Every Victory is Fragile, Every Loss is Catastrophic: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

There are times when I hate perspective. I really do. I came of age in the 1970s during that turbulent time when we as a society realized that we were poisoning ourselves to death, that our air was putrid, that our water was contaminated, and that our lands were not infinite. The Wilderness Act of 1964 was not yet a decade old, and new wilderness areas were being established.. A great battle was fought over the wilderness lands of Alaska, and at least in small ways, one came into the 1980s thinking there was some hope for the future.

The victories were in many ways illusory. Corporations that contributed to pollution of our air and water made changes, yes, and our air and water got cleaner. So much so that in many cases we came to take it for granted (don't ask Flint, Michigan about this). Wilderness areas were established, national monuments were declared, and one could look to a future where these lands would be permanently protected.

The problem with complacency is that often the opposition is not being equally complacent. The very moment a victory was achieved, when another little corner of the country was "saved", those who lost their potential to profit off of national resources began plotting ways to undermine the victories. They knew how to play the long game, so they paid their political bribes and bided their time.

So as I look back on the changes in the last forty years, I start to realize how much we have lost. The rise of population has caused cities to spread into formerly wild lands with horrifying efficiency. Species have been lost and threatened due to loss of habitat world-wide. Old-growth forests continue to be cut down (yes, we need wood, but it can be grown in a sustainable way). And a new threat manifested itself in the thermometers around the planet. Climate change and global warming threaten to overwhelm our ecosystems. So much of the planet's resources are strained to the breaking point. But I hold on to those few places that haven't been paved over, logged, or strip-mined. I find this little bit of hope in the wild places that are left.

And that is what is so depressing about the events in the past couple of weeks. In 1996, President Clinton used his prerogative under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to put a stop to a proposed coal strip-mine on the Kaiparowits Plateau in southern Utah. He established a national monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to protect the plateau as well as the spectacular drainage of the Escalante River, and the unique geologic feature called the Grand Staircase. It was controversial, yes, but it was also farsighted. As geologists and biologists began to assess the resources of the park, they discovered unique treasures. Paleontologists began discovering new dinosaur species as well as a host of other fossilized animals and plants. The uniqueness of this incredible landscape gained wider recognition, and tourists and adventurers tired of the crowds in the small confined parts of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks came to love the wide-open spaces of Grand Staircase-Escalante. The local towns and villages, initially disappointed at the apparent loss of jobs, began to see an uptick in their economies, and employment increased in the tourist trade.

But then catastrophic things happened, culminating in the election of the most environmentally ignorant man ever to hold public office in America. The coal companies, the uranium miners, and the oil drillers had been waiting for the chance to take over the public lands that they wanted for themselves, and they greased the palms of enough politicians to make sure that Donald Trump was convinced to try and rescind the establishment of the monument. There was a sham of an evaluation period that included public comments running 98 to 2 in favor of maintaining the boundaries of the monument. 98%! In a politically divided time, how many issues have the literally unanimous support of our citizens? But it wasn't enough. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said flat out that he would ignore the desires of the American people because the comments were part of a "well-organized campaign". Would it have helped if it wasn't organized?

The vultures in the Trump administration are insisting that they will split the monument into three much smaller units, and delete nearly half of the monument from any protection at all. By some incredible coincidence, the unprotected lands happen to be on the site of that prohibited coal mine, as well as uranium prospects, and potential oil drilling sites. Keep in mind that these sites were ignored and unutilized for a century before Clinton made his proclamation official. But on an even more fundamental level, what justification exists to give over precious public lands, under legal protection for twenty years, over to the profit for a handful of people? Here's a hint: there is none. These lands belong to all of us, and 98% of us say "no".

The attempt by Zinke and Trump to steal our lands, both here at Grand Staircase-Escalante and at Bear's Ears, as well as the other monuments scattered across the country, will be judged in a court of law. One of the lawsuits can be reviewed here. Congress needs to know that we want these lands protected, too. There is an effort to make these changes in the legislature, and that effort needs to fail.

I hope that you will have a chance to see and explore these lands before they are despoiled by economic parasites and vultures. Even more importantly, I hope that you will join the efforts to protect these lands. A good place to start is with any of the parties to the lawsuit listed above. They are included in the article found here. The clothing manufacturer Patagonia deserves credit as well. They have taken a very public stand in favor of the monuments (information here).

In the meantime, please enjoy these images of some of my explorations of the monument.

Vagabonding across the 39th Parallel: Crossing through the Escalante River Country

We woke up in the morning to a beautiful view of Boulder Mountain. The massive high plateau, topping out at over 11,000 feet, is said to be the highest timbered plateau in North America (I wonder if the people near Grand Mesa in Colorado would argue the point). The mountain is capped by thick basalt flows and was extensively glaciated during the ice ages. Black boulders litter the surrounding countryside where melt-swollen rivers dropped them.

For eleven days in July we had been exploring pretty close to the 39th parallel as we journeyed across Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. We were headed back home, and as we drove out of Torrey near Capitol Reef National Park, we had a choice to make: stay on the 39th and head over the high plateaus to Cedar City, or head south into the Escalante Country. More like the 38th parallel.  The title of my ongoing vagabonding series may have to change...

It was really a choice of whether we wanted to rush home, or take a route that would gain us access to one more national monument and two more national parks. For us, a no-brainer. We were out there, we had no appointments back home, and we were still having fun. We drove south on Utah 12, over the high flanks of Boulder Mountain. The road climbed quickly to 9,000 feet, offering some pretty impressive views into the Capitol Reef country and the Henry Mountains.

We climbed a second long ridge, and a wide-ranging view opened up to the south, into one of our nation's newer national monuments, Grand Staircase-Escalante (established in 1996). It's a huge park, covering 1.9 million acres, and as the name suggests, it is a slightly schizophrenic park, too. The eastern end of the park is very different from the western end. The Grand Staircase (western side) is a series of escarpments that reveal something like 270 million years of earth history, from the end of the Paleozoic era to the beginning of the Cenozoic.

The Escalante portion of the park is mostly composed of just a few layers, primarily the Navajo Sandstone. The rock is well cemented, and forms prominent cliffs. The Escalante River and her tributaries have carved an intricate maze of canyons and gullies leading down to the Colorado River and Lake Powell. Some of the high benches and terraces have a combination of good soils and secure water sources, and have been occupied by various peoples over the last two thousand years or so. The most recent one, the little village of Boulder (founded in 1889), was so isolated that it was one of the last settlements in the country to receive mail by mule train (the particular road we were traveling was paved only in 1985). The town is built quite literally on top of the ruins of an Ancestral Pueblo village now preserved as Anasazi State Park.

Beyond Boulder, Highway 12 crosses the Hogsback, a narrow ridge that drops off for hundreds of feet on both sides. There is barely enough room for the two-lane road. The advice on the sign is well considered!

The crossbedded layers of the Navajo Sandstone speak of a vast sand sea during the Jurassic period. The layer is found all across the American West, and reaches thicknesses of 2,000 feet in some places (around 1,300 feet in the Escalante drainage).

In the foreground, the deep canyon of Calf Creek is visible, while the Straight Cliffs loom in the far distance. The plateau is some fifty miles long. It is composed of Cretaceous sediments that formed in a coastal environment with sandy beaches and vast estuaries where coal formed.

Higher up, the Pink Cliffs were visible. The Aquarius Plateau reaches 11,000 feet and contains the youngest of the sedimentary formations making up the stratigraphic column of the Colorado Plateau.

The road descended rapidly into the Calf Creek drainage, and passed the small campground on the valley bottom. There are beautiful waterfalls hidden up these canyons. The Ancestral Pueblo people were here too...we spied a small granary in the cliffs as we reached the Escalante River.

Oh, the Escalante River. It must have been quite the river that carved these deep and intricate slot canyons! We crossed it...here it is.

Of course, I've never seen the river flash-flooding, or in early spring during the snowmelt, or in an ice age. It is truly amazing how much sediment has been removed from this landscape since the Colorado River system was established.

Our road carved a winding path across the eroded sandstone ridges. After several hours we arrived at the village of Escalante. We were a little worried about getting a campsite, so we passed up some scenic state parks: Escalante Petrified Forest, and Kodachrome Basin. If we were at the beginning of our trip, we would have checked out Hole in the Rock or the Kaiparowits Plateau country. But not today...

We made it to our destination: Bryce Canyon National Park. I suppose there was some scenery, but there was a taco bar in the resort that afternoon...first things first...

With our hunger satiated, we grabbed our cameras and headed into the park...

Thanks to Mrs. Geotripper for her many splendid photos in today's post.

Postscript: Seems more than one geoblogger is thinking about Grand Staircase-Escalante in these bleak days of winter: check out this blogpost by Jack at Written in Stone.