January Highway 89 Trip

[Dayhiker]

Nice shots! Funny I wouldn't have thought there would have been that many people at the wave the sameday, unplanned together that are all on this site. I might have said more then just a HI as we walked by you and your dogs :)

I have a tendency to be a bit anti-social around people when I don't know how they feel about dogs. You were sitting up above when my dogs and I walked into the Wave and I was more concerned that they/we would interfere with what you were doing and I didn't want to disturb you. I knew someone was out there from the forums because they listed their license plate here and you signed the registry just before I did.

[Dayhiker]

The first two times I was at Bisti I only saw hoodoos that were no more than a foot or two tall. When I went two years ago, I went much further into the badlands and saw hoodoos on the order of ten feet and many very long petrified logs. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me on that trip. Now that I know where the Rimrocks are, I will definitely hit them up the next time through Page. Did you check out Angel Peak badlands on your trip to DeNaZin? They are easily the tallest badlands I have seen anywhere.

I only stopped at the picnic tables at Angel Peak on a hot June day in 2007 but since I didn't have a map of the area and didn't see any trails down I just took a few photographs from the rim. At Bisti I am not sure how far back I went. I seem to remember 6 miles round trip. Same at DeNaZin and I visited both on the same day. Now I have to digging through the archives for photos to refresh my memory.

Have you been to the Wahweap Hoodoos near Big Water? It's on the way to Rim Rock from Page. Tanya has a trail description http://www.zionnational-park.com/wahweap-hoodoos.htm. I've been there twice from the North and never from the way she describes. But it is worth the hike and since it faces roughly East it is a good early morning hike. Also Stud Horse Point is in that area but with different type of rock.

[Cosmic Kid]

There are no hiking trails down into the Angel Peak badlands...you have to drive 3 miles along the rim and then the road descends down to the floor of the badlands. The navajos have really started to irrigate a lot of that area for farming, especially around Angel peak, and it is beginning to lose some of it's wildness. That entire San Juan Basin area is just loaded with badlands, and believe it or not, it is the (south)eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau. No I haven't been to the Wahweap site. I'd never heard of it until I saw photos on Bogley two days ago, but it is now on my list. Thanks for the link to Tanya's site--she has provided really good directions--I hate when I'm somewhere and have to spend a lot of time just to find my way around.

Don't know if you have ever heard of tent rocks--they are kinda like cousins to hoodoos. I have never seen them in Utah--in fact, a local Los Alamos hiking guidebook claims that the Pajarito Plateau (where Los Alamos is) is one of only three places in the world that has them--and they are in a lot of canyons here. There is a BLM national monument called Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks a little south of Santa Fe. If you ever make it back here it's worth hitting up and you can see the entire place in about 90 minutes--very photogenic place. It even has a very short narrows section as shown below.

The narrows



and some Tent Rocks

[Dayhiker]

I was at Tent Rocks back in the 90's just after it became a National Monument (pre digital cameras). It hasn't been high on my list to revisit because no dogs allowed and finding a place in Santa Fe to day board dog has been a pain the last couple of time. I also spent 4 days one time based out of Los Alamos exploring Bandelier NM, Jemez and the Valles Caldera. I have been back through there a couple of time since then including one time where the fire danger was so bad they closed all the pullouts and baned smoking in the area. And up until the big fire in 2000 there was a vets office in White Rock that I would board dogs at. I think the last time I was through there was 2005 going from Chaco to Santa Fe with a stop at Bandelier. Central Ave Grill still there? Use to be the best place to eat in town when I stayed there.