Start: Paria Canyon
Finish: Hotel in Tropic
Daily Mileage: 13.8
Trip Mileage: 495.7
Elevation gain/loss: 1315/610ft
I woke up and packed up quickly this morning; so quickly that it was still dark when I was ready to go. I had to wait a few minutes for it to get light enough since I was going to be once again wading the Paria, and this is not really something I wanted to do in the dark.
When I started, I played the same game of trying to keep my shoes out of the water. My shoes and socks were still wet this morning, and surprisingly, it just didn’t really appeal to me to plunge my feet into a river at 7:30 in the morning with a wind coming down the canyon and the temperatures probably in the 30s. It didn’t take very long until I just had to take the plunge. Then I had to cross a bunch more times in the 2 miles before I hit Sheep Canyon.
Last night, I camped right at the edge of the Paria stripe where there’s a very distinct line with red stone on the bottom and white stone above it. This continued as I went upstream, and it’s just one more unique feature of the constantly changing scenery here. I hit my turnoff to Sheep Canyon sooner than I was expecting. I guess I made pretty good progress charging up the Paria after I decided to get my feet wet.
By the time I got off the Paria, my feet were really cold, and that coldness was spreading to other parts of my body. I was glad when I turned up Sheep Canyon, which still had some flowing water in it, but it was very minor and easy to avoid. I moved on quickly to try to get some warmth back into my body now that I wasn’t having to constantly be in the Paria.
Sheep Canyon was nice and similar to the Paria. I did find some petroglyphs at one point that weren’t even noted in my data. However, there was modern graffiti right next to them, unfortunately.
I went up Sheep Canyon for a few miles, and then I turned once again into Willie Canyon. At this turnoff, there were also a lot of petroglyphs, but Willie Canyon is a more popular Canyon for day hikes, and the petroglyphs were completely surrounded and sometimes overwritten with recent graffiti. I couldn’t stay there long because it just upset me to see the modern scrawl of initials and names over markings over a thousand years old. What is the need to destroy a cultural artifact just to say “Jim Bob was here”?
I headed up Willie Canyon and soon saw my first day hikers. There was a section of narrows in Willie Canyon which were pretty cool with the rock winding back and forth with gray stripes through it. There once again was a little bit of water but very easy to avoid. I took a bunch of pictures in the narrows. I really like this type of thing. There was another slot Canyon that I could have diverted down, Bull Valley Gorge, but I had read it would be very tough with a pack. I didn’t want to repeat that after my Peekaboo experience.
After the narrows, I soon came to the trailhead which is where I was going to start my hitch into town. There were only a few cars there, so I figured I would start walking down the road towards town since other roads fed into this road. That would give me the highest potential of getting a ride. It took me a little over an hour to get a hitch, and I walked quite a distance on the road in that time. Two cars passed me but indicated that they were full, and then Dave thankfully picked me up in his truck. He was driving right past where I was going to stop, so it was a perfect hitch.
I got into town well before I could check into my hotel, so I was walking around doing my town chores, notably eating barbecue. A guy in a pickup truck stopped and said, “Wow, you made good time.” He was in a truck that passed me when I pitched camp at 7,000 ft. the night before the storm a few days ago. He told me that when there’s weather like that, people get out of the mountains. I thought that was amusing since I was camped at the top, well distant from civilization.
I did all my normal town chores, restocked with food, did laundry, bought beer, and by that time, my hotel was available. I almost finished the 16-inch pizza for dinner along with a salad. I saved 1/4 of it for breakfast tomorrow. The poison ivy is still going strong. It has been concerning to be hiking in fetid water the past couple days with open sores.
