HIKING HAPPENINGS - June 2025

At the beginning of the 1941 movie Citizen Kane, a newsreel announcer describes Charles Foster Kane’s ostentatious Florida castle estate Xanadu, a name from the opening lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1797 poem “Kubla Khan”: “In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan, a Stately Pleasure-dome Decree.” Reportedly only the fragment of a longer poem that came to Coleridge in an opium pipe-infused dream, a “pipe dream” came to refer to imagining the impossible, a wish, an impractical fantasy, or idea that is highly unrealistic.

The Pipe Dream Trail, an east-facing path under the Moab Rim, was once thought impossible to build. Thousands of paid and volunteer trail-building hours later, this impossibility made a tight, no-dab turn to possibility and reality. And the month of June is the 14th anniversary of Pipe Dream’s completion in 2011. In full sun through the morning and afternoon with shade thereafter, much of this trail was designed as a single track mountain bike trail, an excellent example of imagination and craft. For walkers and runners, this marvel is one to hike and study from its three main entry points.

Northern entry: Turn west from Main/191 onto Dogwood Avenue and head uphill to turn north onto Doc Allen Drive. (The newly paved Kane Creek Blvd to Aspen Street is another entry route to Doc Allen.) I park on the mountable curb near the trail head sign on the west/left. This path meanders to the rocky promenade beneath buzzy lattice power line towers, wide enough for side-by-side hiking and on-leash dog walking, and festooned with orange globe mallows (Sphaeralcea incant), also charmingly called “cowboy’s delight.” I choose to take a spur trail east back down to Doc Allen where it intersects with David Court and power walk the sidewalk north back to my car.

Middle entry: From US 191, turn west onto Jackson Street (opposite the turn onto 400 East). Continue to the upper gravel parking area. The spur trail from here hooks up with Pipe Dream, where you can proceed north to the Dogwood/Aspen entry/exit or south to Angel Rock Road.

Southern entry: Drive south out of Moab on US 191, turn west/right onto Angel Rock Road where you’ll see the landmark of an old yellow building with the painted sign “Spanish Feed Store 2 Doors Down.” (Angel Rock refers to “Disappearing Angel,” a free-standing formation and climbing destination that is visible from some locations—most reliably from the south—about halfway up the rim. The figure seems to disappear into the rim itself when approached.) I head up the hill, then turn right onto Rim Rock Road where it curves west to the parking area behind the Hidden Valley Trailhead sign. I study the double kiosk of information and maps for the Hidden Valley and Pipe Dream trails, then proceed right/north to Pipe Dream.

Most of the trail’s turns offer generous view lines, so you can check to see if you need to accommodate trail runners or bikers (and if they need to accommodate you). The engineering by Moab’s trail-building princes is fabulous, with rocky, exposed, narrow, and twisty bits, plus steep dips into ravines with rock slab crossovers, occasionally decorated with waving spears of Prince’s plume (Stanleya pinnata) in full, lemony bloom. On this blustery morning, I also enjoy the expansive eastern panorama of roiling storm clouds building over the La Sals. But, whichever trailhead, whichever trail leg, or whichever adventure you choose, Pipe Dream’s reality is magnificent fun. During this summer solstice month, even on a warm evening you’ll have plenty of shaded hours to enjoy this robust, athletic trail.