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From Boulder , you 'll navigate legendary stretches of road like the Hells Backbone , the Hogback , and the Burr Trail . In the middle of it all is the ice cap — a mile-thick cake of solid H20 dating to the last ice age and skiable from coast-to-coast . A local man , whom we paid to guide us for the day , points guiltily to a hillside pockmarked with holes : the site of a looted Bronze Age grave site.There are scores of them in this region , a place that was unmapped and unexplored well into the 20th century due to the ferocity of local tribes who had a reputation for killing any outsiders they encountered . Lying in a puddle under a picnic table , wet from head to toe in a sopping sleeping bag , with thunder crackling about and sheets of rain pummeling my thin plastic poncho , I was beginning to question the whole fastpacking concept . " She would go on to write about her travels in this region in the 1934 classic The Valleys of the Assassins , while her mapping and exploratory achievements would earn her an award from England 's Royal Geographical Society and , later , a knighting by the Queen of England.Stark risked her life to journey to this part of Lorestan , searching for a Bronze Age hidden treasure that was rumored to be stashed among these hills , but she never found it , leaving behind a lingering mystery . " [ Our ] road trip through the wilderness of southern Utah is Abbey 's blessing writ large : nearly 200 miles [ 322 kilometers ] of crooked , winding , and lonesome roads and trails with views that will have you reaching for your camera . [ And ] we spent an enormous amount of effort building decompression chambers that would allow those mapping crews to routinely conduct five-hour missions inside the cave at 100 meters ( 328 feet ) underwater . This car makes smart , safe driving decisions by communicating with other vehicles , joining car caravans , and navigating around construction and road debris . The route , which I road tested recently , cruises up water-sculpted canyons , over sun-burnished slickrock , and under enormous skies . I was wrapping up my interview with Norm Christensen , the Escalante old-timer who had befriended Ruess at age ten and gone to the movies with him on his last night in town . The men from Hermosillo thanked us profusely , then went to sit beneath a tree on the side of the road . Ahead was a large metal tower , like the kind you build with an Erector set , topped with a solar-powered blinking light .