Field Trip: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Story and photo by Ken Harrison

Having hiked many places over the last 20 years, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, outside of Escalante, Utah, probably features the most unusual terrain I have ever experienced. There were no thick forests or glacier-touched mountains, no maintained trails or signs pointing us in any particular direction—just a vastness of otherworldly beauty, with miles and miles of Navajo Sandstone covering the landscape in all kinds of shapes, textures, and colors.

A husband/wife team guided our 12 hiking club members to places not published in any hiking book or documented on the web. We hiked 11 miles our first day, looking out over thousands of acres of beauty, and didn’t encounter one other person along the route! ANW