Distance = 20 Miles; People Met = 4
Today we deliberately took a route that was longer than the one recommended by the ADT, a rare occurrence for long distance backpackers. The ADT picks up the Great Western Trail in Dixie National Forest, which crossed the Forest Service road we were camped near just a mile into the day.
We almost missed the turn, for although we were on the primary gravel road for that National Forest, and although the Great Western is a National Recreation Trail (oh-oh, shades of the Toiyabe Crest National Recreation Trail), there was no trailhead. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a piece of plastic taped to a tree. The map branded the trail as 4WD, but the path was only wide enough for hikers or horses.
We traveled down the trail for a few hundred yards, until our first spruce blow down. The day before we traveled cross country through an aspen forest with no apprehension. A lodge pole pine forest offers the same peace of mind. A spruce/fir forest is not for cross country traveling, nor do you want to even hike on unmaintained trails. If I had needed a reminder of that fact I received one just a few days earlier through a four mile stretch of blow downs.
Behind the first spruce blow down a second one was not far off. How many more might have been waiting I’ll never know because we backtracked to the gravel road and followed an alternative route of lower “reward” (more mileage), but less “risk” (hiking only about a mile an hour).
The Forest Service map indicated two points of interest along our route. One was Posey Lake, which had more substance than Cyclone Lake but would have been called a pond back East. The fish were jumping there, however, and the nearby Forest Service campground was set up for anglers, with a cleaning station included.
Campground Fish Cleaning Station
The other POI was Hell’s Backbone, a truly spectacular landscape consisting of a narrow ridge separating two colorful box canyons. It occurred to me that we were not missing anything from a scenic standpoint by choosing Forest Service and ATV roads, for Utah’s apparent goal is to make all its choicest treasures accessible to motorized vehicles. Still, I found it ironic how we are being reconditioned from a backpacker that looked for hiking trails first and foremost to looking for alternatives that were miles longer.
View East from Hell's Backbone Bridge
