We camped just outside the entrance to the Needles District, on friendly BLM land (meaning, camp where you want, do what you want). Day One in Canyonlands was supposed to be a bike ride to the rim of the Colorado River, just above it’s confluence with the Green River. Nice try. Wilson couldn’t make it out of the campground without breaking his bike, in reality, he was quite lucky. This freak injury to the bike (broken seat bolt) could have happened at a much worse time or place.
Plan B was hiking. We have some experience with hiking in the Canyonlands NP, and one specific theme sticks out, there is never an easy way back. In the Cascades, we hike to mountain tops, enjoy the view, eat lunch, and eventually take a stress free stroll downhill to the trailhead. In the Canyonlands, you will go uphill both ways, you will climb up and down numerous slick rock mesas, and no matter what, a sandy slog will await you for the final mile in the simmering sun.
Amy chose to park at Loop B in the campground, thereby giving us an extra mile of fun stuff before reaching the trailhead. We immediately got lost, in most cases, cairns are eye candy, in Canyonlands, they are essential, but tough to find on the steep slickrock slopes. This isn’t “Crack in the Wall” or “Hole in the Rock”, but it was our passage from one mesa to the next.
Where we quickly got lost again, how do we get down? We can see Big Spring Canyon (our intended trail), but right now this mesa has us stumped. Wilson confirms with GPS, yep, we’re on a mesa, and the trail is over there somewhere. Meanwhile, Amy scrambles from side to side, eventually finding us safe passage to the valley floor. 
After consulting the map, we’ve decided on ascending Big Spring Canyon, crossing over the pass, then descending Squaw Canyon to Loop A of the campground. Careful math tells us we’ll be just shy of 8 miles, and our legs are feeling good. The sweat on our brows told us it was smoking hot, much warmer than Page, to the tune of 90 degrees. We stopped for lunch at an actual spring, enjoyed the shade and rested up to tackle the pass into the adjacent canyon. This was our last chance to take the easier way out, just retracing our steps. With every step forward, it would be quicker to return via the other canyon. Big Spring Canyon ended in a large basin with a huge mesa looming above us.
How do we exit to the other canyon without ropes and skills to use them? Part of us said, “It’s a National Park, the trail will be marked”, the other part said, “Ha ha suckers, we got you again”, did you think this was Mt. Rainier?”. Once again, we followed the widely spaced cairns. At this point, Amy considered turning back, but that would require going down all the crap she just came up.
This thought would come up again a few more times. In this pic, we’ve reached the pass between canyons, but have zero idea how to get down into the new canyon. That little object about to enter the shadow at the bottom is Amy.
Wilson climbs higher and eventually spots cairns marking a path that seemed counterintuitive, but following rocks stacked in a nice pile by an unknown stranger was a better idea than either of us had at the time. And we really didn’t want to go back down what we just came up. The descent in Squaw Canyon was kind of like a slip and slide with no water and plenty of grip for our shorts.
Throw in a 3 mile sandy slog on the canyon floor, along with some bonus slick rock mesas in the final 800 yards, we were bushed and tired of drinking very warm water. Time to get back to camp and enjoy some cold beers from the comfort of a Cabella Chair. . . .Oh wait, this campground doesn’t look like the one we parked at. Dam . . . A bonus half mile to the car awaits, after scouring Loop A for the path (up and over another mesa) to Loop B. We arrived back to the Rebel just in time to enjoy an outdoor shower and for false hope from Pullman when we turned on the tv to find the mighty Cougs only down by 3 at halftime.
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