Chesler Park & Joint Trail

This hike was so incredible! A fantastic way to spend our 22nd wedding anniversary. 

After spraining my ankle in the Fiery Furnace two days previous to this hike, I was pretty nervous about how it would hold up for 11 miles, so this was my prep on the way--all the ice and elevation!! (And then wrapping it super tight and a lot of ibuprofen.) Just a note since I now know what was going on with my ankle: ATFL tear, posterior tibial tendon tear, talus impingement. Yowzas. 



We got up reaaaallly early to drive from Moab into the Needles district--this was such a beautiful drive! We parked at Elephant Hill and started out on our adventure! 

And it was pretty immediately utterly gorgeous. It was cloudy in the morning with some mixed snow and rain, but the moody gray skies were a great backdrop for all the red rock. 

Gosh I just love southern Utah so much!! 

Most of this hike was okay-ish for my ankle; it definitely felt better going up than down, and I was glad I had my trekking poles for areas like this! I was also really slow any time I had to climb down something, since if the drop was higher than a couple feet I would sit down and scoot down rather than stepping down--my ankle was just not stable enough. 

So so gorgeous! Even though my ankle was hurting my heart was SO happy. This view was incredible; can you see the Island in the Sky district behind us on the left? 

As we got closer to Chesler Park the snow got deeper and it started to get a little slippery; I was glad that most of the trail was relatively dry. 

Gosh I just LOVE that snow and rock contrast! 

Such an incredibly beautiful place. 

Coming up to the last climb overlooking Chesler Park! 

And then I basically stopped taking pictures while we were descending because I needed my hands! 

Stopped for lunch and Juliet did her best Gollum impression. 

My poor ankle! Really working hard here. 

An hour or so after we ate lunch the sky started to clear up and we got the most beautiful blue sky for the rest of our hike. 

Then we got over to the part I was really excited about around the Joint area with all the slot canyons and cave thingies. 

So cool! We could have spent a LONG time exploring this area but thanks to the early sunsets we had to leave far before we wanted to do so. 

The Joint was so cool--basically a slot canyon like this for a quarter mile. 

From the top you would never know it's there!! 

Then we headed back towards Chesler Park, passing a bunch of backcountry campsites on the way. I'm torn about whether I'd want to camp here; I think it would be super cool to have more time to explore but it's a long way to haul a lot of water since there are zero water sources back here, and in the summer it would be hideously hellishly hot. 

I love the variegated coloration on those spires! 

The last mile felt (as always) pretty darn long but we made it back well before sunset! 

And then it was time to get the icepacks back on and head back to Moab! We rented an AirBnb there and I loooved returning to a warm dinner (we brought our slow cooker all the way across country!) and an evening watching shooting stars from the hot tub. I love camping in the summer but in December...it was reaaaallly nice to sleep indoors (well, until we got to Death Valley). 

 

Island in the Sky

We had originally planned to spend this day in Arches, but our Canyonlands pivot ended up being amazing! The goal of this day was to minimize time on my feet, didn't do so well with that, but it was really fun. 



We started our day by exploring a list of sites that Abigail had made for us which I LOVED! So fun to see some things that she'd seen before and really enjoyed and others that were new to her but she thought we would like. Pictograms and petroglyphs were first! 

Can you spot the kids in the photo above? 

Next up: dinosaur tracks! This was SO cool, essentially the tracks are preserved in fossilized algae. 

Loved this so much! 

Then we drove further back in the canyon to do a short hike that had tons of dinosaur bones in the exposed rockface. (This was super tricky for my ankle so I didn't take any photos.) 

So extremely glad I had my trekking poles! 

The stream was frozen over and Neil & the kids had a great time playing around on it. 

Then we drove up into Canyonlands to the Island in the Sky district. So gorgeous and fun to revisit a place where we spent a decent amount of time early in our marriage; this was one of the first national parks we visited together (in our first year we went to Arches, Canyonlands, Yellowstone, and Wind Cave; not bad for full-time students!) 

Since it was Christmas Day, the visitor's center was closed so our little stamp book is still languishing without its Canyonlands stamp, despite four visits. 

We ate lunch on a windy outcropping overlooking the Shafer Trail and told the kids stories about driving it in our old Jeep. I miss that car! 

Then we drove further into the park to check out some of the overlooks. Our plan for the day was no hiking but that didn't exactly happen. 

Somehow we ended up hiking out to Aztec Butte and then doing the scramble up to the top of both buttes to see the granaries and stone houses. 

Super cool though and well worth the effort to visit the granaries! 

The Class 3 scramble up Aztec Butte itself was...not such a great idea and definitely something I should not have been putting my ankle through. The house was kind of lame but the view was gorgeous! 

I couldn't take any photos because I was busy not falling off any dying, but you can get an idea of how steep the butte was--the orange part was fine and the white part was terrifying. 

But again--gorgeous views! 

Definitely the kind of thing you want to try with a freshly sprained ankle! 

Neil and the kids hiked out to the Upheaval Dome while I stayed in the car with my ice, then we drove down to Grand View overlook to watch the sunset over the Needles. 

This was an absolutely incredible viewpoint; can you see the White Rim trail down below? 

Isaac looks so old these days! 

Love that white stone edging to the river canyons...

We watched the very last of the sunset from the Buck Canyon overlook...

and then drove back to Moab watching all the stars and planets come out. Then we sat in the hot tub and watched shooting stars which was pretty darn incredible.