Nyswonger Mesa

Having moved Jacqueline and Zyla out to Zion, I was going to have a few lonely weeks before seeing them again. Jeff, the music teacher at Norwood, was down to go for a hike on the weekend. I finally figured out something fun to do after contemplating it for quite some time. We decided to head out to Nyswonger Mesa in Paradox Valley leaving right from the “town” of Bedrock. The trail had no signage and was rather inconspicuous, though we were able to pick it up from the road. It was an old jeep road but would take a rather hearty jeeper to make it up this steep road. The trail climbed immediately gaining 1600 feet in the first 1.5 miles. We were both feeling pretty good and moving well. We were rewarded with a good view of Paradox Valley. We had been fighting weather the whole weekend, but luckily on this day we just had some good shade from the clouds without any moisture. We flattened out after the initial uphill where a series of roads were to lead to a good view. The mesa was very open going from juniper forest to sagebrush. The road was well defined, though we could tell that no one had been there in a while. We had great views of the La Sals as the clouds hung around their summits. Following the road eventually lead us to the corner of the mesa where we could see La Sal Creek and the Dolores River confluence. The end of the road was a good view, but seeing the little point that was slightly higher, we decided to scramble on over. It was not too much work and soon we had a clear view down to the Dolores River canyon. I climbed up on a rock where I could get a good picture as you could see the whole area where Jacqueline, Zyla and I hiked a couple of months ago. We soaked in the view as I looked at the steep slope below thinking that I could make it down to the river. Now it was time to head back. There were still things to find even though we were just returning on the same route that we had come from. There was a lot of old junk. We had already found a bunch of old Prince Albert tobacco cans from the “do you have Prince Albert in a can?” fame. We found some petrified wood also, which Jeff was rather stoked about having not come upon it much. We also found two Pepsi bottles from the 40s indicated by the date on the bottom. I thought about taking them with me, but I decided not to. It was a wise decision as they could only be worth a few pennies. Too many old people who don’t throw anything away. We returned down the steep climb up the mesa to Jeff’s car. Turned out to be a pretty good short hike for a cloudy Sunday that we did not have to drive too far to get to.