Posts Tagged With: Monarch ruins

Bears Ears XXVII

2024-05-31

Well, sometimes ya get into a skunk of a mess….

We are looking for one of “the Combs” canyons in Southeastern Utah.  This one leads up into the grand Monarch Ruins.

We are not sure today. We have notes and a rough drawn map with some mileage written on it. I have done the math to reverse that mileage, as we came from the other direction. The Buttler Wash Road is just a graded dirt route, not even a good place to take a motorhome, or low sedan. There are several side unmarked two track jeep trails branching off of it. They generally head toward the Comb Ridge, where a significant landmark, or at least a canyon can be seen in the distance. Today, we’re not so sure, but we’ll try the most likely candidate, by my reckoning.

When we arrive at the end of this dirt road, there is no apparent trailhead, but as we are eating a lunch snack, a couple with New Mexico plates pulls up in another slot in the overgrown desert bushes. We slip on some coverings and casually stroll over to ask them if their information shows this as the way to Monarch. They give the affirmative. We are encouraged, but in the back of my mind, I can’t see that they have any resources better than ours. They are going off of an internet website on a cell phone. None the less, we decide to tag along, safe in numbers.

They think that a trail down a steep slippery sandy slope is the route. I’ve seen these slots in the sand made by cattle and have doubts, yet we will allow ourselves to defer to them. They seem to know where they are.

I get more doubts at the bottom of this 20 ft. drop-off. The trail is like a tunnel through the thickets.

When I start to have to bend over, it gets suspiciously like a cattle trail, just at about a cows back’s height. Still, this is better than any route that we have found, so far.

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