So I was down in the San Rafael Swell this weekend. We entered from the small town of Morel, close to Castle Dale. We took the North Fork Coal Wash into the swell towards Slipper Arch and Fixit Pass. The trail is relatively easy most of the way running along a sandy wash for most of it. When you get to Fix it Pass, it gets gnarly quickly and was over the limit of my basically stock 97 Runner. After a few attempts, we decided to turn around and see if we could get through on Devil's Racetrack trail which runs just to the south on top of the canyon ridge above North Fork Coal Wash. We made it most of the way on this trail as well until we got to a 2.5ft drop off that led into a pretty rugged slick rock area. Once again my brain proved bigger than my balls and we turned back. It was dissapointing to not have made it to our goal of Sinbad's head and the pictoglyphs, but, we will approach it next time from I-70 where we won't have to deal with the gnarly bits. FYI both of these trails were rated Black Most Difficult by BLM trail maps. Here are some pics, sorry I didn't take any of the gnarly bits we failed to make it through.

 

nice pics man! like the pup too lol

 

Where's that at?

 

This area of the swell is located north of I-70, and is on the west side of the swell. On the other side of the main swell is the sinbads head area.
To acess this area, there are dirt roads leaving out of the small town of Molen, and the pics were taken about 1.5 hours in.
For reference it is about 2 hours Southeast from Castledale in Castle Valley.

 

What kind of dog is that? looks like a lab with long hair.

 

she is a german wirehair pointer mix with black lab. That is why she is all black, but has a brown beard and ears. She must have come from the runt of both though, cause she is small. Good mutt though.