Poison Spider Mesa
Our plan was to hit the trail early, do Poison Spider Mesa, Golden Spike and Gold Bar Rim, and then see if we could scout the Rusty Nail trail before heading back to Moab.
We left Moab around 8:00AM after breakfast at the Moab Diner. Ladd stopped to show Bob and Kris the petrographs along the river since they had not seen them before. While stopped, we were passed by eight Jeeps. We caught up with the other Jeeps at the trailhead for Poison Spider Mesa -- they were still airing down, and we kept going and aired down a little later. This was the last we saw of this group. With just two Jeeps in our group we moved pretty fast. We did see a number of ATVs and dirt bikes from time to time.
Ladd lead as he had run the trail before, so that left Bob as tail gunner (with two Jeeps there aren't many choices!). Ladd led through the Waterfall and the Wedgy. Both were fun. We watched some ATVs working their way through the Wedgy and they had a harder time than we did. It must have something to do with the width of the vehicle.
It was dry and pretty warm, and the trail was dry after the rains from two days earlier and so driving was easy. Dust was pretty low because of the earlier rains.
Ladd stopped at the grave of Mary Jane Francis for pictures. We left a few tokens, as had many others before us.
Kris drove part of the way on the trail, the first time she had driven in 4 wheel low. She worked at getting the feel for shifting and such. She spun the Jeep in the sand for fun.
We made very good time on this trail, and figured we were on schedule to hit Golden Spike, Gold Bar Rim and still check out Rusty Nail.
Reports from Other Days: 12
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Poison Spider Mesa. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
