HIKING INTO HISTORY

The walk itself is usually all the reason a hiker needs to go backpacking. But the effort is even sweeter than the trailside wildflowers when every step takes you further into history. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this educational concept had eluded my oldest daughter as we approached the first spring break of her fledgling college career. When the long-distance phone call came to discuss plans for her weeklong vacation, I was rehearsing my defense against the possible pitch for airline tickets to Cancun.

“Hey, Dad,” Brook said. “I’m going to do a project on ancient Indians and I’m supposed to have some first-hand experience. Do you want to go hiking down in Utah?”

At least she’d done a little homework. Southeastern Utah and the Four Corners region is the American mainland capital for blending the wilderness experience with vivid examples of lost cultures.

We focused on the Cedar Mesa region in general and the Grand Gulch Primitive Area in particular. By walking into a roadless area and toughing out the harsh high-desert environment, we would be rewarded by close encounters with remarkably intact Anasazi cliff dwellings that date back to a culture that was thriving a thousand years ago.

But first things first.

Months in advance, we called to reserve our permit for hiking into Grand Gulch.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is aware the primitive area attractions could be loved to death, even in this remote region that requires a round-trip hike of at least seven miles to see the choice archeological attractions.

Of 25,000 known archeological sites in Utah, 90 percent show signs of vandalism, according to BLM reports. Minimizing access helps slow the degradation.

Overnight visitation to Grand Gulch is strictly restricted, with a total of only 102 overnight visitors a day scattered into four main access points that lead to nearly 70 miles of main routes and numerous side-trip options.

I bought the maps and pored through six different guidebooks for the area. Clearly the biggest challenge would be to sort out the seemingly endless options for backcountry experiences in Southeastern Utah.

To cover more ground during the weeklong trip, we settled on a mixture of day hiking and backpacking, starting with a half-day hike through Natural Bridges National Monument.

Park Service information centers can help time-short visitors sort priorities and jump-start the learning. We got good information about a six-mile hike we used to explore native history as well as geology.

Natural Bridges is a nice counterpoint to Arches National Park, which is 110 miles to the north. Arches are gaps in rock on the skyline while natural bridges are in the canyon bottoms. Arches are created by wind and weather; bridges are carved by running water.

Day-hiking also helped us acclimate to the desert environment at elevation 6,000 feet in the fickle March weather. Within two days, we’d confirmed that we would need gear to endure the extremes of cold nights and hot days with a good chance of wind, rain and even snow in between.

When I saw Brook wearing a long-sleeved shirt and slathering sunscreen on exposed skin, I realized that, for the first time, I didn’t have to give the sun-protection lecture.

“I did a paper on sunscreen in one of my classes,” she said, securing forever my faith in higher education. “I got the point.”

Our preparation paid off at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station on the morning we had reserved to start backpacking into Grand Gulch.

A family of four was standing at the information board cowering at the weather report.

“It got down to 14 degrees last night and they’re forecasting rain or snow for the next three days,” the mom said to no one in particular. “We’re not prepared for that.”

I struck up a conversation with them and their problem became our advantage as they agreed to shuttle our vehicle. This allowed us to enter Grand Gulch from Bullet Canyon and exit by Kane Gulch, where our vehicle would be waiting at a highway trailhead. This would eliminate the worry of being parked at an off-highway trailhead where a little rain could make the red-earth access road muddy and impassable for hours or days — even to four-wheel drives.

Our choice of routes headed down the rugged slickrock of Bullet Canyon for seven miles to the junction with Grand Gulch and then up the Grand Gulch for a couple of days, covering another 16 miles to the Kane Gulch Trailhead.

All of these logistical considerations faded as we started hiking into a shallow timbered mesa depression that gradually developed into Bullet Canyon.

Cairns and sometimes only common sense directed us down through ledges, boulders and slickrock dropoffs. Cacti began showing in the route, adding another deterrent to looking up at the sandstone walls gaining altitude above.

After 4.5 miles, the first of the major attractions, Perfect Kiva Ruin, stopped us in our tracks.

An intact cliff dwelling was mortared into the sandstone wall under an overhang, facing south to capture the warmth of the sun in winter but shaded from the daunting heat of summer.

The inside was charred with smoke from fires and the ground was littered with pot shards and small corncobs left by Anasazis who apparently just picked up an left about 700 years ago. Archeologists speculate that over 2,000 years, as they became better at growing crops such as corn, beans and squash, their populations grew too settled and large to cope with a prolonged drought.

Fascinating pictographs decorated the sandstone walls, including a series of handprints. The kiva, a ceremonial shelter that’s mostly below ground, had a vent hole at the bottom to feed air to the fire inside the room, where a stone was placed to deflect the smoke up and out the ceiling entry.

One nearby bulge of rock had a dozen grooves where corresponding-sized rocks were used to grind grains into flower. An ammo box at the site had pages of information from archeologists who had studied the area. They noted that the grinding was done with sandstone that left grit in the flower and undoubtedly acted like sandpaper on their teeth.

Brook and I walked away from those ruins spellbound and speechless.

And that was just the first of a half-dozen major ruins and numerous other smaller ones we encountered.

Had we seen nothing but the ruins, our trip would have been complete.

Had we seen nothing but the canyon scenery, the trip would have been worth the effort.

To have both in one experience was unworldly.

After making camp late one afternoon, Brook snuggled into the tent to read a book while I set out to explore Fortress Canyon. I was high up on the slickrock when a hailstorm came out of nowhere.

A winter-like scene developed in minutes with every ledge layered in white. Birds were silenced. Hailstones suspended in the spines of cacti.

Just as quickly as it developed, the whiteness began to fade. The walls of the canyon were still warm from the afternoon sun of a 60-degree day, and the traction I had enjoyed scrambling up the canyon walls melted away along with the hail.

I was able to find a ramp where I could walk and slide down without serious exposure.

Meanwhile, around me, a million tiny waterfalls — pour-offs, as they are called in canyon country — began trickling off the walls, cascading over terraces and saturating the sandstone walls into a spectrum of colors.

Fifteen minutes later in the day’s last rays of sunshine, the spectacle dried up as fast as it had come.

We layered on all of our fleece clothing, pulled on stocking caps and zippered into our sleeping bags that night as the skies cleared and the temperature plunged into the teens. No fires are allowed in the primitive area, and packing a little extra clothing was a small price to pay to see a canyon unmarred by fire pits and wood gathering.

The next morning, I was glad I had put the water filter between us in the tent and insulated the Camelbaks in our packs. Every other trace of liquid was frozen solid.

But the rising sun eradicates the cold in this country like a wave erases tracks in a beach.

As I poured steaming water into our tea cups and prepared breakfast, I was reminded of Brook’s annoying habit of picking the best stuff out of the gorp and dried fruit bags. For the last day of hiking, we had nothing left but peanuts and prunes.

“Yeah, but I haven’t complained about your snoring,” she said.

The trail in Grand Gulch is basically maintained by the boots of hikers. Even though we were in the canyon bottom, the trail braids and changes with every flood or downed cottonwood. We had to cross Grand Gulch Creek dozens and dozens of times, racking up the elevation gain with every 5- to 10-foot climb up from the creek.

The small flow of water in the creek — a product of the unusually wet winter in the Desert Southwest — gave us uncommon freedom and convenience for camping. For most of the season, hikers must gauge their travel in Grand Gulch to the pattern of a few scattered springs.

But any of these hardships are worth the privilege to step back in time.