Back Road Adventure

BACK ROAD ADVENTURE Traveling West on the Lonely Roads of the Remote Arizona Strip to Mount Dellenbaugh

On the way to Mount Dellenbaugh, Alan Scott and I broke into song. "Our poor truck has traveled one hot dusty road," we warbled as we descended the Hurricane Cliffs, a 30-mile-long limestone wall that splits the Arizona Strip in two. Behind us the terrace formed by the Uinkaret Plateau stretched back to Tuweap Canyon, a dozen miles away. The Shivwits Plateau, where we were headed, lay west and nearly a thousand feet below. Utah, site of the closest paved road, was north, the Grand Canyon cut across the south, and we were somewhere in between. We caught our first glimpse of Mount Dellenbaugh when we skidded round an especially tight curve near the top of the Hurricane Cliffs. The day was cloudless, as days on the Arizona Strip tend to be in June, so we could easily see the mountain 30 miles away, a lonely cinder cone rising out of a small ponderosa forest, a peak perched on the westernmost part of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. From the Huricane Cliffs, Mount Dellenbaugh looked like a pyramid built to honor the abstract beauty of a world composed entirely of cliffs, mesas, peaks, and rifts.

Not that we had time to enjoy the view. Because the lower Arizona Strip is effectively uninhabited, visitors to it must be self-sufficient. That includes having a backup car in case one breaks down, a distinct possibility in the case of my much-abused truck. Since our partners, Pete Quinlan and his 14-year-old son, Jack, had already reached the sage and grass flats of the plateau beneath the cliffs, we hurried to catch them.

Half an hour later, we met the Quinlans when they stopped to admire an old schoolhouse in the apparently deserted town of Mount Trumbull. Built by Mormon pioneers, the school is being restored one piece at a time by their descendants, most of whom now live in St. George, Utah, more than 50 miles away. Standing in the schoolhouse doorway, surveying the arid, empty country, it was hard to believe enough families had ever lived on the Arizona Strip to support a school. Together again we tried a shortcut to Poverty Mountain and the Hidden Hills. The main road runs north from Mount Trumbull, probably dozens of miles out of our way, whilemaps show a sequence of sec-ondary and tertiary roads that might link to form a direct route west.

Unhappily, we will never know whether such a route exists, for the chain of roads that appeared so logical on our map soon degenerated into a maze of dirt tracks frequented mostly by stray range steers and the cowboys who chase them every few years or so. A couple of hours later, we stumbled across the main road, which we stuck to for the rest of the trip.

Since the main road was easy to follow, Alan and I fell into a road epiphany before long: truck pegged at 40, radio tuned to the only station in St. George, oblivious to all but the way ahead, we were soon mes-merized by the open road. We cruised south to our campsite at Oak Grove, a spot midway be-tween Mount Dellenbaugh and the Grand Wash Cliffs, 10 miles west. It is part of a small oak-juniper-ponderosa forest thatcovers the lower Arizona Strip. Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, a member of John Wesley Powell's second Colorado River expedition, and the first white man to scramble up the mountain he named after himself, had also camped in Oak Grove more than a century before. The Bu-reau of Land Management has an unoccupied field station nearby, and a few stock tanks have been built in the vicinity, but from the looks of it, not many others have stopped there since Dellenbaugh.

Besides simply wanting to see the Arizona Strip, we had come there to hike up Mount Dellenbaugh and also to pedal mountain bikes to the ends of Twin Point and Snap Point, a couple of spurs of the Shivwits Plateau that jut out into the Grand Canyon like peninsulas thrust into a sea of air. We rode out Twin Point the day after we arrived at Oak Grove. Although we got an early start, the end of Twin Point is about 15 miles from our campsite, hence we couldn't avoid riding through the fires of midday.

It was hot enough to sunburn a horned toad by the time we reached the tip of Twin Point. Mild sunstroke amplified the vertigo I always feel on the Rim of the Grand Canyon. Ordinarily I can clear my head by fixing an eye on the horizon, but that trick didn't work at Twin Point. The horizon out there is so outsized, I felt I could fall into it as easily as I could drop into the Canyon. Finally I was reduced to crawling away from both the Rim and the sky. I hid in the shade of a scrubby piñon, where I closed my eyes and drank a quart of water to cool my fevered imagination.

As far as we could tell, there is no potable water available to travelers in the Arizona Strip. In

rhythm like a skier descending a slalom course. With one hand on the wheel and the other hanging out the window, you can comfortably drift around corners, bounce over ruts, skitter across sections corrugated like washboards, yet still keep an eye out for such obstacles as cattle, coyotes, and crows. Or you can putter down the middle of the road on a bike and attend to nothing more compelling than a songbird perched on a weathered fence post. Either way nobody's going to honk at you on the Arizona Strip.

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

Be aware of weather and road conditions, and make sure you and your vehicle are in top shape and you have plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone at home know where you're going and when you plan to return. Topo maps are a must for this trip. Before traveling contact BLM, 390 Ν. 3050 Ε., St. George, UT 84770; (801) 673-3545.