Start: Deer Creek
Finish: Showerbath Spring
Daily Mileage: 17.2
Trip Mileage: 863.4
Elevation gain/loss: 9647/9095ft*
*My GPS was very confused today with the steep canyons, so I’m not sure if this is accurate. Felt like it from my exhaustion.
I slept great last night and was up for the hike slightly before the sun was. Since I had already been through the narrows and seen Deer Creek Falls yesterday, I decided just to hike through the narrows with my headlamp to get going. After the narrows, I headed off on what looked like an old trail that I had noticed yesterday. It didn’t go straight along the river; this trail went in the same direction at a higher elevation. It worked out for the most part, aside from a couple washed-out parts and a couple of slips.
The main event for today was approximately 7 miles of completely off-trail hiking along the banks of the Colorado River to get me from Deer Creek to Kanab Creek. I hadn’t really been looking forward to this, but I figured I could power through it. The game trail or old trail took me down to the river in not too much time, so if nothing else, it was a little shortcut. For the next several miles, it was pretty much just looking for any game trail that I could find. At first, there were decent game trails and some cairns, presumably from other Hayduke hikers. I’m not sure who else would be going down the river like this not in a raft or kayak.
There were some pretty good game trails for the first part that made it relatively easy to traverse. However, the game trails and the hiker trail seemed to both disappear for the most part after 3 miles. Occasionally, I could get to a game trail, but they didn’t tend to last too long. That left me pretty much boulder hopping, wandering up and down the slope trying to find the most efficient way. It was utterly exhausting! I’m good with rock hopping, but it was just absolutely continuous jumping between large boulders every step of the way. Most of the time, the river went right up to the rocks, but occasionally, there was a little bit of beach I could walk along. It always disappeared way too quickly, though. I did make good progress down the river, and rapids came and went, but seven miles is a long way to walk with no real trail on a steep and very rocky riverbank.
I started to run out of energy with about a couple of miles to go. I just had to keep pushing myself to move forward. I kept looking at my GPS; I could see that I was making progress and could see how far I had come from when I started. And in the end, I told myself that I could not allow myself to take lunch until I got to Kanab Creek. And I was hungry too from all the hard hiking. I had a number of slips, but nothing too bad, and was constantly being tugged at by thorn bushes, stabbed by branches, and scraped by rocks. And they also tore my pack a little bit more and yet again.
I rounded a corner; I could see Kanab Creek and the rapids it generated. I made it! Those were some really tough miles! I threw down my pack and sat down for a much-deserved break and devoured my lunch. It was about noon when I got there, and I left camp just before 7:00, so I was only going slightly more than a mile an hour.
Even after my lunch, I was mentally and physically wiped, more tired than I can remember hiking. I didn’t particularly want to keep hiking, but I definitely needed to. I’ve got a big waterless stretch coming up, and I wanted to get as close to the beginning of that as possible today, so I would only have one night dry. I’ve also only got so much food left and need to do some bigger miles to get to my next town stop before I run out.
I started up Kanab Creek, which was flowing pretty good. I almost immediately jumped in and started the back and forth creek crossings typical for hiking up these creeks. I would be crisscrossing back and forth for the rest of the day. The canyon itself was spectacular with enormous canyon walls much higher than on the river in the Grand Canyon. While the Grand Canyon is pretty deep, you usually only see one tier of cliffs, and several more tiers are usually hidden from you above. This was just a single immense tier straight up.
As nice as the canyon was, I couldn’t really enjoy it at first because of my exhaustion from the start of the day. I just had it in my head to pound the miles. It’s unfortunate because it was such a great canyon. I even put on an audiobook briefly but quickly turned it off because I felt it was disrespectful for a place like this.
Kanab Creek is pretty rocky, and there is no easy way up it. I would cross to the side that was more open and travel upstream on rocks the whole way. There were only brief stretches of sand to walk on, so it’s pretty slow going, picking my way upstream. It also had enormous boulders, often in the stream. They were the size of small houses at times. It was tricky to get around them at times with a little bit of scrambling. Scrambling was a little bit more difficult since the rocks were worn smooth by the river, and my shoes were caked with mud constantly.
As I went up the creek, my mood gradually improved, and I scarfed as much food as I could. Tom gave me some of his extra food yesterday, and I destroyed that in addition to my full ration plus one extra bar for today. I think the sugar helped pick me up, especially after my Snickers. I wound upstream until I got to Showerbath Spring. It’s like a rain shower underneath a ledge with lots of ferns and vegetation growing from it. Hikers had told me that this was the last place to get water upstream, but Kanab Creek is still flowing pretty good, so I’ll be able to go up it further before I have to camel up.
I was about to head on, and I looked at my clock and noticed that it was already 5:00. It would be getting dark in about a half hour, and there was a flat spot where I could set up camp at the spring. I decided to do that since I had only seen two or three spots the entire afternoon to camp. I didn’t want to get caught trying to go upstream in the dark. That would have been a disaster\, especially with as exhausted as I was from the day’s hike.
I set up camp and did my chores as it got dark. I repaired my pack’s pocket for the fourth time and one of the water bottle holders that tore. I almost lost my filter today through that hole. My back mesh pocket also has some bigger holes, and I put my bandana up against it to prevent anything from falling out. This pack is just barely going to make it to Zion!
