More plans squandered and then improvised. Plan A was a 24 mile overnight grand tour through the heart of Canyonland's Needles District taking in Druid Arch, Chesler Park, Joint Trail, the Grabens, and The Confluence. Plan B was instead a long 13.5 mile day trip cutting the Grabens and The Confluence from the itinerary. From Monticello we drove down the spacious valleys of Indian Creek and then onto the dirt road to the Elephant Hill Trailhead. The trail started out as interesting as I remembered as it traversed slickrock and cryptobiotic benches with views of otherworldly jointed formations and snowy peaks on distant horizons. The cool morning encouraged quick travel. At Elephant Canyon we branched off the trail to Chesler Park, instead following the wash upstream towards Druid Arch. The travel was more scenic and varied than I expected and included a section with slickrock bowls and a short bolted ladder. The last gully led us up to a bench with fantastic views of Druid Arch (frontispiece) and a great view back down the valley.
Almost halfway back down Elephant Canyon we missed the subtle cut-off trail to Chesler Park and so ended up taking a more direct route involving climbing through a couple cliff bands to gain the trail. This trail was also quite neat as it intricately weaved through a gully, bypassed dryfalls, and traversed hanging slickrock benches before a final slickrock bowl leading to a saddle into Chesler Park.
Chesler Park was as great as I remembered with horizon spanning views of the needles and a long expanse of mountains beyond mountains towards the Colorado River and beyond. We dropped into the floor of the park and detoured to check out the CP4 campsite we would have stayed at in Plan A. It was absolutely stunning with solitude and a view few campsites can match anywhere. We also detoured to check out an interesting saddle looking southward and then onto the Joint Trail.
The Joint Trail is remarkable and I am jealous of whoever first traversed it, perhaps thousands of years ago. It follows a narrow shoulder width joint gap down a long corridor, and then turns down another cavernous joint before emerging into a wash south of Chesler Park.
We returned back along the Joint Trail and then spent about an hour offtrail traversing around jointed gaps and thick crypto mats to close a loop round Chesler Park.
Back on the trail we made good time through long shadows back to the car. It was great to see a little more of the needles are but it is a place of intricacy like JTree's Wonderland of Rocks that is well worth more detailed exploration.
We drove on to a very busy day-before-Thanksgiving Moab, had dinner at the brewery, and stayed at the hotel across the way. The heated pool and jacuzzi won out the end of a great day.
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