Another premier day hike in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. We have hiked many places in Grand Staircase Escalante, but there are tons more to explore. This National Monument is HUGE! We have been to Utah hiking trip (one trip is 2-4 weeks) now 3 times and I feel I would never finish all the hikes there even if I hike every day for the rest of my life. When I went to Utah second time, my coworker said that I had already been there. Yes that is the normal response. In reality, Utah is too large to explore enough.
We have enjoyed many day hikes and backpacking in Grand Staircase Escalante and I wrote about these below blog entries. I looked back my blog and I realized again how exciting the Grand Staircase Escalante is. This area is really unique and every time I am there I always feel as if I was on the different planet or somewhere unreal world.
Upon completion of 2024 Winter Utah hiking trip, I will be adding several more entries for this Grand Staircase Escalante series. First one is this entry. Cosmic Ashtray was on the backup hike list of last year, 2023 Winter Utah trip, but we saved for another time. Since we decided to come back to Utah again, we tried it.
To go to the trailhead, from Highway12, turn into Old Sheffield Road. It is dirt road, but not bad. Out and back hike with 7.6 mils total. It starts with sandy trail, then soon it becomes slick rocks. Sometimes cairns can be seen, but not always. Without GPS, the Cosmic Ashtray is very likely to be missed, because it is just behind a typical rock and nothing prompts a hiker to check it out behind it. But wow once you see behind the rock, an extremely unusual monument suddenly appears. Really really cool, isn't it?
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| Cosmic Ashtray |
Is it blown water or sand or mud? To figure out, I threw a small stone and found the stone stayed on the surface. I don't know how muddy on the day we were there, but it seemed just sand. In fact, we went around and saw the monument from the other side (below picture, another with red circled marks), we realized small curved steps on the last part of the vertical rock. I pasted a zoomed picture below. I looked up on the internet later and found that some people go down to the sandy portion with rope. However, it is sketchy without rope (and even with rope it is not sure) and I am happy to enjoy the monument with smooth sandy surface without any footsteps!
Those curved rocks are found in Utah area made by Native American Anasazi but the curving here was way too big for Anasazi and clearly done by modern climbers. Anasazi's steps, called Moki steps are really small and minimal required curves (amazing how everything was minimal considering them not having any modern climbing gears).
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| Cosmic Ashtray |
I liked the view from both sides. I probably prefer the first one, because the viewpoint is much lower than the second one. Importantly, this hike is not only for the Cosmic Ashtray. The view on the way is all fantastic. Full day of view-packed day.
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| view! |
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