• Northern Utah
• Southern Utah: The national parks
Compared to the scenic splendor of the southern half of
the state, northern Utah holds little to interest the tourist, although
Salt Lake City , the capital, is by far the state's largest and most
cosmopolitan urban center. The dramatic Wasatch Mountains that line Salt
Lake's eastern horizon do however come into their own in winter, as they
constitute one of the nation's premier ski destinations . The northeast
corner has coal mines, old railroad towns and, along the Wyoming border,
the Uinta Mountains , uncrossed by road and showing hardly a sign of
civilization. From the northwest , the harshly alkaline Great Basin
plain stretches uneventfully west across Nevada to California.
Southern Utah is a peculiar combination of the mind-boggling
and the mundane. Its scenery is stupendous, a stunning geological
freakshow where the earth is ripped bare to expose cliffs and canyons of
every imaginable color, unseen rivers gouge mighty furrows into endless
desert plateaus, and strange sandstone towers thrust from the sagebrush.
By contrast, however, the tiny Mormon towns scattered across this epic
landscape are almost without exception boring in the extreme, so most
visitors spend as much time as possible outdoors .
While Southern Utah's five national parks are complemented by countless
lesser-known but equally dramatic wildernesses, they make the most
obvious targets for travelers. In the southwest, Zion National Park
centers on an awe-inspiring canyon, backed by barren highlands of white
sandstone, while Bryce Canyon is a roaring inferno of orange pinnacles.
Over to the east, Arches holds an eroded desertscape of graceful
red-rock fins and spurs, all on a more manageable scale than the
astonishing hundred-mile vistas of neighboring Canyonlands . Both lie
within easy reach of Moab , a disheveled former mining town turned
Utah's hippest destination. The fifth park, Capitol Reef , stretches
through the middle of the state, pierced by slender, ravishing canyons.
The defining topographical feature of southwest Utah is the Grand
Staircase . Named by pioneer river-runner John Wesley Powell, it
consists of a series of plateaus, stacked tier upon tier, that climb
from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The Chocolate Cliffs , near the
border with Arizona, are followed by the dazzling Vermillion Cliffs ,
then the White Cliffs - a 2000ft wall of Navajo sandstone, best seen at
Zion - the Grey Cliffs , and finally the Pink Cliffs of Bryce. Although
it took a billion years of sedimentation for these rocks to form, the
staircase itself has only been created in the last dozen million years,
by the general upthrust of the Colorado Plateau , which stretches away
to the east.
This is a tough land, and a rough one for travelers: with fewer roads
than anywhere else in the US, almost nobody gets far into the deep
backcountry. Even within the national parklands, overground access is
more often than not limited to heavy-duty, high-clearance four-wheel-drive
vehicles, hikers and, increasingly, to mountain bikes . The best way of
all to experience the region is as the first explorers did: by water ,
along such rivers as the Colorado and the Green. Dozens of companies
offer river-rafting trips, floating downstream and camping out under the
clear night sky to experience the sights, sounds and smells of the
desert.
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