Gemini Bridges

The trail is a broad rocky gravel road, with some steep sections and one stretch of ledgy slickrock. As an out-and-back from the highway, it's 16 miles round trip. Total climbing is about 1500 feet, in 3 sections of 500 feet each (two on the way out, one on the way back).

The highlight of the ride/drive puts you on top of the bridges at GPS N 38° 35.123' W 109° 42.456'. Approach them with caution. You could easily ride/walk/drive off a 200-foot cliff. Gemini Bridges are twin spans over a deep canyon. Be carefull when exploring them --a fall would be fatal. The capstone of Kayenta forms a ledge that protects the underlying Wingate sandstone from erosion. The Wingate fractures away in large vertical columns as the soft Chinle Formation underbeneath it erodes, forming breath-taking vertical cliffs.





My pictures are here:

http://community.webshots.com/album/179018097FimXsX

My trail report:

We were loosing daylight. The plan was to go visit Secret Spire - hang out and head over to Gemini Bridges. We got lost in the vastness of the wilderness and if we didn't run into a BLM Ranger, we may never have found the Secret Spire trailhead. It took us longer than expected to find the spire, so our time for Gemini Bridges was looking grim. We were quickly loosing daylight and it looks like a nasty Storm was heading our way. We could hear thunder and the clouds were looking increasingly menacing.

We found the trail head and proceeded into the trail. We came across a family (dad, mom and two young sons) on their bikes heading into the trail. We chatted with them briefly to make sure this was the right way and then continued on. Unlike the trails to the Secret Spire, the area around Gemini Bridges are very clearly marked. We had no trouble finding the parking area for the bridges and making the 200 yard hike down to the bridge formations. When we arrived, it started to rain. Let me rephrase that.... it started to Rain HARD!!! There was no cover to be had so we made the decision to just hurry up... take some pictures and bail back to the Xterra. As soon as we started to rush around - the rain stopped. Then it came back again... then it stopped. Then we could hear the deafening BOOM of thunder off in the distance. We spent maybe 15 minutes enjoying the views of the bridge formation and exploring the area. We were visited by a lizard (probably looking for shelter from the rain), who mistook my backpack as such.

We returned to the Xterra and continued out of the area. We had several more miles left before we would encounter paved road and we knew that the storm was still on its way so we tried to make good time out of the area - since neither of us liked the idea of being stuck out there in a storm. The trail decended several hundred feet down into and thru a box canyon slowly enjoying the breathtaking scenery which surrounded us.

When we exited the Canyon, the trail started to accend one of the ridges. Now we were on a shelf road overlooking HWY 191 below. We took extra caution to stay on the shelf road, cause neither of us liked the idea of tumbling a few hundred feet off the ledge to our likely deaths (that would put a serious damper to our trip).

The shelf road had a few sections which were off-camber and narrow. I took advantage of my Xterra decent ground clearance and just rolled over the rough sections being very careful to keep my distance away from the steep edges of the road. As the trail was comign to an end and the road flattened, we encountered a Toyota Minivan. Surprised to see such an " ordinary" vehicle on such a treacherous road, we stopped to chat with the driver. He was looking for some campgrounds which (according to his map) was in the middle of the canyon we just exited. He seemed concerned that his van was not going to make it, and asked for our recommendation. We told him it would be safer to turn around and find another campsite. The road "gets worse" and there is a storm coming. He agreed and followed us back out to the mainroad.

The Gemini Bridges Trail was filled with breathtaking canyon views, fun and easy 4wheeling and we were even able to help a fellow traveler out.

Great time.