Indian Creek

24 hours. We spent the night above the town of Monticello in the Manti-LaSal National Forest. At dusk we headed up the mountain road past these confused travelers.
Once at the end of the plowed road we skied up further into the mountains on the crusted snowmobile track. The snow was icy and loud but it was good, as always, to get in the scenery and exercise.
The next morning we went into Canyonlands National Park at the south eastern “Needles” area. We walked a number of short trails over the sandstone slabs following cairns that marked the loops we traveled on. We saw fairy shrimp in potholes, an Ancestral Puebloan granary cache, a “newspaper” rock, all manner of shapes and colors in the rocks and in the clouds.

At dusk we left the park and headed into camp on BLM land. It is certainly almost as beautiful but here ORVs have tracked the fragile soils. The silence is as magnificent as the vastness of the land.