Try this combination to recharge your batteries: periwinkle sky, burnt orange rock canyon walls, sage green leaves and a mirror surface of sun sparkles, reflected color and shadow. Add the music of water coursing over smooth rocks and you've painted a picture of setting up camp at a creek and hiking the trails in southern Utah. Like much of the Colorado Plateau, southern Utah has a diverse natural landscape, a setting for your every mood. Open the map, follow the creeks and head for camping.
Public Lands and Creek-side Camping Opportunities
Public lands comprise more than three-fourths of the land in southern Utah. However, depending on management and popularity, there are different regulations for each. Developed creek-side campgrounds or backcountry backpacking by permit are your only camping options in the five national parks. More flexibility is yours in Utah's six national monuments, all but one of which permit primitive or dispersed camping. Cedar Breaks functions under Park Service rules. National Forest and BLM lands have the fewest restrictions and the greatest creek-side camping opportunities.
Creekside Camping Ethics
Setting your camp at a primitive creek-side campsite you've found gives a taste of frontier reliance. While almost any level area can be a campsite, creek-side camping ethics ensure the site is enjoyed in primitive splendor by the next visitor. Your actual campsite needs to be more than 150 feet from the edge of the creek. All waste needs to be packed out. Check with the management agency on human waste disposal rules, which vary by microclimate. Before leaving the campsite, ensure that all detritus--bottle caps or liners, scraps of paper, spent matches--is packed up.
It's Just Swell
Camping alongside the San Rafael River in the San Rafael Swell (Manti-La Sal National Forest) is your base camp for geologic wonderland hikes in an area sometimes compared to the Martian surface. The "reef" or "swell" is an actual bulge in the earth's crust forming mountains, canyons and escarpments. Hiking trails range from easy following portions of the San Rafael River and its tributaries to extremely difficult, if you're up for wading and hiking into the jagged canyons towards the river's source.
Colorado River Feeding
Looking down-canyon on Mill Creek in the La Sal Mountains (Manti-La Sal National Forest), you can watch rills tumble down mountain slopes or fall off the canyon walls into the creek on its travels to the Colorado River in Moab. For a great view and exercise, you can hike to the La Sal Mountain Loop, a easy-to-moderately difficult multi-use hiking, biking and equestrian trail providing views westward to wind-formed arches and eastward to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
Down the Grand Staircase
Feel the cool waters of the Escalante River flow over your toes hiking one of the creek-side trails that meanders from rock path to wading ford. Your campsite can be in any location you can safely access by vehicle or on foot. There are few places where it's possible to drive to the river but you can access the river from short easy-to-carry gear walks or vigorous canyon-side trail hikes. Some of the most scenic places are accessible exclusively when you're hiking and backpacking.
Backcountry Camping Safety
Even when the weather feels cool, it doesn't matter, you still need to drink at least a gallon of fluids a day, including some sweetener-free electrolytes. Don't count fluids with sweeteners or caffeine in that gallon--they dehydrate your system. Be sure you have a working knowledge of first aid; you'll be camping in areas that are truly isolated and primitive. Use common sense when hiking--be aware of loose rocks or dangerous overhangs.
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