Nielsen Dugway

Fun exploration today. Today was all about chasing petroglyphs and pictographs. A couple of them were bucket list items for me, most specifically the pictograph of head of Sinbad. Big thanks goes out to Mike North for initially introducing me to the San Rafael swell. What an amazing place. Let me see if I can remember all of the dirt roads and trails we were on today. Buckhorn draw, unnamed road to connect to Kane Wash, Oil Flat road, Dugway, Local motive point, Eagle Canyon. In addition to the incredible pictographs, we also explored the 1921 cabin, the Swayze cabin. Including the cave behind the cabin that he used as his refrigerator/icebox.

Ran this trial after coming down Buckhorn Draw with a group of friends, not really a wheeling centric trip, but I wanted to get a little more remote. We had a stock 5th gen 4Runner, Lifted WK2 Grand Cherokee and the kicker - a stock 2015 Forester. Each had proper AT tires and the Subie climbed out with a little skinny pedal persuasion (and getting flipped off by some ATVs). The bigger SUVs were point and shoot.

Reid Nelson Dugway: This is an easy trail, if driven from south to the north as it is all downhill to the wash. At the start of the dugway there are a couple of sections of loose rock but it is only rocky for a couple of hundred yards. The only other obstacles are a few small ledges but they didn’t present any problems for our stock JLUR’s. We enjoyed this trail immensely; the scenery is beautiful. About half-way down the ledge road, look left and on the cliff, across the canyon, there is a rock formation that looks like three stone figures of a Buddha. After lunch at the Cane Wash Junction (638/643) we continued north, following Cane Wash, to the Calf Mesa uranium mine. and then 2-miles back to the Buckhorn Draw road.