Hell’s Revenge 03-27-14

We took a ride today to the Sand Flats Recreation Area.
This is kind of like a skate park for Jeep’s, ATV’s and Mountain bikes.
The park consists of miles of trails over convoluted slick rock, fins, domes and crevasses. Slick Rock is a term used to the describe the eroded sand stone around Moab.
The pictures will explain better than I can.
Here is an example.

The trail that we followed is called; Hell’s Revenge.
We drove up Sand Flats Road on the east side of Moab to the pay station. We paid the $5.00 fee and gathered at the parking lot to air down, etc.

From the parking lot the trail goes straight up onto a “fin”.

Fins are very narrow and drop off steeply on each side.
They are somewhat disconcerting to people who have problems with high places.  

We followed the fin to the top and down the other side where the trail drops into a narrow ravine.

  

After leaving the ravine we traveled along a plateau for a little while.

We drove down a sandy trail off the plateau and then climbed up and over a steep sided dome.

We slowly drove up and down more fins and domes.
Several were very steep.
Here is Patti’s view going up one steep climb.

Here is her view going down.

We wandered around on the slick rock for the day.

The mountain bikers have there own trails; which probably saves some lives.

Someone was apparently not so lucky as we saw this memorial along the trail.

As usual the scenery in all directions is fantastic.

We stopped at an overlook with a view of the Colorado River.

Rain has been threatening off and on all day.

It finally caught up with us when we stopped for lunch.
We sat in the jeep until the rain moved on.

After lunch we wandered around, up and down fins and domes.

One of the obstacles is called the escalator.

  

We didn’t try this one.

The last steep grade is called the Dragons Tail.
It looked steeper than it was but you don’t know that until you start down.

Here it is as seen from the bottom.

There were a couple more rocky spots before we came to the end of the trail.

We went to La Hacienda Mexican restaurant for dinner with 23 people from the group.