Utah Trip Report 2014 March - Comb Ridge - Double Stack Ruins
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Day 1
To sum up my second trip to Utah for 2014 is WOW. I traveled
to the Cedar Mesa / Comb Ridge region in early March. I also made a day trip
further north for another slot canyon adventure. I’m already falling behind on
my 60 by 60 slot canyon challenge but I needed field data for the Cedar Mesa
2014 Canyon Atlas. This trip was an
Anasazi Ruins adventure. 
Let’s talk about the weather first, this time of year it is
still winter in southern Utah and after talking to the locals, I’ve found out
it has been a dry winter regarding the amount of snow that has fallen. Daytime
temperatures were in the fifties and night time temperatures were in the lower
thirties. Although the weather forecast was very similar to my first trip,
there was less snow to be seen at the higher elevations and I avoided any
extremely frigid nights on the second trip. Maybe some of it was being better
prepared for the cold nights with a very nice blanket/quilt and of course using
a sleeping bag. This was my second trip with the homebuilt mini-camper where I
spent five nights car camping. After the first trip I realized a warmer blanket
was needed and during the second trip I realized I needed a slightly larger
sleeping quarters to be comfortable while sleeping. I barely fit lying flat in
the diagonal direction across the camper, feet touching one corner and head
touching the opposite corner. I’m writing this report several weeks after the
trip and have I already made a slide-out compartment on the passenger side of
the camper/truck. Hopefully the extra eight inches will allow me to lie
straight across the back of the camper and be able to roll over without making
a major production out of it.
Usually the first and last day of my Utah trips are
considered travel days but it only takes about six hours to drive from my house
to Bluff, Utah so I planned a short hike on the travel day. Although I have
driven through the towns of Bluff and Blanding many times as a professional
photographer, it was always on the way to Moab or Colorado and has never been a
destination before. I had decided to make Bluff base camp for the first part of
the trip.
My goal for the first hike on this trip and most others is a
short easy day-hike to start the adventure. On my previous trip here I drove
CR-262 from the southern access at Utah highway 163 to the northern access at
Utah highway 95 for scouting, gathering information about the quality and
character of the dirt road and the side tracks leading to the trailheads. I didn’t go down any of the side tracks but
took GPS coordinates.
The Double Stack Ruins was chosen for the first hike on this
trip since it was only a 2.4 mile roundtrip hike and rated easy. This part of Utah is still the Wild West, at
least like it was in the 1800 after they started stringing barbed wire. The Cedar Mesa and Comb Ridge area are known
as federal lands and manage by the BLM. Since this historically has been a low
usage area, there is very little management being done and the only ranger
station in the area is only open during peak hiking season and is manned mostly
by volunteers. The reason I called it the Wild West is the primary road through
Comb Ridge is a primitive dirt country road.
(Not gravel or improved) Although they have run a grader through here
and installed culverts at several of the major washes, basically you’re driving
cross country following the terrain going up and down driving down into the
wash and back up to higher ground at each wash or drainage. Some of these dips
are twenty feet deep. Although there are a few sections where the road is
Slickrock and you can see the grind marks to cut down the bumps this really
isn’t a road for low-clearance passenger vehicles. I have noticed many book
authors will tell you can drive an unimproved road with your car if you’re
careful but this is taken from the perspective of someone driving a 4WD jeep
and is wrong in most cases. I went for three years between pickup trucks where
I had only two mini-vans to choose from and I can tell you from experience that
a 6 or 7 inch static clearance will only result in damage to the vehicle or
getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
Back to the Wild West, the side tracks are made by people
driving (jeeps, ATV, pickup) off the main road and once a number of people have
driven the same path the ground gets compressed and create a semi-permanent
track also known as 2-track. There are
many more side-tracks here than trailheads so finding the correct side-track
for a specific trailhead can be a challenge. A reminder, that a trailhead may
be a general starting area for a hike without any signs or official parking or
official designation of the trail. On these types of adventures on my pre-trip
planning I strive to get enough information to have a successful adventure but
not too much to bias my exploration or follow someone else’s adventure step by
step. I had the trailhead GPS coordinates, destination coordinates and mileage
down the road (CR-262) using the Cedar Mesa 2014 Canyon Atlas.
The issue with using mileage is the tolerance of the vehicle
odometer to measure mileage accurately. Shortly after buying the Ford Ranger
pickup I purchased a set of slightly over-sized tires and calibrated the
odometer. The reading is about 5 percent low or you have traveled 5 percent
farther than the odometer reading. So when a book says to drive 3.8 miles you
might want to ask yourself is it really 3.8 miles or just 3.8 miles on the
author’s vehicle or how accurate is my odometer reading. A 5 percent error on
3.8 miles is .19 miles and did the author round up or down his measurement. The
point I’m making is it is not an exact science but an approximate measurement.
I stopped at a track at 3.7 mile on my odometer and was gathering the GPS
coordinates when two couples on two ATVs stopped and we started discussing
where we thought we were. They also told me they were staying at the Cadillac
Ranch RV Park. They continued on up CR-262 while I drove down the side-track.
The side-tracks along CR-262 aren’t very long normally only 0.1 or 0.2 mile but
usually the parking is near Butler Wash which runs north-south while the hikes
are from east to west. I parked in a well worn area but no signs were in sight.
I verified the first 3-digits of the GPS coordinates matched the ones in Cedar
Mesa 2014 Canyon Atlas and thought this is it, close enough. I purposely parked
the truck in an open area so it can be easily seen from a distance. I found a
worn path on sandy soil through a fairly flat ground with small bushes. Almost
all of the plants are still dormant from winter. It doesn’t take any navigation
skills to see the ridge line of Comb Ridge to the west from here since it is
very prominent. Following a well worn path I hike through the washes and onto
the Slickrock which was marked with rock piles (primitive cairns) leading the
way to the canyon in Comb Ridge.
It really doesn’t take very long to get close since it is
only about a mile to travel although I’m doing everything in slow motion,
marking waypoints on handheld Garmin etrex 30 GPS and entering notes, taking
photos with Olympus TG-830 that records GPS coordinates, occasionally taking
photos with the Canon DSLR and verifying the map in the atlas. The wikiup is
the sentinel guarding the ruins and I know I’m getting very close. I walk
through the sandy drainage into the small canyon and I can barely see an alcove
off to right through the bushes and trees. I start getting excited about seeing
the prize, a ruins wall can clearly be seen from here. I come across another
wikiup. As I continue hiking I can hear voices echoing off the canyon walls and
know I won’t be alone soon. Then I get my first glimpse of the ruins down low
in the canyon which is below the alcove and slight west of it. I’ve made it to
the Double Stack ruins along with the two couples I previously met on the road.
They had driven their ATVs to the next side-track and started their hike from
there. I marked my GPS coordinates and started snapping away with the DSLR.
Down low are two sets of structures about 20 feet apart with partially intact
walls running from about 10 to 20 feet high? These ruins are in a shallow cave
while another ruin is up in an alcove maybe 50 feet up and over several hundred
feet to the side.
As I explore around the ruins I’m careful not to touch any
of the walls or disturb the ground. I come to the realization that these ruins
without protection will be destroyed by visitors within a century although they
may be 5 or 6 centuries old. Most people are cavalier when visiting sites like
this and don’t realize the damage they are causing by walking through the ruins
or touching the ruins or artifacts in the ruins. The other group wrapped up
their visit here and I now had solitude. I snapped away freehand down low and
tried to get a better view of the ruin in the alcove above. The ruins down low
were in the shade even though the sun was shining. I headed back and another thing nice about
this hike is not only is it down hill heading back but I could seen my white
truck with the white camper from a great distance and there would be no
problems finding my way back. I headed for Bluff and decided to stay at the
Cadillac Ranch RV Park getting a tent site for 3 nights. I didn’t set up a tent
but the $16 per night is well worth it for flush toilets, showers and outlets
to charge batteries.
Summary
Double Stack Ruins is a nice easy short hike with an
excellent prize at the end of the hike (Anasazi Ruins).
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