Canyoneering

The Battle for The Bears Ears, Part V: A Personal View

This is the fifth and final installment of a series of articles examining protection of Cedar Mesa and the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. On my first day as a ranger I climbed the Bears Ears. Visible more than 100 miles away from my home in New Mexico, they stood like two beacons above the desert, […]

The Battle for The Bears Ears, Part IV: The Trouble With Archaeology

This is the fourth installment of a series of articles examining protection of Cedar Mesa and the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. When it comes to protecting the land, archaeology is the problem from hell. Ruins deteriorate and crumble away, vulnerable to animal disturbance, erosion, and weathering. Looters and vandals can destroy sites just as […]

The Battle for The Bears Ears, Part III: Road Wars

This is the third installment of a series of articles examining protection of Cedar Mesa and the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. On Christmas Day of 1879, George B. Hobbs gazed out over Cedar Mesa to contemplate his fate. Along with three other scouts from the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition, Hobbs found himself without food, on a […]

The Battle for The Bears Ears, Part II: The End of Obscurity

This is the second installment of a series of articles examining protection of Cedar Mesa and the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. In his 1996 book In Search of the Old Ones, adventure writer David Roberts described stumbling across Moon House, which he called “The most striking Anasazi ruin I had ever seen”: I had […]

Bears Ears National Monument Map

Bears Ears National Monument is a new national monument in southeast Utah, named for the centrally located Bears Ears Peaks. President Obama signed the monument into law on December 28th 2016. The national monument has many wilderness study areas and consists primarily of unprotected BLM land, used heavily by everyone from hikers and backpackers to the […]

Map of Cedar Mesa

Cedar Mesa is home to the well-explored Grand Gulch as well as many other lesser-known canyons filled with Anasazi ruins, artifacts, and artwork. The area is basically a museum without the hours, fees, and glass cases. At least for now. Cedar Mesa could become part of a huge and heavily-contested proposed national monument in Southeast […]

The Black Hole of White Canyon

Most of us have a list of exotic, dangerous, ambitious, and even mysterious items we want to do before we kick the proverbial bucket. On a recent trip to explore the canyons of Cedar Mesa in southeast Utah, I was able to cross one trip off: the notorious Black Hole of White Canyon. We were […]