The Curtain
We love the badlands around Farmington partly because they are out in the middle of nowhere, and we often don't see another person all day. Bisti Wilderness has no trails. You just wander around looking for bizarre formations. But Bisti does have signs on the main highway to show you how to get there and two developed parking lots with signs at the "trailheads."
Today, we checked out a new badlands area called Ah-shi-sle-pah. It not only had no trails, it also had no signage on the highway. And I use the term "highway" with reservations since Highway 57 was just another dirt road. It also had no developed parking lot. A double track left the highway and people park on a small grassy knoll that has been packed down by usage. If I didn't have the coordinates from Google Earth, we would have NEVER found Ah-shi-sle-pah.
From the parking area, we saw nothing but range land
in all directions. The only clue that there could be "anything out there" was a mile-wide wash off in the distance.
The double track that used to lead to a parking area right next to the wash is now blocked off and vehicular travel is prohibited.
That added another mile each way to our hike.
While doing the research on the Internet, I found three areas in Ah-shi-sle-pah that I want to hike. Today, we hiked The Curtain area. I found the formation on Google Earth and created a route to load into our GPS. Unlike Bisti, the Ah-shi-sle-pah hike didn't begin in a wash. Instead, we hiked the now-closed double track over a high-plateau grassland down to the edge of the wash. After a couple of tries, we found a route down to the bottom of the wash. Most of formations along the wash were variations on the toadstool theme. They came in all sizes, shapes, and offered several color variations. As we hiked up the wash toward The Curtain, we checked out the side canyons for more surprises.
We had no problem finding The Curtain. We recognized it easily as we hiked up the main wash. Although it was our main destination, the entire area around The Curtain was very interesting. Most of the ground and pedestals were light sand-colored, while the balanced rocks on top were rust-colored. One giant slab of sandstone in the middle of the wash had a pedestal that was massive and must have been three feet tall. I would have thought the first large flash flood would have eroded the pedestal and toppled the balanced slab on top. It's probably been there thousands of years.
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| The Curtain | Survivor |
Rain clouds seemed to hover at the east end of the badlands all afternoon, but they never crept into our area. Since we were over two miles from the Explorer and we had 18 miles of dirt road to get back to civilization, we appreciated the clouds holding off.
Although the light was much better as we hiked back up the wash, we only made a couple of stops because we wanted to get back to the Explorer before it got dark. My favorite stop was "The Small Mushroom Patch." The lighting and shadows added depth and interest to a shot that looked flat only a couple of hours earlier.
We returned to the Explorer just after sunset and watched the full moon rise on the way back to the paved highway. The rest of the time, we dodged jack rabbits trying to cross the road. We couldn't drive 1/4 mile without seeing more jack rabbits. We managed to miss them all, although there was one close call.
We both agreed that Ah-shi-sle-pah was worth visiting, but it didn't have nearly the variety or concentration of interesting features that Bisti has.
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