniper, and flowering brush.
Another shot of the Bears Ears.