Grand Staircase - Escalante
National Monument, Utah

Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument spans almost 1.9 million acres of south central Utah, a region that was the last place in the continental US to be mapped. This is an area of high plateaus, deep canyons and multi-hued rock formations and cliffs that can extend for up to 100 miles. This is a world-class geologic sampler displaying 200 million years of Earth changes in a very large remote area filled with very difficult terrain. This land is as pristine as it is primarily because of its innate ability to frustrate human settlement. On the other hand, if you're looking for adventure or solitude or a place to explore eons of geologic time, this is the place to go.

The Grand Staircase is the name given to a series of spectacular cliffs rising step-by-step northward from the Grand Canyon area. Each line of cliffs, from the Vermillion Cliffs to the White Cliffs to the Gray Cliffs to the Pink Cliffs, is composed of different layers of depositions made over the last 200 years. The Vermillion Cliffs are deep red Moenkopi sandstone on top of Chinle badlands, and the formations contain fossils of fish and small dinosaurs from the late Triassic Period. The White Cliffs are Navajo sandstone (solidified Jurassic sand dunes). The Gray Cliffs are ocean-bottom shale filled with the fossilized remains of marine life and beds of marsh and swamp plants compressed into coal. The Pink Cliffs at the top of the Staircase are composed of limey sandstone deposited in the bottom of an ancient large freshwater lake.

The Kaiparowits Plateau is an 800,000-acre-plus area of incredibly rich fossil deposits from the late Cretaceous Period. This is a very dry and highly eroded area of sheer cliffs, wide canyons and poisonous soils. Many of the red hills of oxidized rock that you'll find here were created in the aftermath of huge underground coal fires. The eastern edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau is marked by the Straight Cliffs that drop to the Fiftymile Bench.

On the eastern side of the Fiftymile Bench lies the highly eroded Navajo sandstone of the Escalante Canyons region. This extremely dry countryside has been eroded into a maze of canyons and cliffs by the action of flowing water over the millenia. East of Escalante Canyons is Capitol Reef National Park.

The area is accessed from the south via Highway 89 and from the north via Highway 24, but all the roads in between are gravel, rugged and can easily degenerate into the very primitive quickly when inclement weather sets in.