HIKING HAPPENINGS - September 2024

When the temperatures around here can feel like you’re walking on the sun, it may be time to go up—way up—into the coolness of our eastern sky island, the La Sal Mountains. One of the isolated mountain ranges in this area (including the Abajos and the Henrys), the La Sals cradle several forested oases including Warner and Oowah Lakes. Situated in the shadow of pointy Haystack Mountain in a grove of fluttery aspens, the five-acre reservoir called Warner Lake was created by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) boys in 1933. Other diversions and dams along Mill Creek became Oowah, Clark, and Medicine Lakes.

To access Warner Lake via the La Sal Loop Road: Option 1 [as of this writing, the only option open seven days a week]: Take Main Street/Highway 191 north, turn right onto highway 128 (the River Road), then turn right around Milepost 17 to Castle Valley. At the intersection of the Gateway and La Sal Loop Road, turn right (south) and travel 11 Gambel-oak-lined miles to the sign for Warner Lake and turn left, the last turn before construction begins. (I also took a gravelly spur road to the memorials to victims of the 1881 Pinnock Draw Battle (or Massacre or Dispute or Confrontation, depending on your point of view). Proceed five miles to the Warner campground and parking areas. Option 2: The La Sal Loop Road from the south out of Moab to the lake turnoff is only passable on weekends and after 5:30 p.m. on weekdays. I drove up Option 1 on a Friday morning, returning to Moab via Sand Flats Road. I then did the roundtrip via Option 2 on a Sunday afternoon with no delays. For updates, check https://highways.dot.gov/federal-lands/projects/ut/la-sal

Moab’s elevation is 4,000 feet. Warner Lake’s elevation is 9,400 feet. Wowzers! Over twice as high! The campground offers picnic and camping sites, plus a rentable cabin. A popular two-mile-long segment of the Trans-La Sal Trail starts here, leading you down to Oowah Lake, at 8,800 feet in elevation. Oowah also offers fishing, camping, and picnicking. If you arrange a shuttle pick-up, your driver must use the Option 2 route, turn east onto Forest Road 076 to Oowah, then proceed 2.5 gravelly miles to the campground.

Utah’s Department of Wildlife Resources stocks both Warner and Oowah lakes with rainbow trout. Your fishing license can be purchased at Walker Drug, and through several online sources. I’ve fly-fished here, hunted for mushrooms, and sketched lots and lots of aspens. This particular summer day at Warner campground, the thermometer in my car says 77 degrees, almost 30 degrees cooler than Moab’s valley floor.

I follow the footpath from the campground trailhead, pass through flower-strewn meadows and pass by people fly-fishing at the lake. I pull open the iron gate to a serene singletrack dirt path, which often opens up to flatter areas bursting with asters, lupines, and yarrows. But the aspens! They’re scarred, they turn yellow, lose their leaves in the fall, endure winter storms, grow leaves again in the spring, and now breezily display crisp hunter green foliage shading grateful hikers. They’re an incredibly beautiful inspiration. I also hike under pungent umbrellas of Engelmann spruce and Douglas fir, which provide habitat for tiny ruby-crowned kinglets, birds I only notice in town during the Christmas Bird Count.

As the trail descends into the Mill Creek drainage, the footing gets muddy the nearer I get to Oowah, but I wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t even made it all the way; this oasis feels like a destination in itself. My skin thanks me! However, if you need to meet your shuttle driver, continue walking the road to the Oowah campground. And, if you and your driver might like to bag another La Sals lake, pick up the Clark’s Lake loop trail on the east side of Oowah. So very cool indeed!