Ever Closer to the Red Rock

After a delightful night at the local Grand Junction Walmart, I decided to get up early and check out the road in the Colorado National Monument that I needed to ride. A short drive out of town and you start up into the rock wall that you can see from town. Amazing. One of the reasons I became aware of this road is some dork being chased by the police for some sex crime, decided he'd do humanity a favor, drive up here and go off one of the cliffs. I guess it is quite a popular area to do one's self in, 27 incidents in 2008. Ala, Thelma and Louise. (we'll get to that subject later) Well, I'm not sure if he was stupid, drunk, or stupid and drunk, when he chose this course of action, but, when he found his launching pad, ran the countdown to zero, he went about 120 feet off the road and managed to land his van on top of a rock pinnacle with all four wheels spinning.
Photo compliments of The Rocky Mountain News.
He now resides in the "Big House" and the tax payers got the bill to get a huge crane up there to remove the debris.

These are shots from my drive along the road during my scouting tour.




To allow the day to become a bit warmer, I decided to do a short hike on the trails on the east side of the park. The trails are cut into the rock and go up the face to the plateau above. One of the trails called the Serpents Trail is actually the remains of the original road up one section of the canyon. Many switchbacks.


Another trail was called Corkscrew for obvious reasons. This thing went back and forth so many times I was dizzy.


The No Thoroughfare Canyon Trail starts near the south entrance and goes up a box canyon. This has a small creek running down it with two water falls. The middle falls is small, about three feet of drop. The upper falls comes out of a rock mouth up on the cliff and drops probably 100 feet. This area is in constant shadow so there was still ice on the fall pond and on the rock wall.


An unfortunate turn of events did not allow me to do the bike ride I had needed to do. The bikes remained in seclusion. The weather brought forth some incredible winds which were worse on the canyon road up on the edge. I made the command decision to abort the ride and continue to Moab. As can be seen by the photos the wind kicked up a dust storm like I have never seen in my life. The wind was coming from the SW and "stuff" blowing across the highway was always a challenge to avoid. I did make it to Moab and that is the next chapter.