Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, UT

Dates

Sep 19th - Sep 25th 2010

Service Project

River restoration, removal of invasive Russian olive trees

Free Days

Slot canyon, narrows or slickrock hike.

Accommodations

Backpack camping

Trip Rating

Strenuous : 7-mile backpack. Lopping, sawing and dragging Russian olive trees.

Leaders

Jen Jackson

Equipment

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a magnificent and vast area, managed on behalf of the public by the Bureau of Land Managment, encompassing 1.9 million acres of multicolored cliffs, plateaus, mesas, buttes, pinnacles, and canyons. This is a high, rugged and remote region, covering a vastness that defies human perspective. It consists of three distinct regions: Escalante River, Kaiparowits Plateau, and Grand Staircase. Due to the remoteness of the area, the Escalante River was the last major river in the lower 48 states to be explored and named. It was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped. Even today, this unspoiled natural area remains a frontier, a quality that greatly enhances the monument's value for scientific study. It contains more than 300 species of amphibians, mammals, reptiles, and birds, and is rich in ancestral puebloan ruins and artifacts.

Working with the Escalante Office of the Monument, our project will be continuing eradication of invasive Russian olive trees along the Escalante River corridor above the bridge crossing at Highway 12. Russian olive wasn't found in the river corridor until the mid-eighties, but this non-native tree is quickly choking out willows and other native plants. To clear the river of this invasive tree we'll use saws and loppers and apply an herbicide to the stumps. This project will extend the work being done down river in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, where almost 40 miles of river have been cleared of the trees. It includes a seven mile backpack with numerous stream crossings to a base camp near the mouth of Death Hollow, a big side-canyon to the Escalante River, where we'll spend our week deep in the remote Escalante slickrock canyon.