HIKING HAPPENINGS - December 2025

The Grandstaff Canyon Trail starts from one of Moab’s closest-in trailheads, just three miles up the River Road, where you wend your way up a surprisingly lush riparian corridor for about a 4.5-mile roundtrip. The trailhead’s vaulted toilet, information signs, doggy bag dispenser, and wood fences open onto a sandy path heading south. As I arrived, a dad and two happy little boys were just returning to their car in soaking wet tennis shoes.

I had driven up Utah Highway 128 (the River Road) just past the 3 mile marker to the trailhead and parking area to the right/south. (An extension of the paved, multi-use Colorado Riverway Bike Trail up to this trailhead is planned for next year.) After a sandy quarter of a mile, I walked into the signed wilderness study area, a high desert paradise with prickly pear cacti, singleleaf ash, Utah junipers, Fremont and Plains cottonwoods, and willows. Damaged vegetation had piled up and wrapped around rocks and tree trunks from recent floods, though the trail has received tender—though robust!—repair since then. The new 20+ log steps on one steep, sandy incline are very much appreciated.

William “Bill” Grandstaff was born into the slave-holding Grandstaff family around 1840 in Alabama (according to the BLM) or Virginia (the Moab Museum). He joined the Civil War’s Black Brigade in Cincinnati, then in 1877 found his way to the Moab Valley where he lived for a time with Canadian fur trapper Frenchie. He built a cabin and ran about 40 head of cattle in the canyon I was hiking today. Bill got a canyon, a trail, and a campground named after him; Frenchie, alas, did not. What must it have been like running cattle in this twisty canyon? Would calves have been getting lost in the many side pocket canyons? Did Bill sit on his porch enjoying shimmering leaf displays such as I witnessed on this late fall day? Forced to abandon his cows, Bill disappeared from Moab in 1881 after being accused of selling whiskey to native Americans.

Turning up later in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, he died in his cabin in the summer of 1901.

As I hiked upstream, moving between sandstone domes and towering fins, I wound through a variety of bouldery, sandy areas with seeps, hanging gardens, and pools, crossing the perennial stream about ten times. Stepping from rock shelf to flat rock to sturdy stone, crossings also feature trickier, serpentine bits with tippy, slick, water-covered slabs. Trekking poles, sandals, or old shoes may inspire confidence in these watery sections. Be aware that rain storms can cause rock slides on the River Road and flooding on the trail. I advise hiking a different trail if rain is in the forecast! Also, poison ivy—clusters of three dark green, shiny leaves with serrated edges —grows along the stream and beneath Morning Glory Arch, this trail’s glamorous destination.

The National Arch and Bridge Society (NABS) calls Morning Glory an “alcove arch,” though some call it a bridge, especially when rivulets of rain water flow beneath it. It is 243 feet long, descends into the Medieval Chamber (a dark “hallway” only accessed by rope), with only a mere 15 feet separating it from the cliff. Morning Glory is the sixth longest natural rock span (including arches and bridges) in the United States. America’s longest span is Landscape Arch at 275 feet in Arches National Park. The world’s longest span is China’s Xiānrén qiáo (Fairy Bridge) at 400 feet. A canyoneering route from Sand Flats leads visitors to the top of Morning Glory. Beneath the arch, I joined admiring hikers from (as I learned) Washington, D.C.; Detroit; Salt Lake City; and Coloradans from Denver, Breckenridge, and Fruita. This gold-spangled canyon was Bill Grandstaff’s home for just a few years of his peripatetic life. As the cascading crooning of an unseen canyon wren serenaded my hike back, I wished Bill could somehow know what his luxuriant gorge means to visitors and high desert denizens alike.

Kathy Grossman is an artist, nature journalist, birder, and writer who’s lived in Moab since 2011.