BLM brochure outlines recreational options

The Bureau of Land Management publishes a brochure that outlines the many recreational options available along the 45-mile Colorado Riverway, as well as the regulations applying to those activities. The agency's goal is simply stated:

"As steward of the public land within the Colorado Riverway, it is the goal of the BLM to preserve the scenic and environmental qualities of this remarkable area, while providing opportunities for public recreation."River-running is one of the most popular activities in these spectacular canyons. Twenty licensed outfitters take visitors down the Colorado near Moab, and last year more than 56,000 commercial and private "river days" - a number representing the number of people on the river - were counted by the agency, according to Russ von Koch, a BLM outdoor recreation planner in Moab.

Picnic and campgrounds, both developed and semideveloped, pepper the roadsides along U-128, U-279 (the Potash Canyon Road) and the Kane Creek Road. These range from the substantial Big Bend Recreation Area northeast of Moab to more basic sites. At a few, like Moonflower Canyon on the Kane Creek Road, campers must park their cars and pack their tents and sleeping bags several hundred feet back from the roads.

Here are some suggestions about what to do along the Colorado Riverway:

- Go for a ride. Two of the riverside roads, U-128 and U-279, are included among Utah's 27 official "scenic byways." And the ride is indeed incredible. Often the narrow highways are squeezed between river and salmon-colored cliffs.

Ancient Indian art - believed created by the Fremont culture between 600 and 1300 A.D. - is pecked into and painted onto the rock at several spots, as on the potash road and at Moonflower Canyon. Sightseers can glimpse portrayals of desert sheep, snakes and other creatures, as well as humans, sometimes in lines. One roadside stop along U-279 toward Potash points out several huge three-toed dinosaur prints visible on a rock clinging to the hillside above.

Most visitors use the Colorado Riverway for a day or less, von Koch said, and the BLM has taken this into account. Picnic sites without fees, for example, are available at Lion's Park at the junction of U.S. 191 and U-128, Big Bend, Fisher Towers and Hittle Bottom.