Canyonlands National Park

Where it sits. Canyonlands protects 1,366 square kilometres of southern Utah where the Green River joins the Colorado, and the two rivers divide it into three districts that share a boundary but almost nothing else. Island in the Sky is the northern mesa, 1,800 m up, reached in 50 km from Moab and offering the long views. The Needles, in the south-east, is a maze of banded sandstone spires reached by a separate 120 km drive via Monticello. The Maze, west of the rivers, is among the most remote country in the lower 48 states and requires high-clearance four-wheel drive, self-sufficiency and usually several days. There is no road within the park connecting any of them.

What built it. The layers are the Colorado Plateau's standard sequence, exposed here more cleanly than almost anywhere: Navajo and Kayenta sandstones on the mesa top, then the sheer Wingate cliff, then the slope of Chinle and Moenkopi mudstones, then the pale White Rim Sandstone forming a bench roughly 400 m below the rim, then Organ Rock Shale and Cutler beds down to the rivers. The Needles owe their stripes to Cedar Mesa Sandstone with red mudstone partings, and their fracture pattern to salt moving deep below. Upheaval Dome, a 5 km crater on the Island in the Sky, is still argued over - salt diapir or meteorite impact - with shocked quartz evidence now favouring the impact.

On screen. Canyonlands has been used less as a film set than the country around Moab, largely because access is hard, but the rim above the Shafer basin has done heavy duty. The final flight in Thelma & Louise (1991) was shot on this rim country, standing in for the Grand Canyon, and the Shafer Trail switchbacks below the Island in the Sky appear in the opening of Mission: Impossible II (2000). The park's most retold real-life story is Aron Ralston's 2003 entrapment in Blue John Canyon, in the Robbers Roost country just outside the park's western boundary near the Horseshoe Canyon unit, filmed by Danny Boyle as 127 Hours (2010) partly in the actual slot and partly on a Salt Lake City sound stage.

What you actually see today. From the Island in the Sky the essentials are close together: Mesa Arch, a 0.8 km loop to a low arch on the cliff edge that frames the Washer Woman spire and is the single most photographed sunrise in Utah; Grand View Point at the mesa's tip, with 160 km of visibility on a clear day; Green River Overlook; and the Shafer Trail, a set of switchbacks dropping 450 m off the rim onto the White Rim Road, which circles the mesa for 160 km and takes two to four days by vehicle or bicycle with a permit. In the Needles, Chesler Park and the Joint Trail wind between the spires on a 17 km circuit; Horseshoe Canyon, a detached unit reached by a long dirt road, holds the Great Gallery, a panel of life-sized Barrier Canyon Style pictographs painted perhaps 2,000 to 4,000 years ago and among the finest rock art in North America.

Practical notes. There is no water in the park except at the Island in the Sky visitor centre in season and at the Needles visitor centre - not at any trailhead, not on the White Rim. Backcountry travel, all four-wheel-drive routes and every overnight stay require permits, and White Rim campsite reservations open months in advance and fill in minutes. Mobile coverage is absent throughout. Flash floods are a real hazard in the slot canyons from July to September, and the Shafer switchbacks become impassable when wet.

Getting there and timing. Island in the Sky is 50 km from Moab via U.S. 191 and SR 313, sharing the approach with Dead Horse Point State Park. The Needles is 120 km from Moab via U.S. 191 and SR 211, which passes the Newspaper Rock petroglyph panel. The Maze is reached from SR 24 near Hanksville on 75 km of rough track. April to May and September to October are the sensible windows, with highs between 20C and 28C. Midsummer exceeds 38C on exposed rim. Winter is cold, clear and nearly empty, and the north-facing switchbacks hold ice. The park is an International Dark Sky Park with exceptionally low light pollution, and the view of the Milky Way from Grand View Point is among the darkest readings recorded anywhere in the contiguous United States. Entrance is charged per vehicle at Island in the Sky and the Needles; the Maze and Horseshoe Canyon have no staffed station at all.