Canyonlands National Park News

Below is a news release from one of our long-time friends, Holiday River Expeditions.

Last week, I hiked the indescribably beautiful Chesler Trail in Canyonlands National Park.

If I could recommend only one classic desert mountain bike "tour," I would choose the White Rim loop.

Utah is home to some of the most unique geography in the world. Inside its borders are five different national parks, all of which display parts of the mind-boggling beauty of the red-rock desert in the southern part of the state, known as the Colorado Plateau .

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 End of the road for Salt Creek trial Attorneys for San Juan County and the state of Utah said Friday that they have proven the Salt Creek road in Canyonlands National Park was used continuously by the public from 1949 to 1998 and, therefore, should be open to Jeeps, all-terrain vehicles and other motorized travel.

Tim DeChristopher became convinced last year that global warming 's potential effects were so urgent and dire that direct action was needed.

It's been a 10-day-long bench trial for a judge to hear both sides as to whether a remote road in Canyonlands National Park can be accessed by motorized vehicles.

Closing arguments over the fate of a remote route in Canyonlands National Park turned on who used it and when - and whether that historic use is enough for a local county to claim ownership and allow motorized vehicles to resume.

Since it took millions of years of geologic activity to create what visitors see from the overlook at this Moab-area state park, the human history at the place seems almost insignificant.

Closing arguments in the trial over a disputed route in Canyonlands National Park won't be held until next month.

Willie Holdman's photograph of Angel Arch, with the rest of Canyonlands National Park's Needles District in the background, adorns the cover of the official 2010 Utah Scenic Calendar, on sale now from the Utah Office of Tourism.

The route to Angel Arch is impassible now due to deep pools and quicksand left after repeated summer rainstorms flooded Salt Creek Canyon, but San Juan County and the state of Utah pressed their case all week to open a 10-mile stretch of creek bed in Canyonlands National Park to motorized traffic.

A small Cessna plane sits at the edge of the roadway after making an emergency landing on state Route 211 on Saturday.

Angel Arch in Canyonlands National Park would be cut off to much of the public -- those who couldn't make the rugged 20 mile round-trip hike -- if the National Park Service's closure of the Salt Creek Road is allowed to stand, attorneys for the state and San Juan County argued Monday.

There long have been pockets of disgust over federal land ownership in the West, and perhaps nowhere is that stronger than in Utah, where roughly two-thirds of the landscape is federally managed.

Does a wash constitute a road in a national park? Salt Creek, top photo, long as been mired in litigation over the question.

A small plane made an emergency landing on a highway near the Needles district at Canyonlands National Park in San Juan County on Saturday.

From the National Park Service : Canyonlands National Park preserves a colorful landscape of sedimentary sandstones eroded into countless canyons, mesas and buttes by the Colorado River and its tributaries.

By MIKE STARK Associated Press Writer SALT LAKE CITY - The fate of a remote, dusty corridor leading to one of southern Utah's most spectacular sights will be the focus of a federal trial that starts next week in Salt Lake City.

Art Allen, October 1, 1934-September 4, 2009. He'll be missed. The National Park System lost a strong advocate when Arthur C. Allen passed away on Friday.