Over a decade ago I passed through Petrified Forest on my way east to Kentucky. I drove the north-south paved road through the park and stopped at many of the overlooks and short walking loops. The colorful agatized wood chips were neat to see but the manicured viewings removed some of the appeal for me. Fast forward to researching this trip and I find out that the park now has designated off-trail backcountry areas they allow hiking exploration which piqued my interest. Looking at aerial imagery I could easily map out the blue paleosol layer of the Chinle Formation and also see petrified logs like matchsticks. From this I sketched out a 5.5 mile loop through the northern Painted Desert part of the park that I thought would make a neat overnight backpack trip. Our Flagstaff accident had other plans so we instead opted for a day hike. From Flagstaff we drove out to the Petrified Forest, parking at the historic Painted Desert Inn and following the trail north off the mesa into the colorful wash and badland network beyond.
We crossed the aptly named Lithodendron Wash and climbed into the blue silts containing the regionally prominent petrified forest, passing through some interesting mud karst. Nearly everywhere we were at this layer we would see enormous logs and the washes below always had rounds as float. One of the first features we saw was a rare upright log. Another log we soon came upon was about 150 feet long!
We marveled at the well preserved and perfectly lifelike bark textures and growth rings within, and had a lot of fun hiking zigzagged beelining between interesting features. We saw much of the Angel's Garden, a 10 acre area with some of the best logs around.
We had a very pleasant lunch spot in a section of wash riddled with good wood sections, making the most of an upright round as a table. At the northeast end of the Angel's Garden was one of my favorite features, two large logs damming the confluence of two washes, something I have certainly seen large woody debris do but never when petrified.
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| Large [formerly] woody debris dams |
From Angel's Garden we crossed through the red capped hills heading towards Onyx Bridge, spotting many nice windowpane-like gypsum crystals. Onyx Bridge is a prominent log that crosses a wash; unfortunately its appeal is somewhat diminished since it collapsed in 2021.
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| Onyx Bridge |
Past Onyx Bridge was another neat feature, two logs crossed as an X. We saw some more nice logs and interesting badlands continuing east towards the large area of the Lithodendron Forest. The logs in this area were abundant but had less color.
Reaching the end of Lithodendron Forest, we started back towards Painted Desert Inn passing through one more nice badland section before regaining our approach trail. In all it was a neat hike and I certainly saw more petrified wood than I had ever seen before. We spent a few minutes walking through the Inn and then a good long while organizing gear for our San Juan River trip while we still had daylight.
We drove across the vast Navajo Nation, eventually getting to Sand Island Campground near Bluff in time for a late dinner hiding in the warm car.
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