His advance permission, plus a backcountry permit and a compelling argument to backcountry office workers were required for three Deseret News staffers to visit the top of Navajo Mountain in September of 2003.

Sacred to most Navajos — including some who believe it shouldn't be climbed — this mountain in San Juan County is less than 3 miles from Rainbow Bridge, another sacred Indian site.

According to "Navajo Places: History, Legend and Landscape," by Laurane D. Linford, Navajo Mountain is "Naatsis'aan" — Head of the Earth. It refers to the head of the sacred female and pollen range of Navajo belief.

Indeed, some traditional Navajos believe that other geological features scattered over the region represent some of her other body parts. Black Mesa is her body, the Balakai Mesa her feet, Comb Ridge an arm, and another ridge the other arm. Agathia Peak and Tuba Butte are her breasts.

Rainbow has religious significance for the Utes and Paiutes, too, and in Navajo legend "is an arch of two beings (male and female) frozen in place," according to Linford's book.

At 309 feet high and 278 feet across, Rainbow Bridge is gigantic, but so many tourists go there that some Native Americans feel it is defiled and as such they have stopped performing any religious ceremonies there.

Still another sacred mountain is found to the east in southeastern Colorado, Ute Mountain (or sometimes referred to as "Ute Peak," or "Sleeping Ute Mountain." Resembling a sleeping Ute chief of legend, the 9,979-foot peak also resembles Utah's Mount Timpanogos, which has its own legend of appearing like a sleeping Indian princess.

Ute Mountain has many legends, but Utes believe it to be a deity who angrily collected rain clouds and storms come from clouds that escape his pockets. It is further believed the mountain will awake one day and fight enemies of the Utes.

Still another is the Shiprock pinnacle, an 1,800-foot-high volcanic plug in the northwest corner of New Mexico and visible throughout much of the Four Corners area.

Navajos believe its creation helped some of their ancestors escape their enemies and still used in certain Navajo sacred ceremonies.

The three San Francisco Peaks (Humphreys, Agassiz and Fremont Peaks) in northern Arizona are also sacred to Navajo creation mythology.

So strong still is the Indian belief in protecting the San Francisco Peaks, that in 2007 Navajos wanted to prohibit artificial snowmaking at the Arizona Ski Bowl resort there, because they felt the unnatural process would defile the sacred mountain, because it used reclaimed waste water, which they considered impure for the holy mountain. They lost that court battle, but their sacred beliefs remain.