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| Hiking | 7.14 Miles |
504 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.14 Miles | 5 Hrs 20 Mns | | 2.20 mph |
| 504 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 5 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Explored the Bisti Wilderness. A route is listed here, but there's no actual trail or pathway. Just get out there, pick a direction, and explore.
There's a bumpy dirt road the last 2.5 miles in, but any vehicle can make it. There's a fairly large parking lot (30-40 vehicles) which was almost full when we arrived at 1pm. At the edge of the lot there's a large sign, maps, and some benches. Beyond that, it looks like a desolate flatland with some buttes off in the distance.
We started by heading ESE and ended up doing an 7-mile loop with a lot of scrambling, climbing, and exploring. The badland areas are vast and beautiful. There were numerous buttes to climb, with extensive vistas from the top. There were large clusters of hoodoos that looked like ancient cities. There was one extended area of hoodoos that formed a giant maze. There were several caves. We checked out some of the landmarks on the map such as the Cracked Eggs (interesting, but surrounded by a large group of tourists and drones), the Bisti Arch (tiny and unremarkable, I didn't even take a picture because I was so disappointed, although if you get down low at the right angle you could make it look good), the Tabletops (they were ok), the Petrified Wood (meh), the Eagle's Nest (really cool) and the Valley of Bones (worth seeing). The most fascinating areas didn't have names or checkpoints on the maps; they were just things we saw while wandering.
The route we took involved a lot of climbing and scrambling, but apparently most people just walk around the flat areas and see what they can. We saw no other people the entire afternoon other than the large group around the Cracked Eggs, despite the number of vehicles in the lot. I took about 170 photos. We probably saw about 50% of the area, with a lot of stops along the way, and will eventually return to see more of it. |
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