Two days, one truck, a hundred and two miles of canyon edge — and the kind of weather that makes you grateful for windshield wipers and second-guess your lift kit. Here's how it actually went, and what I'd do differently next time.
Aired down to 22 PSI at the Shafer Trail trailhead by 7:30. Cool morning, maybe 48°F, sky clear enough to lie about. The descent into the canyon is the part everyone talks about — fourteen switchbacks dropping fifteen hundred feet, with a sheer wall on one side and a thousand feet of nothing on the other. It's wider than it looks in photos. It's also a lot longer.
By 11 I was at Musselman Arch, which I'd planned to skip and ended up spending forty minutes at. The trail across the top of the arch is maybe ten feet wide with a six-hundred-foot drop on either side. I did not drive across it. The two guys in the Wrangler ahead of me did, slowly, and I watched their reverse lights flicker the whole way.
The middle section between Musselman and White Crack is where the trail earns its name — the rim of the canyon, sometimes literally six feet from your driver's window, with the Green River two thousand feet below. It is the most exposed driving I've done. I made coffee at White Crack at 1pm, ate two sandwiches, and didn't speak to another human for three hours.
Murphy Hogback at sunset is the photograph that sells the trip. I rolled into Murphy A around 6:45 with maybe forty minutes of usable light left. Set up the rooftop tent in twelve minutes — fastest deploy I've done — and was sitting on the cooler with a beer by 7:15. The light moved from gold to copper to bruise-purple in about ten minutes.
"Murphy Hogback at sunset is the photograph that sells the trip. The light moved from gold to copper to bruise-purple in about ten minutes." — Day One, 6:45 PM
Storm rolled through overnight. Heard the first thunder at 2:14 AM and the first rain at 2:22. The Roofnest is dry as a bone — first real rain test and I have nothing bad to say. The thing I did not account for was how loud heavy rain on hardshell fiberglass actually is. I slept maybe three more hours.
Morning was overcast, with the kind of low ceiling that makes everything look closer than it is. The descent off Murphy is steep and twisty and it was wet. Crawled it in low range, didn't touch the brakes more than I had to. By the time I hit the river bottom at Hardscrabble it was clear again and warming up fast.
Mineral Bottom Road on the exit is its own thing entirely — a series of switchbacks back up out of the canyon to the rim. After two days of canyon-edge driving, going up the cliff felt almost backward. Aired up at the top by 3:30 PM, made it to Moab by 4:15, ate a burger that was probably mediocre but tasted incredible.
WHAT I LEARNED
- 01Bring more water than you think. I brought 5 gallons, used 4. If anything went sideways and I was out there an extra night, I'd have been counting drops.
- 02The Roofnest passes the rain test, but earplugs. Heavy rain on hardshell is loud. Pack the foam earplugs from the recovery kit.
- 03Don't underestimate the time at viewpoints. I planned 8 hours of driving Day 1. It was 8 hours of driving plus 3 hours of stopping for photos and snacks. Realistic budget is 11.
- 04Reservations the day-of are not a thing. Glad I booked Murphy A weeks out. The other camps were fully booked at the kiosk on Day 1.
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