Fisher
Towers Trail
Distance:
4.2 miles (round trip)
Walking
time: 2 1/2 hours
Elevations:
650 ft. gain/loss
• Fisher
Towers Trailhead (start): 4,740 ft.
• viewpoint:
5,390 ft.
Trail:
Popular, easy to follow trail
Season:
Spring, summer, fall, winter. There may
be some snow on the trail during the winter
months. This area is very hot in the summer
months and there is no water, so be sure
to carry some. For current conditions call
the Grand Resource Area, Bureau of Land
Management, in Moab at (801) 259-6111.
Vicinity:
Near Moab
Few
of natures geologic creations are more bizarre
to look at than Utah’s Fisher Towers.
About a dozen of the strange monoliths stand
near the Colorado River east of Moab, grouped
together like petrified skyscrapers from
some prehistoric city. The brick-red sandstone
skyscrapers rise abruptly from the desert
floor, while a network of gullies and canyons
form the city’s avenues and boulevards
below. The residents of this weird metropolis
are an endless collection of goblins and
gargoyles frozen in the canyon walls beneath
the towers.
The Fisher
Towers have long been objects of fascination
among rock climbers, and on holidays and
weekends you are likely to see a few of
the human spiders here. The trail passes
by the bases of a half dozen of the sandstone
monoliths, including the 900-foot Titan,
and finally ends on the crest of a ridge
commanding a spectacular view of the Towers.
If you are interested in photographing them
try to be at the viewpoint about half an
hour before sunset, when the low western
sun inflames the spires’ reddish hue
and striates them with deep shadows.
The Titan,
largest of the Fisher Towers, remained unclimbed
until the 1960s when a team of three Colorado
climbers, sponsored by the National Geographic
Society, made an assent to the top. On his
impressions at the top of the 900-foot pinnacle,
team member Huntley Ingalls wrote:
"It
was a strange, awesomely isolated place,
a flat, rough area of bare orange sandstone
about 70 feet long and 40 feet wide. Its
boundary was the free air. It overhung
the body of the tower below it, which
plunged in rippling bulges and converging
fluted ribs to the distant desert floor." (National
Geographic Magazine, November, 1962)
From
the campground the trail first drops down
to cross a small dry wash, and then winds
its way back to the Towers. For the next
two miles it proceeds in a general southerly
direction along the tower bases, meandering
in and out of a succession of arroyos, but
never straying far from the Towers. The
entire length of the trail is decorated
with an enormous variety of rock art, sculpted
by the wind and the rain from the soft red
sandstone, and it is in large part this
spectacle that makes the hike so delightful.
The last major
tower on the route is the Titan, which the
trail passes after about 1.5 miles. After
passing the Titan the path veers southwest
onto a long ridge from which you will be
rewarded with a majestic view of the Towers.
The most common assent route up the Titan
is on the south side, the side nearest to
the viewpoint.
The ridge
at the end of the trail also offers a fine
view of Castle Rock and the Priest and Nuns,
about six miles to the southwest. Confusingly,
there is also another formation which the
USGS Fisher Tower map calls Titan Tower
about 1.2 miles northeast of the viewpoint.
The tower that most locals know as the Titan,
however, and the one scaled by the National
Geographic team is the one near the trail.
Content
provided by David
Day of utahtrails.com. Click here to
order his book Utah's
Favorite Hiking Trails.
