Cathedral Valley — Capitol Reef's spectacular northern badlands

CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK — Just under 200 years ago, trappers and other trailblazers pushing into the American West began traversing bleak, torturous landscapes mostly barren of vegetation and browse.

They called these places "badlands." Nowadays, often as not, we call them "national parks."

A perfect example can be found in the spectacularly eroded backcountry northeast of Fruita and the Fremont River in southcentral Utah. There, in 1945, Frank Beckwith and Charles Kelly, the first superintendent of what was then Capitol Reef National Monument, christened an area of fantastically eroded cliffs, sandstone monoliths and panoramic views. To them, the scene seemed downright Gothic.

So they called it Cathedral Valley. There you'll find, among many other jaw-dropping formations, the Temples of the Sun, Moon and Stars.

"It's spectacular and remote," observes Al Hendricks, superintendent of today's Capitol Reef National Park.

Cathedral Valley's sometimes atypical Colorado Plateau scenes are often depicted on postcards and in books, but getting there requires heading off the paved U-24 highway that bisects Capitol Reef, often to travel a dusty — and in wet weather, potentially treacherous — 58-mile loop that crosses the eerie Bentonite Hills, rises over the South Desert and descends into Cathedral Valley and the Caineville Wash . . . or vice versa.

Compared to the more popular Waterpocket Fold area to the south, not many people choose to make this trip.

"Very often, you may be the only one visiting them that day," Hendricks says.

The Cathedral Valley tour is a fascinating passage through the geologic eons, from ancient seas that laid down sandstone layers to not-quite-so-distant volcanic and ice ages that have left big basaltic boulders strewn about as if giants had been playing marbles with them.

"The landscape of South Desert and Cathedral Valley looks eternal," Rose Houk writes in her book "Capitol Reef: Backcountry Eden." ". . . But change is nature's universal theme."

The wonders along this backcountry loop greatly add to Capitol Reef's picturesque inventory. The park's better-known Capitol Dome, Hickman Arch and Grand Wash are familiar to most visitors because of their proximity to historic Fruita, Capitol Reef's headquarters. But the moonscape hills, plateau-top views, shimmering gypsum hillocks and pyramid-like temples in the park's northern sector are certainly worth taking in as well.

Overnight visits are possible, but a minimum of seven hours is usually required to complete the Cathedral Valley loop. The route also passes through some private land, where no trespassing is the rule, and winds in and out of national park boundaries and into Bureau of Land Management territory.

---