On The Burr Trail

Thursday 4th October
Next day we took the drive to the Waterpocket Fold, Sally was still unwell, but determined that having come this far we would do it! The Burr Trail is fortunately paved for about 30 miles, and we were camped 5 miles along it. It then turns to dirt road and then has a set of steep switchbacks to tak us down into the Waterpocket Fold. The Burr Trail then goes South along the fold, eventually getting to Bull Frog, a marina and Ferry on Lake Powell.
Our aim was only to go to the bottom of the Waterpocket Fold. We drove slowly along the Burr Trail, after about 5 miles is descended into a long, deep, narrow ravine, called Narrow Canyon. The layers of red sandstone towered on either side of us, the canyon had a small stream running through it, with huge boulders strewn across the floor. This canyon was about 6 miles long, we came out the other end to find that the entrance to the canyon at this end was part of a plateau, about 600 feet above the valley floor below, straight down. Fortunately there was a reasonable road to take us onward. We then travelled about 10 miles across scrubby high desert, until we hit the end of the paved road. Now we were travelling on dirt road and approaching more rocks, like huge jagged teeth across the landscape. The road twisted carefully between cliffs and there below us was the Waterpocket Fold, a single valley 60 miles long, with steep cliffs either side and something under a mile wide. The whole landscape had been formed when the land to the East had been forced up several thousand feet by a fault deep underground, the surface rocks were bent upwards, so that the rock strata was left at an angel of about 60 degrees Later differential erosion left the harder rocks standing out and the softer rock became valleys, the waterpocket fold valley is the softer bit. From the top of the fold the view was amazing; you could see right across to the Henry Mountains, it was wonderful.

The only way to access the valley floor is down the mile long switchback of the Burr Trail, so having reached the top the only was down, so off we set, slowly grinding down the cliff face, twisting and turning, always driving on the side of the road that was against the rock face, hoping nothing would come the other way, fortunately only one car did and we were able to find a place to pass each other. After the switchbacks the road wound down to the valley floor through a ravine, once on the valley floor we drove a short way and would have had lunch, but there was no shade, so we came back again into the shade of the ravine had lunch, I had a quick explore while Sally had a quick sleep and then we came back up again, driving back along the Burr Trail to our trailer under the Lone Ponderosa Pine. It was a wonderful day and I can only thank Sally for managing to take the trip even though she was still feeling unwell.