Hike and gape at Utah’s looming Fisher Towers
Oh, there’s a logical, scientific explanation, all right: varying amounts of hematite. That’s why the rocks are the colors they are.
But really, there’s no word for the color. It’s not red, exactly, nor is it purple. Maroon is not quite it, either. Without the right descriptor, then, the only thing to do is look.
Or gawk, in fact. Visitors to eastern Utah’s Fisher Towers Recreation Site, located 20 miles northeast of Moab on Utah Highway 128, spend the majority of the 2.2-mile hike looking up, mouths agape.
They can’t be real, those striated, dimpled, impossible towers. They loom and soar, jabbing at the enormous desert sky in a phantasmagoria of shapes.
The imagination runs amok: Look there, on top of that tower. Is that a dog shaking hands with a banker? Maybe they just signed a contract? Maybe they just bought the genie lamp perched above them? But then you move two steps and the shapes change. It’s like cloud-gazing.
The trail winds and undulates, a moderate hike that offers time to ponder, well, time. The tops of the towers are lower sandstone members of the Triassic Moenkopi Formation, a mere 245 million years old. Beneath that, sandstone, mudstone and conglomerate of the Permian Cutler Formation, about 290 million years old.
That explains the wrinkles, then, rock resembling paper that’s been unfolded and crumpled again and again and again. The mind boggles, the senses take over.
There’s always something blooming. In spring, it’s bushes of wild yellow flowers that smell sweet and rosy and earthy. The scent fills the valley. There are blossoms red and white, and you scramble for a botanical primer.
Lizards dart and the wind blows — an ancient wind, impervious and busy, charging the towers and ramparts. It adds interest to the hike, a “yikes!” feeling when the drop-off is more than a foot or two.
But you keep going, drawn upward to a castle of redrock, a vision in colors impossible to describe.
How to get there: From Grand Junction, travel 55 miles west along Interstate 70 and exit at Cisco, Utah (exit 204). Travel about 2 miles on U.S. Highway 6/Utah Highway 128 and turn south on Utah Scenic Byway 128. Go about 12 miles to mile marker 21 and turn east toward Fisher Towers Recreation Site. Go 2.2 miles on the graded dirt road to the trailhead.