Needles District Canyonlands — Attraction in Spanish Valley

What a fun experience. We had a two vehicle caravan. Land cruiser, and a four runner. The park was awesome, and we only encountered the park ranger on trail the first day, and spotted some other vehicles the second night at the Devil’s Kitchen site.

Spent the first night at Horse hoof, it was perfect. Second night at DK1. Horse hoof was nicer, but the cave aspect was fun at DK. We had ninja Marmots at DK, and they were doing parkour all over our camp chairs at night. We have a key fob rack mounted light, so we caught them mid antics.

All the trails were amazing.

The only negative was the gate ranger.

We had booked online, paid for sites online, paid park access online, and even stopped in the Moab office that am. The gate ranger went full border agent power trip. I had not printed off my pass, and only had the digital pdf. Why are we required to cut down a tree, and print onto it? This seemed really ironic considering they require you to defecate into a bag, and take it with you for conservation.

I offered to pay the $60 again, after they told us they didn’t want to see any of our printed papers, then demanded to see our papers, then finally said ‘they shouldn’t accept the pdf, but they will do it just this once’

I was also confused with the heavy mask requirements, as in you weren’t allowed within the information centre. This was in contrast to the Moab station we were just at in am.

Summary; loved the park. Loved the Moab agents, top notch ambassadors. Was extremely put off by aggressive booth attendant. (As we offered to pay again, we were also told it would have to be cash, as they / them shut down their till, and were going on lunch. What?) last bit. Tattoos, all good. Knuckle tattoos, maybe not for...

The Needles District of the park, the southern portion, is most noted for the 400-foot red and white banded pinnacles, as well as a collection of canyons and arches. We were here to see those and they proved hard to photograph, as like many features in the park, they are remote and require long treks across inhospitable waterless land to reach. Almost all of the active trails in this park were beyond our abilities. So, we drove the nice access road and took short ‘walks.’ The reason for this had most to do with the heat, as April through September are the warmest months and this was a surprise. The first viewpoint was the Wooden Shoe Arch Overlook. It was so obvious that we knew what it was before we read the map. The Cave Spring Trail is just about 1 mile RT and it goes back through some shady and cooler overhanging rock ledges with little places to stash gear, have a snack, and rest a spell, and on to a primitive Cowboy Camp which has been well preserved since the days when range riders and herders really did live under these rock shelters in the same way the ancient Indians did. It was quite interesting for us city folk to really see how they lived. The herder’s horses also sheltered here with them. The alcove was surrounded by posts and gates where horses could be tied. And nearby, was a large ‘rock bin’ made to store their feed. The spring really did have running water in it and this would have supported the men and animals who...

Regarding the “Colorado River Overlook” jeep trail, NPS says, “You must have a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle.” Do they mean it?

Short answer -- yes. If you have a vehicle like that, this trail is for you. With some skills, you can drive right to the edge of a mind-bending canyon with utter solitude.

But instead we just had a garden-variety AWD SUV (Chevy Equinox). How far can you get with a vehicle like that?

Pretty far. About 60% in, there is a big switchback and the trail resumes its general north-west course. To that point our vehicle was more than enough.

At that point we were confronted with a short, mildly rocky passage. One can manage this passage either with high clearance or proven skills. We had neither so this is where we left our vehicle. It was about 1.5 hours each way from here, hiking briskly, just mildly scenic right until the precipice.

Had we persevered, we could have driven another mile or so before we got to serious rocks. In between is a lengthy passage where the trail cants 15 degrees and has a big center hump. We probably would have bottomed out on the hump in places but it is soft.

Download the NPS map, in their app. On the trail it opens and even shows...