Unlike humans, Nature makes few mistakes. For the last piece of this post, I will shift from people’s slipups to Nature’s brilliant flukes as I cover our interactions with Goblin Valley’s remarkable figures of contorted stone.

After our investigation of Temple Mountain and short peek at Goblin Valley, my parents joined us for dinner at Duke’s in Hanksville. We followed that meal up with another at Duke’s the next morning. There ain’t nothing wrong with having chicken fried steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Duke’s is a solid place to eat if you find yourself near Hanksville. With our bellies bursting, we headed for the hills… well, valleys.

Goblin Valley State Park encompasses nearly 4,000 acres of some of the most bizarre terrain you’ll find on Epsilon Gorniar II. Unlike other parks, it contains only a handful of official trails. Otherwise, you are on your own to wander, climb, and explore. Unfortunately, it’s no longer an isolated secret. These days, Goblin Valley State Park often receives an intense influx of tourists between 11:00 and 3:00, at least on weekends. If there are no open parking spots, staff won’t let any more cars in until some become available. To avoid this, we arrived at 10:00 AM, a successful approach. If visiting, I’d recommend you do the same.

We scrambled around for almost eight hours, crawling into holes and over hoodoos. After poking around First Valley for a while, which is the valley closest to the parking lot, we wandered to the Second Valley of Goblins. It contained significantly less people. Back in its remoter regions, we saw no one. Second Valley looked a little different than First Valley. Probably due to its relative narrowness, water had etched deeper paths through its sandy bottom. The hoodoos seemed hewn of rougher stuff with thin jagged pieces of a lighter rock protruding regularly from their surfaces. Apparently, there is also a third valley, but we didn’t make it that far, which is too bad because I’m sure it was deserted.

My parents left in the late afternoon, and the rest of us hiked to the Goblin’s Lair and the Goblette’s Lair. The Goblin’s Lair is a natural 70-foot sandstone cavern that was formed when part of a slot canyon collapsed. One of its skylights can be used to rappel 90 feet to the cavity’s bottom. We didn’t enter that way, but the non-dangling entrance still tested my bouldering skills. Thankfully, Jason was there to assist my squat legs on those massive slabs. His lack of claustrophobia also came in handy. He took the kids exploring in a tiny tunnel that leads off the main chamber. They clambered through that channel for about 100 feet until he decided a tight spot requiring an army crawl was a great place to turn around.

The Goblette’s Lair, a much smaller hollow, we found far less impressive, but as it is only a short trek from Goblin’s, why not.

By the time we finished hitting all the gremlin hideouts, we were a little pooped. I’ll admit, my thighs were quite tender the next day. Plus, my knee was still displeased. As the proverb goes, “A sore body pairs perfectly with fine memories.” Man, those sagacious proverb writers really know their stuff.

From professors to goblins, our extended weekend was full of unusual characters, and most of them weren’t even family members. Humans’ idiocies were contrasted with Nature’s wondrous creations, curiosity was satisfied, and knees were dissatisfied. Outdoor outing extravaganza perfection!

My family arrived in the Goblin Valley area in a staggered fashion. After Jason and I concluded our short exploration of Bell’s end, we met up with some of them and took a trip to the temple.

The group checked out the Temple Mountain Wash Pictograph Panel in route to Temple Mountain. This panel was originally more than eight feet tall and over a hundred feet long. It includes pictographs in both Fremont and Barrier Canyon Style making sections of it over 1000 years old. So, naturally, some numbskull decided to use it for shooting practice. The bullet marks scarring sections of its surface were a testament to the irresponsible stupidity of humans, but they weren’t the only reminders we received that afternoon.

At 1,200 feet, Temple Mountain is the highest point in the San Rafael Reef, the eastern edge of the San Rafael Swell. It has two peaks divided by a saddle. While the mountain is beautiful, its most intriguing components don’t lie above but beneath.

Miners sought out vanadium, radium, and uranium at Temple Mountain beginning in 1914. Extraction continued off and on until the 1920s. Then, with the nuclear boom during the Cold War, mining recommenced and escalated. Between 1948 and 1956, the Temple Mountain area produced 261,000 tons of uranium ore containing 1,287,000 pounds of triuranium octoxide, AKA yellowcake, and 3,799,000 pounds of vanadium pentoxide. Mining decreased after 1956 but continued until at least the mid-sixties.

What became of those mines and their associated shafts? Apparently, nothing. The Utah DNR has closed 203 mine openings at Temple Mountain in the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program since 2002. Even with those efforts, some cavities clearly remain as we came upon an unmarked shaft that dropped about 30 feet. We also encountered one intact steel tower that appeared to be patiently awaiting a reopening as it slowly deteriorated. It stood over an exposed shaft with only sparse bars to prevent a human from stumbling in. We dropped a rock down, and it took 2.5 seconds to hit the bottom. That’s a fall of about 100 feet if my calculations are accurate.

Over the course of nearly three and a half hours, we only made it about four miles because we stopped to examine so many things. We were amazed how much mining equipment and miner’s junk were just left to rot and rust. Besides headframes and other mining standards, we came across ovens, fridges, mattress springs, building foundations, vehicles, shoes, piles of oxidized cans, and even tubes of electrical paste. Since these leftovers were more than 50 years old, they held historical interest and captured our curiosity. However, it was impossible to ignore the carelessness involved. Obviously, mining companies abruptly departed leaving hazardous holes perforating the ground and unsightly scrap everywhere. Sometimes I’m disgusted by my species!

Afterward, we stopped by Goblin Valley State Park and let the kids run around in hollows and on hoodoos for about an hour. It was only a preview of what they would be enjoying the next day. Even with that sampling, no cranny or alcove was repeated at any point during our visit. In Goblin Valley, it’s difficult to return to a precise spot even when you aim to.

The final day of our outing was all about exploring Goblin Valley’s misshapen rock stubs and spacious caverns that were certainly no mistakes of Nature. I will cover these perfect oddities next time.

Jason and I are Moab junkies. Last spring, we decided to create an outdoor outing extravaganza by combining a visit to Moab with a visit to Goblin Valley. We also opted to invite some family members to join us for the Goblin Valley portion. All the above were excellent decisions. Others made regarding this vacation were perhaps less prudent, and some of humanity’s missteps witnessed during these travels even more so. I’ll get to those soon while covering the trip’s plentiful, mysterious slots and silhouettes.

Moab was the first stop on our destination circuit. Jason and I made it into town with just enough time to complete the short Sorrel Ridge Trail before dark, which is 1.8 miles in total. Sorrel Ridge, unsurprisingly, is a ridge overlooking the winding Colorado River. We found the views lovely in all directions and the desert wildflowers prolific on this easy trek. As I had injured my knee snowboarding only five days earlier and had an acute case of patellar bursitis, my knee was not in agreement with the rest of my body about the difficulty of this activity. Stepping up or downhill was not pleasant. Of course, patellar objections didn’t deter me in any way.

After getting some overdue sleep to counteract a couple crazy weeks, we headed into Mary Jane Slot Canyon the next day on the Professor Creek Trail. Professor Creek originates in the La Sals and travels to the Colorado River passing through Mary Jane on its way. The Professor Creek Trail follows that stream’s flow through Mary Jane. The majority of the canyon isn’t too constricted, but a section of it narrows to just 10 feet with walls towering over 100 feet. Amidst these confines, a 30-foot waterfall drops over a bulky chokestone. That waterfall was our destination and is the end of the hikeable portion of Mary Jane.

Reviews of this 8.4-mile route said hikers should be prepared to get their feet wet in multiple creek crossings. If by “multiple” the writers meant exactly 180, they were correct. Am I exaggerating? No, I literally mean there are 90 crossings each way adding up to 180 in total. Since temperatures reached the low 80s that day, those dips were mostly welcomed, except near the waterfall. There, we lingered too long relishing the echoing surge while the shade from the lofty walls and chill from the cool water dropped our internal thermostats to uncomfortable levels.

It took us about 5.5 hours to complete this trek. Apparently, most people take less than four, but we didn’t mind achieving slowpoke status, especially with injuries considered. For though it handled this long, flat hike better than our quick climb the night before, my unhappy knee turned bright red in patches from the activity. I thought maybe I had somehow found some poison ivy, but Jason theorized the blotches were related to the swelling. As the rest of my body showed no hints of a toxic interaction, Jason was probably right.

The next morning, it was time for a change in scenery and weather. Instead of 82 degrees, we got 61 degrees and 28 MPH winds. We left Moab in a rainy state and headed to Farnsworth Canyon near Goblin Valley State Park. Unfortunately, the storm did the same.

We chose Farnsworth Canyon because its slot section is limited, unlike many other trails in the area. With the rest of the canyon a low flash-flood risk, we believed we were selecting a path wisely. As the precipitation was supposed to stop by the time we started our hike, we assumed slot thoughts were only a secondary precaution. However, neither the timing nor terrain went as expected.

As anticipated, the clouds cleared, and the sunshine returned as we neared Farnsworth’s trailhead… and then the clouds came back about half an hour later. Just minutes after their arrival, thunder began regularly interrupting the tranquility with demanding crashes. Did I mention that this whole hike travels through a wash? While only a small section is confined enough to be potentially deadly during a flash flood, the wash looked like it had seen an outpouring mere hours before. I wasn’t keen on being caught in a surprise gush of water, fatal or otherwise, or, alternatively, serving as a lightning rod. Thus, what would have been a peaceful ramble turned into an unnerving march.

Constantly watching for signs of an approaching flood proved tiring. We thought about turning around several times but pressed on to see the Sunrise and Shadow Panel. One section of this panel doesn’t get nearly as much sun exposure and is therefore much better preserved than the other part. It gives you an appreciation for UV’s capacity to erase over time, but it does require some rock scrambling to see well. By the time we returned to the main route after viewing the pictographs, the thunder had dissipated. With the threat level reduced, we decided to go a little farther. We ended up doing the whole stick of the trail’s lollypop but not the lollypop itself.

We hiked 4.15 miles with me nervous for about four of those. Farnsworth’s slot section only lasts about 0.2 miles. Most days, we would have lamented its brevity; on this occasion, we praised Hephaestus. During our return, the weather being what it was, we practically ran through that segment completing it in four minutes. Clusters of tree branches perched high on boulders testified of the power of water as we hurried through, a power we were not keen on immersing ourselves in. Our omnipresent anxiety did nothing to keep us warm though. Despite the fretting, we had to wear two jackets most of the time and ended up with beanies and gloves on as well. I’d love to do this path again without overflow and amperage on my mind.

The next day, Jason and I hiked a small portion of Bell Canyon while we awaited the arrival of family members. We did about a mile and a half total, just enough to get into the real beginnings of Bell, wind around a bit, and appreciate what we wouldn’t have time for. We will certainly be going back to Bell and Little Wild Horse Canyons, which connect to form an alluring loop.

That concluded the confined portion of our trip. Afterwards, the landscapes expanded, at least above ground, and all the risk went below the water table. Likewise, our scrutiny of questionable human decisions expanded beyond those made by our group. Be privy to that scrutiny as we visit the holey temple in my next post.