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Beef Basin and the Needles District of Canyonlands
Our Jeep Cherokee KL Conquered Canyonlands
Deep within the "Needles District" of Canyonlands National Park are several 4x4 trails. The Elephant Hill trail is considered by many to be fairly challenging, particularly to stock 4x4's. Many off-road trail guides written about the area rate this particular trail as one of the most difficult in the area.
We entered Canyonlands National Park from the south. We passed through Beef Basin and Ruin Park. The areas are rich with ancient Ancestral Puebloan artifacts and ruins. A neighbor of ours who is original from the area claims that Beef Basin holds on the most heavy numbered concentrations of ruins in anywhere in the USA. We visited several sites I had never seen before, after getting tips and leads from the guy. We visited ruins in Beef Basin Wash, Ruin Canyon, Ruin Park, and elsewhere.
Just before crossing the southern boundary of Canyonlands NP, the route takes you through some particularly challenging 4x4 roads, including a descent at Bobby's Hole and a climb up SOB Hill. This hill was very eroded. traction was difficult climbing up the angles ascent. We saw why it was so named. There is a sharp 90 degree turn while climbing up at about a 45 degree slope with not much room to negotiate. I made several attempts at the turn, but could not get enough traction. I eventually had to pull forward and back up the last part.
While camped at the backcountry campground called Devil's Kitchen, which is only accessible via foot, mtn bike or 4x4. As we pulled into the campground, several other campers all came out to the road to greet us. All other campers had driven Wranglers in. We came in a Jeep Cherokee KL. If ever there was a picture perfect example of the description, "jaws dropped" it would have been the case. One comment we heard was "someone brought a 'station wagon' over Elephant Hill!!"
While camped at Devil's kitchen, my wife and I hiked around to several beautiful places while were in the area. Some of them were Chesler Park, the Pinnacles, the Joint Trail, and into Elephant Canyon. We did not make it to Druid Arch.
On our day of departure from the area, we passed by a few more obstacles on the trail. They were all fairly amazing. The most challenging spot of all was an unnamed feature located between an obstacle called "The Silver Stairs" and "Elephant Hill" itself. It is located about a 1000 yards from Elephant Hill on the exit climb up and over to get to the parking lot. This particular obstacle, not named, has about a 4 foot high angled ledge that if you were to drop off of it......well, they'd be a problem. The ledge angled in such a way as to make the road narrower and narrower until in connected to a high sandstone wall on the right shoulder of the road. Fortunately the KL was itself narrow enough to squeeze against that right wall and dropped down the ledge at a place where it was only about 24 inches high. My wife got a picture of the spot after I came off of the ledge and just down a corner... I did not want to go back up and try it again for a better picture http://jeepcherokeeclub.com/images/smilies/smile.gif Oh well. It's unnamed, but I have a few things I could call it...
Here are some pics
GoPro Video of the Needles District Canyonlands
For those interested, I made a very amatureish video of two main challenges on the loop route in Canyonlands National Park between Beef Basin and Elephant Hill. The video is mainly of our descent of the trail down into Bobby's Hole and of our ascent up Elephant Hill in exiting the trail.
It was my first attempt at using the GoPro and the resulting video shows it.
Anyway, I share it just to give anyone interested some idea of what the current state of the trail descending Bobby's Hole looks like in May 2015, and what the trail ascending up Elephant Hill looks like as well.
Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfpp...ature=youtu.be
