What We Are Planning for the Utah ADT When the Babylon Fire Closures Lift

Last updated July 24, 2026. This is advance notice of work in progress, not a route to walk today. Closures here are changing weekly. Verify with the land managers before you rely on anything on this page.

The Babylon Fire has burned 107,189 acres of the Manti-La Sal National Forest and Bears Ears National Monument southwest of Monticello, Utah, and the American Discovery Trail runs through the middle of it.

Coming south from Moab, the route drops through the Needles District of Canyonlands, continues south through Beef Basin, and climbs into the Manti-La Sal. The fire started with a lightning strike on Elk Ridge in the Dark Canyon Wilderness. At UT5-33 the ADT sits at The Notch, the trailhead for Dark Canyon East Trail #006, which puts the route on the wilderness boundary where the fire began.

Containment reached 95% this week, and agencies have started reopening ground, including some of it on the ADT. The Needles District of Canyonlands reopened July 18, and State Route 211 is open to the park boundary. Coming south from Moab on the Lockhart Basin Trail and into the Needles along 211, that much of the route is back.

The break is south of the park. The BLM closure through Beef Basin, Dark Canyon, and Sweet Alice is still in force with no announced end date, and Forest Service Closure Order #04-10-26-05-01, covering the Dark Canyon Wilderness and the Bears Ears portion of the Monticello Ranger District, runs through August 31 unless rescinded earlier. That takes out the stretch from Beef Basin up into the Manti-La Sal, which is the piece the ADT needs.

Elephant Hill, Lavender Canyon, and Davis Canyon roads are still closed to motor vehicles and bicycles, and the notices do not address foot travel either way, so call the park rather than assume. Needles backcountry permits were canceled through July 31, and the park has said later-summer cancellations are being assessed, so confirm permit availability before planning a night in there.

We have been working on an alternate around the burn, once the non-burned land closures are lifted, and this is where that thinking stands today.

It is a draft line, not a finished route, and it cannot be walked yet.

In the north, the route leaves the official ADT in Ruin Park at 38.01092, -109.90970, four tenths of a mile past the Homewater Spring waypoint UT5-43 (EABO 86.3 / WEBO 88.2). It rejoins at UT5-13, the Sundance Trail trailhead junction on Woodenshoe Road (EABO 12.1 / WEBO 162.4). Between those two points, it runs 39.1 miles in place of 74.7 miles of official trail, with about 5,900 feet of climbing against 7,060 on the official line.

The GPX is free to download from this post, and the line is already in the Hiking America data in Gaia GPS so you can see it against the official route. Take it as a look at our working draft. Do not load it as a plan.

The track is free to use and share with attribution.

Here is how it was built, so you can judge it. We took existing trail and overland traces used by drivers through the country west of the closure, joined them into a continuous line, and measured that line against our Segment 5 master track to confirm both ends tie in. Again, nobody has walked it yet. It has not been field verified, and surface and passability through the road-walk stretches are unconfirmed. Treat the line as a proposal we are testing, not a promise. It will change.

No part of this line crosses burned ground. But some of it crosses land that is closed today. The BLM order covers Beef Basin, Shay Mesa, and Sweet Alice as a precaution on country that never burned, and our alternate's first eight miles run through Beef Basin, as does the tie-in at Ruin Park. The ground that actually burned is Forest Service land on Elk Ridge and in the Dark Canyon Wilderness, and the official ADT runs straight across it. Crews are working hard to restore passage through the area.

The BLM is holding unburned country while crews work, and it reopens when the work is done. The Forest Service is holding a hundred thousand acres of standing dead timber that falls without warning, no shade through a Utah summer, ash in what water is left, and drainages that move debris after every storm. That ground stays hard long after an order expires.

This alternate is built for the gap between those two dates.

The file is still being studied and still moving. Our hiking contributors will be walking and verifying conditions across the trail this season and the next, and the same process applies here: better information changes the file, and the version posted on this page gets replaced as that comes in.

What we want now is knowledge: if you have been overlanding through Beef Basin or the country west of it, or you know these traces from driving them, tell us what we have wrong or where the track can be improved. And water is an open question we also care most about.

Hike Your Hike - John.

Update log

• July 24, 2026: First publication, as advance notice. Fire at 107,189 acres, 95% contained. Needles District and SR 211 reopened. Draft alternate posted at 39.1 miles: unverified, no documented water, no burned ground crossed, northern miles inside the active BLM closure.