Women’s Wine Hiking Society – 3 Day Backpack Trip – Canyonlands NP – Needles District

The Women’s Wine Hiking Society on occasion has longer hikes and excursions. The posting for the 3 Day Backpacking trip to Canyonlands National Park looked intriguing as it was to an area of the park that Joel and I had not explored. The group has been extremely well organized, sending out gear and food lists ahead of time and then we had a Zoom call to coordinate carpooling, tent and gear sharing and to discuss the expected weather and water requirements. This is a remote area that has no running water and the camp area that we were going to had no toilets so you carried in about 9 liters of water and bagged and carried your poop out. At 48#, the pack was probably the biggest that I have had since the 5 Day Glacier Peak climb a couple of years ago. But, good training for my upcoming Mt. Olympus climb and Wonderland Trail trip with Bob and Larina.

We carpooled down to a condo in Moab (my driver and tent mate was also named Alison!) Once we did introductions (fellow hikers included; a technical writer, three veterinarians, a lawyer, another retired gal that volunteered with a nonprofit, the communications director for the University of Utah, and a couple that I didn’t remember their occupations,) we ate dinner from a local Thai restaurant and then fought over the rickety bunk beds. Luckily they had enough for 12 people so no one had to sleep on the floor!

We left the condo by 5:30am to get to the trailhead early.

Our “basecamp” was in Chesler Park and the 4+ mile hike wasn’t too bad – a lot of steep areas with about 1500 ft of elevation gain.

The Elephant Hill trailhead starts out pretty rocky and steep for the first mile or so.

Blooming Indian Paintbrush were a jot of red in the otherwise sort of bleak landscape.

This area of Canyonlands is appropriately named the “Needles District.”

Great contrast with the red rocks was the white-capped La Sal mountains in the distance.

Our campsite had three tents pretty close together with a strategically placed branch that everyone walked into when they weren’t paying attention!

It took a little over three hours to get to camp. Once there we set up our tents and then went on a couple of shorter 3 – 5 mile hikes before having dinner.

This was the view from our campsite – pretty amazing!

The next morning we had an option to hike to Druid Arch which was about a 6 mile hike or the Devil’s Kitchen Loop which was about 9 miles. Since I had one neither, I opted for the longer hike. Unfortunately the pace of the group is a lot more leisurely than when Joel and I would set out for a hike or climb. We learned very early upon arriving in Utah that you needed to get on the trail in the dark and off the trails by noon due to the heat. Although it is not usually too hot in April, it hit 76 degrees so by starting a 9 mile hike at 10am, I was not a really happy camper. No shade to speak of except when we stopped for lunch – this was the point in the trip that it made sense that we were all carrying in at least 20# of water!