Deep in the wilds of Utah

Most people wouldn't consider "Desert Death March #9" to be an inviting name for their vacation itinerary. But for two "desert rats" hellbent for adventure, this was a fun and fitting title for a daring cross-country backpacking trip in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, this past April.

My companion on the trip was Ted Greenwald, senior editor of Wired magazine and a long-time friend.

Ted and I had done eight previous "death marches" in years past-exploring hundreds of miles of desert wilderness in California, Arizona and Texas-but this trip to Utah's Moab Desert would be by far the most ambitious and dangerous.

Our plan was to traverse the northwest extent of a geologic formation known as the Waterpocket Fold, an area so rugged and remote that no park official recalled ever before issuing a backcountry permit to visit it. There were no trails in the area.

The Waterpocket Fold is a highly eroded wrinkle in the Earth's crust that extends for a hundred miles across South-Central Utah. Dominated by deeply cut canyons flanked by sheer cliffs and spectacular rock spires and domes, the Fold affords very few known passages through its maze-like sprawl to the high-elevation interior of the park.

Most routes that look possible on topographic maps are dead ends, blocked at some point by rock palisades or dry waterfalls over thirty feet high.

Ted and I planned to punch through the Fold not once but twice, hiking a 42-mile loop in seven days. But topography wouldn't be our only challenge.

There was only one potential water source along our entire route - located at the midpoint, in Spring Canyon - and we were told it could be dry. We would have to travel carrying five gallons of water between us, boosting our pack weights to over 60 pounds each. To be safe, we also buried an emergency water cache along a road that was four miles beyond Spring Canyon.

After burying the cache, we drove our rented SUV across the unbridged Fremont River and then for another 15 miles along primitive dirt routes to the starting point for our backpacking trip.

Hoisting our packs, we headed out across the barren Moab moonscape known as Lower South Desert, battling sandstorms whipped up by 60 mph winds. Jailhouse Rock and Temple Rock, two isolated rock spires rising hundreds of feet above the windswept desert floor, loomed before us like lost stage sets from a Lord of the Rings sequel gone horribly awry.

After crossing Lower South Desert, we hiked up Deep Canyon, left slack-jawed by views of its red, pink and gray palisades towering a thousand feet above us. We made our camp that night in a secluded basin nestled on the edge of the Waterpocket Fold. The temperature dropped to a brisk 19 degrees Fahrenheit that night.

The following couple of days of travel can hardly be put into words. Parts of the route more closely resembled a mountain climb than a backpacking trip, as we scrambled our way into and out of impossibly beautiful white and orange canyons, past sweeping red amphitheaters and natural rock arches, and around the bases of huge rock domes at the heads of unnamed basins. Our song was the ever-present Moab wind. Our lifelines were our maps, compass, GPS receivers and altimeters.

On the third day of our trip, we made the vertigo-inducing downclimb into Spring Canyon, dropping 500 vertical feet in the last tenth of a mile. To our relief, Spring Creek was flowing, if just barely a dribble.

A couple days later, we climbed out of Spring Canyon with fresh stores of water to tackle the second half of our loop route. After two days of jigsaw-puzzle navigation over broken plateaus, along knife-edge ridges and down forgotten canyons, we clawed our way out of a multi-hued bentonite canyon and camped on top of an expansive overlook.

A panoramic view of Lower South Desert, with Jailhouse Rock standing guard in the distance, lay stretched out below us like a soft salmon-colored carpet in the fading sunlight. We had made it through the Fold.

Michael Cooper is an avid outdoorsman and a longtime Sisters resident. He works in the music industry.