Chesler
Park
Distance:
17.0 miles (loop)
Walking
time:
day
1: 6 3/4 hours
day
2: 6 hours
Elevations:
1,400 ft. gain/loss
• Elephant
Hill Trailhead (start): 5,120 ft.
• Chesler Park:
5,600 ft.
• Druid Arch:
5,740 ft.
Trail:
This is almost entirely a slickrock trail, with
stone cairns marking the way. The terrain is very
rugged and you will be continually climbing over
and around obstacles; hence the trail seems longer
than it really is.
Season:
Spring, early summer, and fall. This is one hike
you probably won’t want to do in July or
August. There is very little water or shade, and
daytime summer temperatures are nearly always
over 100 oF. Winter hikes are possible, but the
high desert is often cold at night. For current
conditions call the Canyonlands National Park
Headquarters in Moab at (801) 259-7164.
Vicinity:
Canyonlands National Park, Needles District, near
Moab
If
you can stand the high desert temperatures, the
Needles District of Canyonlands is a hiker's paradise.
The needles themselves are the main attraction.
Carved by the wind and the rain from the multicolored
Cedar Mesa Sandstone, they present a startling
array of spires and pinnacles that rise from the
slickrock like a forest of sandstone trees. Some
parts of the trail wind torturously through the
stone towers and canyons, forcing hikers to negotiate
one obstacle after another.
Deep inside the
rugged needles country lies an unexpected refuge
of gentle grassland. This is Chesler Park-a flat,
circular-shaped meadow about a mile in diameter,
almost completely surrounded by the sandstone
needles. There are three designated camping areas
on the perimeter of the meadow, and one could
hardly ask for a more beautiful place to spend
a night or two. There are also several other interesting
things to see within an easy walk of Chesler Park,
including an impressive natural arch and a small
Anasazi Indian ruin. The one drawback that prevents
Chesler from being a perfect hiking destination
is the unavailability of water. The nearest reliable
spring is two miles away in Elephant Canyon, so
you will have to carry most of your water with
you.
Day
1
The route from Elephant
Hill Trailhead to Chesler Park is only about 3.3
miles long, depending on which camp site you use.
The trail is almost entirely across slickrock,
marked by stone cairns. There is a great deal
of up and down, and this makes the distance seem
greater than it actually is. There are three junctions
with intersecting trails along the way, but the
route is clearly marked with signs at each junction
so there shouldn’t be any confusion as to
which way to turn. After 2.8 miles the trail emerges
from behind a row of needles to give you your
first view of the northern side of Chesler.
Once you reach Chesler
Park you should decide where you are going to
camp so you can shed your packs. The Park Service
allows camping in three places along the eastern
edge of the meadow, but, in my opinion, the southeastern
camp sites have the most to offer. To reach this
area continue south from the last trail junction,
along the eastern side of the park, until you
meet another trail coming in from Elephant Canyon.
Turn right here, onto the Joint Trail, and soon
you will pass by the southern side of a rocky
island in the center of the park. The camping
area (marked by signs) is along the southwestern
side of the island. The western side of this rock
island was also a popular camping area for cowboys
who ran cattle in Chesler Park from the late 1800s
until the early 1960s. You can still see the remains
of their camp just north of the backpackers camping
area.
After you have established
a camp site, leave your backpacks behind and check
out the Joint Trail. Continue walking west from
the camping area along the main trail for about
0.8 mile, where you will find a long, narrow flight
of stone stairs that lead down into a dark, slender
crack in the sandstone. The trail continues through
the bottom of the three-foot crack, called a “joint”
by oldtimers, for some 300 yards before emerging
once again at the top of the slickrock. The Chesler
Park hike is full of surprises, but for many the
joint is the most exciting part of the trip.
Soon after emerging
from the joint you will cross the dry streambed
of Chesler Canyon and meet a jeep trail coming
down from Elephant Hill. You will have to walk
north along the jeep trail for a short distance
to reconnect with the Chesler Park Trail and complete
the loop back to your camp site. The sides of
Chesler Canyon, through which the sandy road winds,
are lined with hundreds of stone needles. Like
giant terrestrial pin cushions, even the hills
surrounding the canyon are packed with clusters
of needles. After 0.7 mile on the jeep road you
will see another sign marking the departure of
the trail to Chesler Park. Turn right here and
then right again at the next trail junction. Finally,
1.9 mile from the road you will again arrive at
the northeast corner of Chesler Park.
Day
2
After breaking camp
you should leave Chesler via the southeast exit
to Elephant Canyon. About 0.2 mile before you
arrive at Elephant Canyon you will have the opportunity
to see an Anasazi Indian ruin. The ruin is a few
hundred feet below the trail, in the bottom of
a small canyon on the north side. You can’t
see the ruin from the trail itself, but just above
the site there is a place where previous hikers
have left the main path to walk to a viewpoint
only 15 feet away that looks directly down onto
it.
There is another
trail junction in the bottom of Elephant Canyon.
The northern path leads back to Elephant Hill
where your car is parked. But before going back
you should take off your backpacks and make a
side trip to Druid Arch, 1.8 miles south of the
junction at the head of Elephant Canyon. You will
probably see a few scattered water holes in the
creek bed as you make your way up the canyon.
This is one of the few places in the area where
you can usually obtain water-a useful thing to
know if you plan to spend more than one night
in Chesler Park.
Druid Arch itself
is extremely impressive. It stands high on the
mesa top above Elephant Canyon, with nothing but
blue sky behind it. The appearance of the huge
arch reminds many people of Stonehenge in southern
England, hence its name. (The Druids are the people
who built Stonehenge.) In her book, Desert
Quartet, Terry Tempest Williams shares with
us her first impression of Druid Arch:
Druid Arch
"Red
Rock. Blue sky. This arch is structured metamorphosis.
Once a finlike tower, it has been perforated
by a massive cave-in, responsible now for the
keyholes where wind enters and turns. What has
been opened, removed, eroded away, is as compelling
to me as what remains. Druid Arch-inorganic
matter-rock rising from the desert floor as
a creation of time, weathered, broken, and beautiful."
(Desert Quartet, Pantheon Books,
New York, 1995)
The
best time to see Druid Arch is in the morning.
The trail ends at a magnificent viewpoint high
on the east side of Elephant Canyon where, on
most days, the arch is bathed in the morning sunlight.
From the Chesler
Park trail junction, where you left your backpacks,
the trail back to Elephant Hill continues down
the bottom of Elephant Canyon for another 1.4
miles before reaching the trail used on the first
day to reach Chesler Park. From that junction
it is another 1.9 miles back to the Elephant Hill
Trailhead.
Alternative
Routes
As the map suggests,
there are many alternative routes for this hike.
In my opinion it would be a shame to visit the
area without (1) spending at least one night in
Chesler Park, (2) experiencing the Joint Trail,
and (3) seeing Druid Arch; and the route I have
suggested will allow you to do those things with
a minimum amount of walking. If you have the time,
however, I suggest you begin your hike at the
Squaw Flat Campground rather than Elephant Hill,
and spend two nights in Chesler Park (see map
on page 211). Doing so will add 2.1 miles to the
outbound distance, and 2.7 miles (via Big Spring
Canyon) to the return distance. The section of
trail between Elephant Canyon and Big Spring Canyon
is particularly interesting, with another cave-like
crack to walk through and two strategically placed
ladders to negotiate.
Virginia
Park
If you fancy yourself
an explorer, I will leave you with a final thought.
Chesler Park isn’t the only desert Shangrila
in Canyonlands. Only a mile southeast of Chesler
there lies another smaller, but equally beautiful
grassy meadow: Virginia Park. Virginia Park is
so well protected by a surrounding wall of sandstone
that its isolation is nearly complete, and for
that reason it is considered to be a very special
place by the Park Service. It is one of the few
places on the Colorado Plateau that was never
grazed by cattle or sheep, and, consequently,
its plant life is still in a nearly pristine state.
For botanists and ecologists Virginia Park has
great scientific value and the Park Service is
striving to maintain it in its original state;
hence it has been closed to hikers. There is no
marked trail leading to it, but possible routes
into the park exist from Elephant Canyon and Chesler
Canyon. If you succeed in finding your way to
Virginia Park, please do not defile it in any
way. Be especially careful not to damage the cryptogamic
plant life that exists in the park’s dry,
undisturbed soil.
Content
provided by David
Day of utahtrails.com. Click here to order
his book Utah's
Favorite Hiking Trails.
