Grand County Search and Rescue training ends with illegal trash cleanup near Moab access point

A four-day rope rescue class near the La Sal Loop Road ended with Grand County Search and Rescue volunteers hauling five bags of illegally dumped household waste out of a pullout near the Oowah Lake turnoff.

The cleanup came after students spent the course with Swiftwater Safety Institute instructors practicing knot tying, anchor systems and the mechanics of moving a patient up and down vertical terrain. Those are the core moves behind the cliff, canyon and remote-terrain rescues Grand County crews handle so often, and the county says the technical rope rescue unit keeps a core group of about a dozen dedicated members who train extensively.

That skill set gets used a lot. Grand County describes GCSAR as the busiest search-and-rescue team in Utah, and the numbers show the load: 143 incidents in 2025 and about 3,000 hours spent on rescues, from stranded hikers and climbers to BASE jumpers. The haul-out near Oowah showed how quickly the work can shift from training to field cleanup when a remote access point turns into a dumping ground.

The setting makes the problem harder to ignore. The La Sal Loop Road is a 60-mile scenic drive climbing from Moab into the La Sal Mountains, and the Oowah Lake turnoff leads to a small alpine lake at 8,800 feet. Oowah Campground has 11 tent-only, first-come, first-served sites, along with day-use access and trail connections into the Warner Lake, Clarks Lake, Boren Mesa, Moonlight Meadows and Trans-La Sal trail systems.

That makes the site more than a roadside pullout. Mill Creek runs nearby, part of the Moab area watershed, and Grand County rules explicitly tell visitors to protect that watershed and pack out waste. Dumping household trash there is not just ugly. It threatens water quality, creates extra work for crews who may need to operate in the same terrain later, and chips away at the reliability of a high-country gateway that hikers, campers and drivers depend on every season.

The sheriff’s office has county-wide jurisdiction outside city limits, and anyone with information about the dumping can contact Grand County law enforcement. For the people who use the La Sal high country, the message is plain: if visitors treat trailheads and camp pullouts like disposal sites, the next thing lost may not be a view, but access itself.