Dry Bench

On Wednesday we took a road out of the monument and into national forest land up Indian Gulch, with the goal of hiking a trail that eventually makes its way up onto a ridge. The road itself becomes impassable at a washout, so we parked there and continued on foot. The hike ended up being about 3.5 miles in with 1000+ elevation gain, a lot of which was at the end.

At one point the road faded out at a steep washout so we started hiking in the wash, which actually contained a small stream. The bushwhacking became nearly impossible, but luckily we found the old road again running above us, which soon ended at a spring that someone had tried to contain to transport in a pipe (bits of that pipe are visible for miles in the roadbed) and the official trail continues from there. The trail heads up Stair Canyon, and as we gained altitude we started to see large pine trees, oak trees and eventually even Douglas firs. Some of them being on shelves high up the sides of the cliff! In the sandy wash near the point where the trail headed up the hillside we spotted huge footprints (bear or cougar?). We gained several hundred feet in the last 1/2 mile and had a nice view, but not the view back into the monument that we were kind of expecting. The transition from sage/rabbit brush through large trees to manzanita and cactus on the ridge top was a very cool experience.Read more