Backpacking in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park

A Broads View of Backpacking in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park

By Amy Brunvand

Salt Creek Backpack, May 14-19, 2024, Cathedral Butte to Needles Campground, 27.4 miles backpacking + side hikes to Angel Arch and various archeological sites.

Amy Brunvand + Dana, Karen, Charley and Celina

For three years I had been trying to line up the right permits for a backpack trip down Salt Creek in Canyonlands National Park. There are only a few reservable backcountry sites, so in order to thru-hike you have to get them in the right order at a time of year that’s not too hot, too buggy or too dark. The stars finally aligned for a five-night trip in May.  I persuaded my sisters Dana and Karen, my daughter Charley and her friend Celina to come with me for what I promised would be an epic adventure.  Coyote Shuttles in Moab dropped us off at the trailhead. “You know you have to walk all the way back to your car,” the driver joked.

Despite the name, Salt Creek is not actually salty.  It’s a year-round freshwater creek making it a rare desert hike where you don’t have to carry tons of water.  It’s also a huge success story for environmental activism. Back in the 1990s, San Juan County tried to claim Salt Creek as an RS2477 highway.*  Off-road vehicles drove in the water on their way to Angel Arch, churning up silt and thrashing through willows. When the National Park Service tried to limit the number of vehicles, San Juan County sued. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) sued back. After more than 16 years of back-and-forth litigation, the courts decided that the park service could close the road permanently to protect the riparian habitat. Jeeps have been gone from Salt Creek for 20 something years now and the water is full of aquatic life.

It wasn’t Charley’s first time backpacking in Salt Creek.  Twenty-one years ago before she could even walk I carried her on a 5 night trip during one of the lulls in off-road traffic.  At the time I was volunteering for SUWA on a project to document the condition of RS2477 road claims so I wanted to see Salt Creek by foot in order to know what we were trying to save.  On that trip we hiked to both Angel Arch and the famous All American Man pictograph, but grown-up Charley couldn’t remember a thing except for a story I told about how baby Charley took off her hat and gleefully threw it over a cliff.

This trip started with a steep descent from Cathedral Butte to our first campsite at #SC2 is located near an old cabin and a spring where ancient people left painted handprints on the rock wall. Dana had not been backpacking for years.  She had an outdated 1980s backpack that seemed much too big for her.  Luckily it proved to be adjustable or she would have been truly miserable.  All of our meals were crammed into mandatory bear jars.  The ranger told us that little desert bears come down from the Abajo mountains to Salt Creek in order to eat prickly pear cactus. The bear jars limited how much food we could cram in, so we had mostly freeze-dried backpacking meals. They taste a lot better if you perk them up with extra cashews, chicken pouches, dried cranberries and such.  We saw a little bit of bear scat, but no bears