Trip Report: Gilad in Canyonlands National Park

Where did you go?

I went to Canyonlands in Utah, specifically, touring and backpacking around Island in the Sky. Canyonlands is one of the newest National Parks and is split into three parts:

• Island in the Sky in the north

• The Maze in the west

• Needles on the east

Canyonlands is a national park that surrounds the confluence where the Green River and the Grand River meet and form the Colorado River.

Why there?

It was an accidental opportunity: a good friend of mine from back in the day now lives in California but was attending a workshop in Salt Lake City. We’ve been planning to go backpacking together for a while and this was a chance to see a place neither one of us planned specifically. With us were also my friend’s partner and a colleague from the workshop (all geologists!) 

Trip details:

Length of trip: four days including driving, three nights outdoors, two days of actual backpacking covering around 19 miles and some small trails around one to two miles.

Weather: Very dry with nice days and very cold nights. No water besides at the ranger station (some frozen streams, but not reliable). Days were in the 40s and nights dropped down into the teens. 

Best moment?

On night 3, we decided to go to the only place in the park where you can car camp to find that it had fire rings, which allowed us a chance to actually sit and look at the amazing night sky without needing to run into our sleeping bags. Since it was so cold at night, we tended to eat our dinners around 6pm and immediately dive into our sleeping bags for warmth.

The fire that we had allowed us to sit, talk, enjoy each other’s company and see the most amazing night sky I’ve seen in a very long time.

Worst moment?

Finally accepting that my 20 degree quilt hasn’t been at this rating in a long time and is now probably good for about 35 degrees. Most nights I was cold but on our 3rd night temps dropped to around 13-14 degrees and I was really, really cold. Time to upgrade my quilt!

Gear MVP?

Since it was so dry, I brought a bunch of water carrying containers for everyone. Among them were a couple of exciting prototypes: a 4L large volume Vecto and a final version of a hard sided bottle we've been working on for a very long time called the ThruBottle, as well as two Vesicas. It was fun to compare the Vesicas and the new ThruBottle since it has been quite a while since I’ve backpacked with a hard sided bottle. 

Having the ability to carry 7 liters of water for a dry overnight comfortably was excellent and very satisfying as I got to truly test some new gear.

Who would you recommend this trip to?

Canyonlands is amazing but is a relatively small national park and usually pretty busy. Going off season allowed us to have it ourselves, backpacking in areas that are usually dominated by off-roaders. I’d highly recommend heading out to that whole area (Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce) off season on a dry year - you truly get the whole place to yourself.

And of course, there's no better place to look at rocks with geologists, so you should find some friends to go with.