Start: Hackberry Canyon
Finish: Paria Canyon
Daily Mileage: 22.4
Trip Mileage: 481.9
Elevation gain/loss: 2391/1994ft
I woke up from a relatively cool (not cold) night, probably only in the upper 30s. A good break from the last couple of days. I packed up quickly to hit the trail because I needed to get far enough today to set myself up well for going into town tomorrow.
Hackberry got a bit narrower as I went down it, but there was good rock hopping from side to side of the stream, and I managed to get down it without further getting my feet wet. Not that they were dry this morning; obviously, my shoes and socks didn’t dry overnight, but they were definitely drier in the desert air. I encountered some slickrock formations closing in the canyon, and it was pretty fun figuring out where I could go and rock hop to keep my feet dry.
I came out of the canyon and headed downstream slightly and then took an alternate. The Hayduke continues down a stream and then goes up the Paria Canyon/River, but I decided to check out Yellow Rock, which can be made into a loop of about the same distance as the Hayduke. There was an actual trail going up, or at least treadway, and I quickly climbed a canyon wall. There was Yellow Rock as I crested a plateau. Yellow Rock is a huge lump, mostly bright yellow but also with some grays and reds and other colors swirled in. It’s just a very distinctive, colorful 200-ft tall mount. It was extremely cool looking and very unique, and I was definitely glad that I took this diversion. I even decided to climb to the top of it and took a break, though it was a little bit windy. I took a bunch of pictures of it, capturing the different colors; it was almost like the Wave, but a different variety. And something that is just as scenic and right next to a road unlike the Wave, but no one knows about it and few visit.
Heading down, I was supposed to take another trail that would get me down into the Paria Valley and hook back up with the Hayduke. I put myself right on the supposed trail per GPS, and there wasn’t really anything. I could see some periodic footprints, but I quickly realized this is one of those “trails” that are subject to interpretation. I followed the route, but I had to refer to my GPS quite a bit since it was not just as simple as going down a wash. There was a lot of traversing and switching between valleys, but not too difficult with the GPS. There were also more colorful rock promontories on this trail, which was great to see, sort of a continuation of Yellow Rock.
After making my own trail, I got to actual treadway when the descent to the Paria River started in earnest. That was good to see; I had heard that this route could be steep, and it’s always nice to know that you’re going the right way. The trail down was super easy.
I was then on the Paria River, the upper part of it. The popular part is slightly downstream which I’ll be circling back to later on my circuitous journey, but I travelled upstream for now. I quickly came to an old town site where there used to be a mining town and explored that a bit and took a break. I always like when history is tied into a trail.
The Paria Canyon continued with colorful scenery though in a different way than Yellow Rock. The start of the Paria had a bunch of hills on either side layered with different colored stripes of dirt and rock. Extremely unique and cool-looking. Whoever set up that town had a good view, at least back in the day.
I headed up the canyon; first, it was quite wide, and I managed to stick to game trails and an old road to keep my feet dry. That obviously wasn’t going to work for long as the stream was flowing pretty good, and I was in another one of those crisscross the stream a million times situations. However, I liked this one better since you weren’t just buried in brush, and you could see the canyon as you were going through it. Though I never liked to have wet feet hiking, I think the combination of wet feet and not being able to see anything but brush is what I don’t like.
The Paria Canyon was a spectacular sight, and it changed as I traversed it. I was in it for quite a while so that’s a good thing. It started out as just dark red rock the whole way up, which was very striking compared to the deep blue cloudless sky and the yellow leaves of the cottonwood trees. Just a very stark landscape. I even saw a flock of longhorn sheep.
Since this is a flowing river, Indians used it back in the day. I had a couple of waypoints for petroglyphs in where canyons intersected the Paria. At one of the canyons, I couldn’t really find anything except a stylized “X”. I’m not sure that’s what it was supposed to be looking for. However, the other canyon had quite a bit of petroglyphs carved into the rock; it was along a whole wall, and there were all sorts of different markings. It was interesting to look through, and I wonder what it all means, although there are some obvious symbols like the sun and the snake.
Going up the stream, I saw a couple of pieces of septic field pipe, and there was heavy signs of cow, so I definitely did not want to get water from the stream itself. Instead, I got water from a Crack Pipe Spring which had a great flow of clear water along the side of the canyon.
The banks of the river were pretty brushy without camping areas that I could easily see. Later in the day, I looked around for a while for a spot as I was heading upstream and eventually settled with just setting up on the riverbank. Not above the highest flood line, but I shouldn’t have any problem with that tonight. It is a scenic spot next to an outcrop where the top half is pure white and the bottom half is pure red. I love all these different views going along in the canyons.
