Unfortunately, while reaching for snacks in my hip belt pocket, I found that the pocket had torn during one of my scrambles and I had lost a few candy wrappers and some electrolytes.  I was sad that I left trash unknowingly in this beautiful area.  The pack that I brought on this trip is the pack that I finished the Appalachian Trail with, and it is 13 years old and has definitely seen better days.  I figured that this would be the last trip before retiring that pack, but one of the reasons I brought it was that I thought any pack would be dinged up on this route, and that would be okay for this old pack.

 After the high plateau and ledges, the trail dropped into a shallow canyon.  After a brief time in the canyon, I turned off to do a side trip to see the famous Loop of the Colorado River.  The side trip followed a wash up and it was not very difficult though it got slightly steep at the end.  But when I got to the viewpoint above The Loop it was so worth it!  I sat out on a rock taking in the stunning view of the Colorado River winding back upon itself to make almost a complete circle around a tall rock plateau for at least an hour maybe more.  It just looked as if you were looking at the river through a fish eye lens.  It also gave me an opportunity to take out my sleeping bag and let it dry in the sun which worked great.

I’ve generally been carrying around six liters of water leaving a water source.  You occasionally see potholes or small puddles of water but most of those are muddy.  I do have a settling agent I could use to quickly settle water, but I’d still prefer to get the best source possible to begin with.  However, water is the biggest thing I’ve been thinking about out here since I am in the desert and the days are still getting warm in the high 70s or low 80s with tons of sun and mostly clear skies aside from welcome sporadic shade from canyon walls early and late in the day.  This morning I did get a couple liters from a small pool I found.  There was a pool with a cow patty sitting right in it and then a second smaller pool next to it, so I got water from the pool not soaking up the extra flavor from the cow patty.

 It was mostly sunny in the afternoon and got into the low 80s, so I just kept going but took a few breaks so I didn’t get too hot.  That may not be too warm for some but I run warmer than most people so I struggle more in the heat.  Also, I had gone pretty far today so I wasn’t really pushing for miles or anything.

I continued on the 4×4 track down from Hurrah pass, with much of the same eroded rock on this side of the pass.  When I was nearing the bottom, a pickup truck pulled up to me and told me that he had a lodge a mile further and he’d give me water and anything I wanted if I stopped by.  I found it funny that the guy was driving an old truck fully loaded with water jugs down the same road people were using SxSs with roll cages and helmets.   

 I stopped by Base Camp Lodge and got my water.  Tom, the owner has a 300-pound African tortoise that likes to wander and go for a hike each day.  It will cover up to 10 miles in a single day.  His tortoise had gone out for his daily hike and one of his workers went along to track it and he needed corral it back home for the night.  Tom asked if I wanted to come along and help get the tortoise back home.  Initially I thought that I would just decline and continue on the trail but then I figured why not?  This was pretty unique.  So, I hopped into Tom’s truck and we went off in search of the tortoise.

 We got to a wash where Tom’s worker had followed the tortoise, but he had lost track of it coming to meet us.  We went back to track it and we went separate ways.  I thought I saw something that looked like tortoise tracks and followed those myself and shortly saw the tortoise charging towards me full speed.  I got the others and we began to corral it back to the truck.  Tom’s worker had to go back to base camp to clean some rooms so he did that and they had me drive the truck back to where the tortoise was off-road.  Where else would someone hand keys to someone they had just met and told them to do a bit of off-roading in it unsupervised?  

The river valley was also dry and I found a faint footpath that followed it down.  It was hard to follow through with all the rock and I lost the track a couple times.  I ended up on the other side of the river which is probably not where I was supposed to be, though there appeared to be a faint game trail on that side too.  Not having much luck trying to follow the barely existent trails, I tried to follow the wash itself for a little bit but quickly came to a pour over (dry waterfall) that I couldn’t get through.  However, above the pour over was a natural bridge called Troll Bridge.  I would have missed that completely if I hadn’t been on the wrong side of the stream.  

The wash was extremely brushy and we had the choice of either walking straight down the stream or pushing through brush which was packed with debris from previous flash floods and beaver activity.  That made the going really difficult.  We initially tried walking down the stream since that was generally clear of brush and shallow, but we quickly discovered why that was a difficult option after Kate had to stick out her hiking pole to help haul me out of some quick sand.  You could just be walking along the stream in ankle deep water, and all of the sudden you were up to your knee where the apparent solid stream bed was just a mirage.  After that, we were more cautious and figured out how to read the stream for quick sand a little better, but it was still not fool-proof and we still ended up with a quick sand surprise occasionally.

 We tried just pushing through the brush, and while I was ok with that, it took Kate a long time to make her way through and she made it obvious that she didn’t enjoy it.

 After slogging through cart house wash for just over a half-mile, bouncing between thick brush and the quick sand laden stream, I could tell that Kate was really not having a good time.  I could have continued on, but it wasn’t fun for me either though I could have made it work.  I offered to Kate that we could climb back up to the rim of the canyon and follow it downstream until we were able to descend back to the wash where travel looked more reasonable.  I did have some waypoints I had downloaded where it was marked as potential descent points into the canyon, but I didn’t have any information other than the waypoints to know if they would go.

 It didn’t take Kate too long to decide that she wanted to ascend the canyon wall and get the heck out of the wash.  We found a spot to scramble out of the canyon, and we escaped to the high rock plateau which Courthouse Wash ran through.  

We navigated off-trail with a combination of GPS and compass, crossing the desert until we eventually rejoined a 4×4 track.  We were walking down the track when a Jeep stopped and offered us water.   We could have gotten by with what we had, but we gladly accepted a couple bottles of water.  It was getting quite warm by this point, in the low 80s and we were fully exposed with the lack of cover out here.