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The Needles

This Tour Comes From...

An image of the book: National Geographic Guide to the Lewis and Clark Trail

National Geographic's Guide to the Lewis and Clark Trail

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Unless you’re camping, you’ll probably be driving from Moab, 1.5 hours away, or Monticello, an hour away. Utah 211 enters at Squaw Flat, a grassy park studded with juniper and pinyon pines. The Needles area covers a lattice of canyons, flat-bottomed valleys called grabens, arches, and spectacular sandstone walls notched by spires and columns. To the north, Island in the Sky and Junction Butte stand silhouetted against the horizon. CONTINUED

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Rain pools in small craters at the park.

Photograph © David Muench/Corbis

At the visitor center a dirt road heads north to the Colorado River Overlook. Don’t take it unless you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Continue on the paved road to the Roadside Ruin pull-off. Stretch your legs on a 0.25-mile [0.4-kilometer] self-guided nature trail that leads to a small but well-preserved granary used by Indians to store corn more than 700 years ago. These ancient farmers were related to the ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. Pick up an interpretive booklet at the trailhead to learn how they used the trailside plants.
Your next stop will be Pothole Point where a 0.5-mile [0.8-kilometer] trail leads past depressions in the sandstone that fill with water after a rain. Although the water looks as still as the rock, they often teem with life. Snails, fairy shrimp, and horsehair worms lay eggs that survive the summer encased in dried mud. When the rains come, they hatch in days.

The road ends at Big Spring Canyon Overlook, where squat columns of sandstone rise from barren bedrock. Here the 5.5-mile [8.9-kilometer] Confluence Overlook Trail climbs the far side of the canyon by a ladder and ends at a point 930 feet [283.5 meters] above the junction of the rivers. This is a popular trail but less scenic than the 2.5-mile [4-kilometer] Slickrock Trail, which begins just before the road ends at the overlook. If time allows, stop here on your return drive for a moderate hike across slickrock balds of Cedar Mesa sandstone.
Turn on the Elephant Hill spur, a graded dirt road that leads to the base of a notorious climb for four-wheel drivers. Along the road are great views of The Needles. You see tall fingers of rock arrayed along the skyline, their red and white bands created by the interlayering of ancient river deposits with sand dunes. A shaded area at the end of the graded road makes a good place to picnic.