A day on the Uncompahgre Plateau

[IntrepidXJ]

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Today Amanda and I went up on the Uncompahgre Plateau to do a little exploring. Last year I had driven across the plateau on it's main road (Divide Road) on my expedition across Colorado and Utah, so this time we started checking out some of the lesser travelled 4WD roads on the northeast corner of the plateau.

We accessed the plateau through Jacks Canyon on Divide Road, but quickly turned off the main road and headed towards Dominguez Canyon. We skirted around the canyon since it's a wilderness area and ended up on top of Dominguez Ridge. We were on some two tracks that didn't seem to be well travelled.....my favorite kind!





There were a number of wildflowers all over Dominguez Ridge



From Dominguez Ridge we crossed over onto Brushy Ridge.

View towards Brush Mountain



Brushy Ridge then led us down into Palmer Gulch





...and Palmer Gulch brought us down into Escalante Canyon.

Escalante Creek



On our way down Escalante Canyon we came across a couple of historic cabins. The first one belonged to Captain Henry Smith and was built in 1907. This cabin was built against a large slab of sandstone and his bed area inside the cabin was carved out of that rock.

The cabin built up against the large rock



Bed area carved out of the rock



A little further down the road we came across the Walker Cabin which was built in 1911.



After visiting the cabins we finally made our way back to US 50. We stopped in Delta for a late lunch and then headed back to Grand Junction in the 99 degree heat.