Fable Valley Backpack trip, an educational tour focusing on natural history, ancient peoples, and geology - MNA Ventures program.

Fable Valley Backpack

Leader: Don Keller
Dates: September 10–15, 2012 (6 days / 5 nights)
Cost: $,1000 members/$1,050 nonmembers
Difficulty: Strenuous

Cost includes transportation, meals, permits, and group gear.

Fable Valley joins Gypsum Canyon to form the northern arm of the Dark Canyon Primitive Area, a frontier zone between the better known Canyonlands National Park to the north and Natural Bridges National Monument to the south. Steep 800-feet-high canyon walls enclose the main valley, which then drops deeper into the lower canyon. The valley and canyon cut an impressive slice across the Dark Canyon Plateau from 8,000 foot highlands westward to the Colorado River in Lake Powell, exposing 300- million-year-old rock strata in a variety of wild habitats. Campsites of the 2,000-year-old Basketmakers, ancestral people who first brought agriculture to the Four Corners region, little-visited cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verde Pueblo, early Ute and Navajo features, and historical stock trails evidence longtime human use of the valley. Archaeologist Don Keller will lead this backpack trip and field seminar down Fable Valley, day hiking to parts of the valley from a central base camp. This will be a visit to an engaging area with fascinating learning, cultural and natural history, and memorable landscape. Additionally, the trip will have the goal of examining several unrecorded archaeological sites which have suffered from past undocumented artifact removal.

Banner photo by Megan Powers.

Don Keller strives to help participants understand the landscapes, the resources they contain, and how these resources have been used over time to create human settlement... Read more…

“Trip was well-planned and visits to sites were very interesting. Don adds much to the enjoyment of the trip…I thoroughly enjoyed it.” —J.S.

“Creative menus…impressive anywhere — Lisa, Ann, and Don (experts all) saw to every eventuality — our physical needs, transportation, food, sanitation, etc., as well as our hiking strengths and weaknesses — without a single lapse. Learning from consummate instructors/ambassadors for the museum really is a privilege.” —C.U.