Walking the Cracks of Canyonlands National Park

Finally, summer!  Weather to bask in, lay around in, soak up the heat and take a walk in, feel the air, or just let the sun warm your bones.  Thursday was even warm out on the shores of San Pablo Bay, at Point Pinole, where we chose to take our third East Bay Regional Park hike.  I’m determined to set foot in all 65 of these parks, and walk whatever is walkable over the next year or two.  I’m a hiker, but I’ve only hiked a fraction of these wonderful parks, mostly those that border our town.  But there are lots more, and we’re going to find them all.

I worked in El Cerrito for ten years in the 1980s, and early 1990s and often spent lunch hours walking at Point Pinole, but I haven’t been back since.  I really liked it then, but its gotten better.  All who came with me were struck by how lovely the place is.  It’s got dense eucalyptus groves, dry grasslands, well watered shady lawns and BBQ sites, children’s play structures, ruins of the old dynamite companies that produced over 2 billion pounds of explosives from 1880 to 1960, miles of beaches at low tide, and views of the Marin and Sonoma shoreline with their mountains in the distance.  Simply sitting on a bench overlooking the Bay would be worth the drive out.

We decided to hike the Bay View Trail to the fishing pier and then return via the Marsh and Owl Alley Trails.  We crossed the railroad tracks on a pedestrian overpass, just in time to watch the Amtrak on it’s way to Sacramento.  

The trail initially passes through an area of lawns and BBQ’s with gorgeous views over the Bay, and is large enough to handle many people comfortably.  It would make a great place for a picnic with friends.  It’s a mix of sun and shade so it would work for hot or cool days. 

Leaving the manicured section, you quickly find yourself walking through a dense forest of soaring eucalyptus, its pungent perfume filling the air.  Long before we reached the fishing pier at the end of Point Pinole, we turned off toward the beaches on the west shore, and found it was low tide.  What the water had left for us was fascinating.  The rocks and seaweed were mixed with bits of old brick buildings and unrecognizable rusted iron work, the remnants of pilings and wooden foundations, all of it with a story for the guessing.   

We never made it back to the Bay View Trail, as the beach was just too cool.  We followed it all the way to the Pier which juts out a quarter of a mile into the Bay from the point, and has great views in all directions.  

We walked to the end and watched as one fisherman caught a small jacksmelt.  Suddenly, another ran for his pole which was dipping violently.  He pulled hard and sank the hook into something that fought like the dickens.  The current was running hard, and this fish used it to pull away from the pier, just a swirl of water where the line sank.  More violent eddies and then a flash of a black striped, silver side.  

He had a striper on the line, and it was good sized.  He played the fish while his friends lowered a net to lift it out of the water.  It measured out at 32 inches and while I’m not much of a fisherman, I can appreciate the excitement of hooking something that big.    

It was saddening to see the warning signs at the end of the pier however, recommending no one eat more than two meals per month of Bay caught striper, pregnant women and children, none at all.  They are top of the line predators and concentrate the chemicals in the food chain, hence are just not safe to eat in quantity.  The lowly little jacksmelt might have been a safer bet. 

From the pier we continued our walk on the Marsh Trail, and then Owl Alley, through dense forest and marshlands, past a lovely tule backed pond, and finally back to the “civilized” section of the park.  We had hiked four miles or so, but there were miles more side trails we couldn’t explore.  Next time. 

Everyone vowed to come back to this East Bay Regional Park gem with food and plans for a BBQ.  But it would be just as good to come back alone and find a quiet bench, or a spot on that rocky beach with a good book, and nothing better to do than look out across San Pablo Bay, watch the seagulls, and see just how long I can do nothing while a ship makes the long slow transit from the Richmond turn to the Carquinez Straits.

Maps and a brochure can be found on line at: http://www.ebparks.org/files/EBRPD_files/brochure/pt_pinole_map.pdf  and at: http://www.ebparks.org/files/EBRPD_files/brochure/pt_pinole_text.pdf   There’s lots of history here and the brochure is worth reading.  There is a shuttle that runs from the parking lot to the fishing pier everyday but Tuesday and Wednesday, on the half hour from 7:30am till 2:30pm for those not up to the walk, or who are loaded down with fishing gear. 

Trail Stories from Canyonlands National Park

Sarah and I had two weeks to explore the Southwest together.  It’s not often you get that much time with a college age daughter, so it was special for me.  We had started with a quick shot through Zion National Park, just the shuttle bus tour so she could see what it’s all about. 

It was late in the afternoon and the light was just beginning to turn from the brilliance of a desert day, to the dusky richness of early evening.  We were both blown away by the beauty.  

Sarah captured it when she said, “Dad, it’s Yosemite Valley in sandstone.”  And it is, from the great stone monoliths to the spires, grouped and spaced as if an artist had worked with the forces of the world to get each tableau just right.  There’s a rhythm and a pacing to the cliffs, the strata, the color and their silhouettes as the light fades.  This was just a taste of Zion, but enough to get us both sold on the idea of coming back and doing some serious hiking here.

The following day we blasted down to the Grand Canyon hoping that all the wilderness permit slots had not been taken, and were amazed when we got one.  The three day hike to the bottom is the subject of last week’s column at: We ended with the climb, up and out of that incredible, sacred canyon without killing ourselves, and ready for more Southwest backpacking, this time in Canyonlands National Park, a long drive east.  

We hit the road about 1pm and drove all afternoon, stopping for the night in a little nondescript Utah town about three hours shy of Moab, had Chinese food that was just a little suspect, and crashed that night early.  We were bone tired, fourteen miles, six thousand vertical foot climb and six hours of driving, tired.  

While we slept, the wind came up.  When I hit the road next morning, it was hard to keep the car on the pavement.  My little old pickup is light and a bit wobbly, and the buffeting we took was scary at times.  By Moab the winds had increased to serious wind/sand storm levels, blowing so much dust into the air that the redrock cliffs were gone.  It was like living in a really smokey California fire year, when the whole state fills to choking with smoke, only it wasn’t smoke, it was dust.  

This was a first for me, and is right up there with tornado weather in the Midwest, or serious thunder and lightening, flash flood, summer storms in Texas, for impressive.  It blew all the next day, and Sarah and I decided to take a zero (thru hiker slang for a day of no mileage) in Moab and walk in the wind from shop to shop.  

Moab has turned into quite a fun little outdoor activity hub, with outfitters who will get you on the Colorado River in canoes, kayaks and rafts, or with bikes and backpacks out onto the red rock wonderland that surrounds the place.  There are good restaurants too.  If you’re a foody, check out the Desert Bistro on the north end of town.  Built in a restored ranch house, the windows look out on a stunning view of the red cliffs, and a canyon cut by the Colorado.  But that’s not the reason to try this place out, it’s the food.  I had a buffalo fillet with a reduced balsamic sauce, over garlic potatoes surrounded by roasted vegetables to die for.  Sarah got a vegan stack of roasted vegetables and tofu that was equally as interesting and delicious.  

The owners, Karl and Michelle Kelley are skiing, climbing, biking, hiking enthusiasts who are great cooks as well.  Check out their web site if you’re traveling through as the menu is worth the read, http://www.desertbistro.com/Site/Welcome.html

On a recommendation from our waitress, we had lunch the next day at Sabaku Sushi.  Sabaku means desert in Japanese.  Coming from the coast, I wouldn’t normally try a sushi bar this far from the ocean, but it was incredible, up to the quality and freshness we expect from a really good sushi joint in San Francisco.  Mixing Asian and Southwestern flavors with local ingredients and fish flown in three times per week, the food was fantastic.  Check out the Elk Tataki for a local twist.  Another site worth a look if you’re in Southern Utah, http://www.sabakusushi.com/

Moab was fun, and we almost didn’t want to leave, but when we woke after our zero day, the sand had dropped out of the air.  The view of the cliffs was stunning, and the sky an almost turquoise blue.  We headed off early to the southern section of Canyonlands National Park, the Needles District, hoping again for a wilderness permit on the spur of the moment.  

We weren’t as lucky as we’d been in the Grand Canyon, and ended up car camping, so we could hike into the best of the “Needles” that day.   The sites are all first come first served, and many are more private than anything you could get in Yosemite.  Most of them back up to a large rock formation and some even have caves in them.  We set up our stove under a large, sandstone overhang in our rock, that was cool and protected from the heat of the day, and camped in the lee of the rock when a wind came up in the late evening.  No pines, just oaks, savannah, sagebrush, junipers and huge rocks, a wonderland for a family with kids, or adults that just never grow up.

The Elephant Hill Trailhead was only a few miles drive, and the scenery is wild with fantastic shapes in stone.  At times you overlook great fields of mushroom topped pillars, that look like the cobbles of a giant’s causeway.  Single needles of stone point high above conical hills, rubble of rock, the leavings of its creation, all the stone that has worn away to create the spire, and wall after wall of rock pinnacles.

Much of the Southwest was originally a littoral zone, whose sediments and subsequent rock layers were created by shallow seas, tidal marshes and great sand dunes, believed to have been the largest dunes ever to have existed on the planet.  But this end of Utah was also shaped by salt.  For millions of years the area under Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and beyond, was a huge salt lake which dried and filled, over and over again, consolidating and compacting the salts up to 10,000 feet thick.  These layers were eventually overlaid and compacted still further by sea and wind deposits of sand, silt and rock.  Through the eons the sheer weight of the upper sediments caused the salt to flow like glacial ice, deep underground.  As the salt seeped away, the upper layers of sandstone subsided, causing fractures in the rock in regular patterns.  As water percolated through the formations, it followed these cracks, widening and smoothing them into larger fissures, and eventually, separating rock from rock into giant formations.  

At Arches, NP, the fractures are like the lines on a sheet of ruled paper, long and narrow, separated by straight, sandy hallways for miles, creating what are known as fins, which wear away in the center creating arches, the largest concentration of stone arches in the world.  

In Canyonlands, the long narrow fractures occurred as lines intersecting at right angels, like a sheet of graph paper.  Here the water wore away along the faults, creating tall squares that were further smoothed and rounded into spires and needles.  At places a harder, rounded disc was left on top, creating the mushroom formations that looked like so many neatly placed cobble stones for the Gods.  At other places, walls and groupings of needles, like so many huge fingers, claw upward. 

Sarah and I wanted to get out into the needles themselves and on the advice of the rangers, took off from the Elephant Hill Trailhead on the Chesler Park Trail, for a twelve mile loop.  Almost immediately, we found ourselves winding in and around rocks and sandstone formations, some of which were obviously sand dunes, the strata like a pile of discarded Japanese fans.  Their disarray, a jumble of curved lines, cutting one another at oblique angles as the prevailing winds of prehistoric earth changed direction over time. 

The trail descends into canyons and then up the rocks to reveal spectacular vistas and colors, purple tinted mesas on the horizon and red, gold and buff brown rocks in the foreground, and the whole place a riot of life.  Various multi colored lizards skittered out of our way as we hiked through juniper, yucca, sagebrush, bunch grasses and blooms of every hue.

Of course Sarah was ahead, and at a turn, called out in astonishment.  She had rounded a rock, and happened to look up just at the right moment.  Accessible from a low rock ledge were human hand prints in red ochre on the white sandstone.  Some long ago tagging, a signature before signatures, the most human appendage, a persons hand.  Opposable thumb, spear gripping, touching, feeling, sensual, tool making, hand. 

We were both stopped in our tracks.  Signs of man in the vastness of these time sculpted landscapes, always felt sacred.  Someone touched this rock, as I do now, but they lived here, hunted and loved here, worshipped here, and no doubt found the land holy, magnificent.  We are placed in our shoes on the sand, aware of the moment, for a moment anyway. 

The sanctity is short lived however as not far beyond these remarkable hands the trail stops winding around the formations and dives right in, and the fun really begins.  We were no longer looking at needles, we were in amongst them in straight, narrow slots, thousands of feet long, walled by cliffs, hundreds of feet high.  At regular intervals the slots were bisected straight across by other slots, and the whole area is a maze of caves and clefts, slits and alleyways of sandstone.  No telling what the upper formations looked like, as we couldn’t see the sun, let alone the tops of the sheer walls.

This place was fun, and college kid Sarah climbed and squeezed up the slits, feet on one wall, shoulders on the other.  She ran in and out of the bisecting channels, keeping contact by a continual barrage of whoops and hollers, echoes which seemed to come from all around me.  She was the kid I wished I still was.  I can hike it.  I can climb it.  But I’ve got to do it slowly.  She went a mile a minute and couldn’t stop laughing for joy, at one point proclaiming it the “coolest trail I’ve ever been on.”   It was for me too, as my joy was no less than hers, at simply being present to such wild, coltish exuberance, such openness, such playful, childish spirit.  A blessing on this world.

Out of the cracks and into caves, the trail just got more deliriously wonderful, eventually pouring us out onto a broad grassy, sagey potrero, a natural amphitheater surrounded by The Needles.  Our mood shifted, the playfulness replaced by awe.  What has worked so surely, so soundly to build monuments capable of eliciting emotional responses in us?  Some interplay of natural, sculptural magnificence, and a human mind enthralled, aware of the beauty, the patterns in an atom, a rock, a tree, a planet spinning through a universe, echoed in that atom.  

The trail wound in and out and through the landscape, mile after mile of beauty and the paean running through my head was the last stanza of the Navajo Night Chant, a long healing song, a poem grown out of this landscape to make one whole again:

Happily may I walk.

Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant showers, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant plants, may I walk.
Happily on a trail of pollen, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.

All is beautiful before me.
All is beautiful behind me.
All is beautiful below me.
All is beautiful above me.
All is beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished.

Night in our cave at dinner, protected by our rock in sleep, we lay on holy ground.  Much like any ground, anywhere you chance to lay your head, different only in our awareness of it.  The glass of a great cathedral is no less, simply a reminder, that all is beautiful.

"If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles -- a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story -- the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort -- each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart." 

— John Muir