River Crossing Archives - Yeti Hikes

Hayduke Trail Day 54

Yeti — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 02:18:04 +0000

Start: East Fork Virgin River

Finish: ZION!

Daily Mileage: 9.1

Trip Mileage: 952.4

Elevation gain/loss: 2293/1383ft

It was a cold night; definitely my coldest night on this trail. I awoke to a good coating of frost inside my tent, probably because I was camped next to the river. Due to the cold, I was a little more hesitant to get going this morning since I would have to immediately plunge into the river. I fueled myself with leftover steak and potatoes from last night and an egg from Kristi. So much better than my oatmeal, even my homemade oatmeal.

I packed up and even considered wearing my down puffy, which I never do as a rule while hiking. However, since this is the last day of my trip, I can throw some caution to the wind since I do not need to manage my gear for future days. I ultimately decided to just use an upper thermal layer, my shirt, and my hard shell. I could put on the puffy if I needed it.

I hiked over to the river and stood next to it for about a minute, steeling my resolve before and wondering what I was doing out here ready to walk miles down a river in 20 degrees. I worked up the courage to step out into the river. The water was obviously cold but warmer than the air, and I quickly crossed to the other side.

I followed a series of game trails down the river where I could. The trails were often good and led to decent shallow crossing points for the river. The river would wind back and forth between the walls of its canyon, causing me to have to cross it often.

As expected, the crossings left me cold, and I moved as quickly as I could between them to stay warm enough. My fingers and toes were the coldest, but I knew my body well enough to know that I would be able to keep this up for the time being.

The canyon was beautiful, and there were lots of side canyons with slots and petroglyphs and such to explore, but I rushed past all of that to stay warm and in the drive of my last day.

About halfway through the river, I entered some narrow sections where I even had to just wade straight down the river for a few hundred yards to add to the cold. When I took out my water bottle for a drink, it was slushy and starting to freeze up while I was wading through the water. I slept next to the water bottle, so the ice had definitely formed during the day. Proof that I’m serious that it was cold out. Let me repeat, my water bottle was turning to ice while I was constantly wading down a flowing river.

There were a couple of obstacles in the river. I came to some falls at a boulder jam and managed to work my way over the boulders and drop down after some time scoping it out. The grip on my shoes is already shot after 24 days, so I just had to be careful. Immediately after that was a bigger log jam and waterfall that consumed the width of the canyon. I had read that this could be down climbed, but definitely not with the amount of water that was flowing. There was an alternate to go around the falls by scrambling through some boulders, so that’s definitely what I had to do.

I scrambled up a bit, then had to take off my pack to squeeze through and down a crack into a void below a big slab of rock. Then I had to downclimb a vertical drop, which turned into an overhang, but thankfully there was a rope there to help with that. Then just a little more scrambling down before I got back to the river.

As I went downstream, more side streams came in to join the flow of the river. I got as much as knee-deep in it by choosing my path carefully, and it ranged from calm to whitewater crossings. Shortly after the waterfalls, I reached the Hayduke exit of the canyon. There was supposed to be an easier exit a little further downstream, but it looked like I could manage the Hayduke exit, so I opted for that to get out of the water as quickly as possible.

The scramble up from the river was a good Hayduke-style scramble, being steep, rocky, and brushy. It went through, but I definitely had to study a few spots for how to continue up. I made it to a saddle at the top of the climb with a campsite and took a well-deserved break in the sun to warm up and wolf down some more food. The sun never hit me in the canyon, which is half the reason I didn’t just wait till later in the day to go into the river. It was much warmer on top, and I was able to take off my layers and quickly warm up.

There were a fair amount of footprints now, and I was able to follow a cairned way trail for the rest of the day. It was fairly sandy, which made climbing a bit harder, but there were also stretches of slickrock to break it up. I shortly entered Zion National Park proper and was presented with the famous mesas of mostly white rock that towered above me. The mesas were fantastic and amazing scenery. I climbed up to the base of them, then circled around to come up the narrow gully next to Checkerboard Mesa, the icon of Zion.

It was scenic between the mesas, but my thoughts were shifting to the end of the trail only a mile off now. I was reliving my trip and thinking about how long ago it seems when I started 53 days ago. It seemed like a different life!

I powered towards the end of the trail until I could see cars passing on the road. This was it! I waited for some cars to pass then stepped out onto the road to complete the trail! I got a bit emotional since this was a very tough trail and I had just successfully completed it. I wandered over to a road pullout and sat on a rock to process my thoughts. After a few minutes, a woman who was there with some children asked how far I hiked. Boy, did I have an answer for her! She then told one of her kids to go get me a beer! She apologized that it was water beer (Keystone Light), but I still gladly accepted. She and her kids were amazed at what I had done and asked me a bunch of questions before they left.

After I had collected myself, I went to the road and stuck out my thumb. It took about 20 minutes before a couple picked me up and took me to the visitor center where I caught a bus to Springdale. I mailed as much home as I could fit in a large flat rate box, the stuff I can’t carry on, and had shrimp tacos and a margarita to celebrate. I was killing some time before a bus was scheduled to St. George. I went to the visitor center and asked about the bus, and they said it was no longer running. Apparently Google and the bus website were wrong. That left me a bit stranded. All I could do was stick out my thumb again and hope for the best.

After about 15 minutes, Rob stopped and said he lived in St. George and could take me right there! We had a great conversation in the car, and he dropped me off right at the hotel I reserved. An amazing person, and much better than a bus ride! I strategically finished today to make it to Salt Lake City tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, in time to have dinner with family, so everything worked out.

The post Hayduke Trail Day 54 appeared first on Yeti Hikes.

Hayduke Trail Day 28

Yeti — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

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.

The post Hayduke Trail Day 28 appeared first on Yeti Hikes.

Hayduke Trail Day 27

Yeti — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

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.

The post Hayduke Trail Day 27 appeared first on Yeti Hikes.

Hayduke Trail Day 19

Yeti — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Top of the Waterpocket Fold at the head of Stevens Canyon

Finish: Hamblin Arch

Daily Mileage: 20.6

Trip Mileage: 358.5

Elevation gain/loss: 2242/3265ft

I thought I was going to be cold last night since I was at a higher elevation, but it wasn’t too bad. As always, it seemed colder than it was when I actually got out of my sleeping bag.

I continued down the wash I started on yesterday, which fed into Stephen Canyon. I would follow this canyon for much of the day today. I took the wash for a bit, but then I had to work around the head of a canyon to get to the right spot where I could get around a dryfall and drop into it. I finally found the cairned trail again to take me to the spot to get into the canyon. When I got there, the cairns led down the canyon rim, and my GPS said to go straight into the canyon, but I decided to follow the cairns since there was good treadway, and I figured that route had to drop down into the canyon eventually. It sure did, and it was a very nice and easy descent into the canyon.

I followed the wash in the bottom of Stephen Canyon for a while. It wasn’t too difficult, and as I descended, the canyon walls rose around me. I soon got to a big dryfall, and the trail went up on the left side of the canyon wall. There was good treadway where there was dirt, but the route often crossed large stretches of bare rock. The view down into the canyon was spectacular from above with ledges and undercuts below the rock I was walking on. It’s nice to have a view from above occasionally and not just be down in the canyon where you can’t always see a lot. The bypass stayed up on ledges for 3 miles or so. During that time, it was often side-slabbing on slanted rock, slanted toward the drop into the canyon, and this got old after a while. There were a lot of pebbles on the slab rock I was walking on, and one wrong step hitting one of those pebbles could have made me slide out and down. I would normally be fine with hiking like this, and I’ve done it many, many times, but the constant miles of doing this got to my nerves after a while, and I just wanted to get down.

Imagine 3 miles of off-camber side-slabbing above this canyon

About halfway through the canyon, there was another Hayduke hiker coming towards me. I did not at all expect to see that. We stopped, and he said his name was Thomas. He tried to do the Hayduke Trail this spring but had to quit due to injury, and he wants to try it again next year. He’s just trying out some sections now. We exchanged info on the trail behind each of us since we were going in opposite directions and gave each other pointers. When we traded names, he said he had heard of my trail name before, but I know there are several other Yetis out there other than me.

I continued on after meeting Thomas, and the stream down Stephen Canyon began to flow consistently. It was still very brushy, but now there was more water as well, and I decided just to get my shoes wet again to make the dodging back and forth across the stream easier. I knew I had a wet crossing of the Escalante River coming up anyways. At one point, I went over a hill coated with poison ivy that Thomas had warned me about. Once again, I washed up in my convenient flowing water after coming in contact with it.

I got back down to the stream and continued to follow it. There were occasional sections up to knee deep, but I never really found the quicksand that the ranger had mentioned. It was slippery, though, and I was doing my best not to dump myself and my pack contents into the stream. Like Muley Twist, there were great undercuts in this canyon where the stream could be completely flowing under a large overhang that it had cut. I love these alcoves, showing two forces of nature fighting against each other.

As I was approaching the end of Stephen Canyon, Stephen Arch came into view. It’s quite the beefy arch, really high up on the canyon wall and with enormous legs on it. There is a way to scramble up to the arch, but it looked like some tough scrambling, and I didn’t want to do that. I continued down Stephen Canyon and was quickly surprised to see the Escalante River in front of me. It sort of snuck up on me, which wasn’t a bad thing since I was growing tired of the wet and brushy bushwhacking. It was flowing all right, and it was really brushy along it, so I ended up having to continuously cross back and forth across the river to make downstream progress. The river was about knee-deep for the most part with moderate flow, so it wasn’t difficult to cross. I just made sure to probe ahead with my tracking poles to try to avoid the quicksand patches.

I only had to go down the Escalante River for about a mile, but in that mile, I had to cross the river about 10 times. It wasn’t really the flowing thin mud consistency the guidebook described, which was nice. Way clearer than the Dirty D. The normal Hayduke trail joins the Escalante River 25 miles upstream and goes straight down and along the river like this that entire distance, so I’m really glad that I did the alternate route down Hall’s Creek, over the Waterpocket Fold, and down Stephen Canyon even if I didn’t like some portions of Stephen Canyon. Stephen Arch came into view again since it is between Stephen Canyon and the Escalante River, and then I got to Coyote Gulch.

I knew that Coyote Gulch was a popular hike, so when I got there, I was expecting to see a trail. It took me a few minutes to figure out that there’s some trail, but part of the time you were just meant to walk up the stream. That wasn’t what I was expecting, and I was looking forward to drying out my feet after Stephen Canyon and the Escalante River. I didn’t really read the guide to the section ahead of time; otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised. I was a little upset realizing that I was going to have to continue on with wet feet, but my anger quickly subsided when I started to look around and see what Coyote was all about.

As I started up Coyote, I had a big fall. There was an off-camber slickrock face that had to be climbed and traversed. It was pretty steep and I got up it after a couple tries, but half-way across, I lost my traction with my wet feet and slid down the slope. It was about 10 feet and was thinking, there goes the trip figuring I would break something. However, apart from definitely feeling the impact I ended up luckily unscathed. I dusted myself off and regathered myself and was able to get across on my second try, but it was pretty slick and sketchy.

Coyote Gulch is usually wet, so it was used by Indians back in the day. There’s a few signs of them left in the gulch. There’s also actual waterfalls and weeping walls in addition to the normal canyon undercuts and alcoves. It was all really scenic, and after starting down the gulch and understanding it better, my mood was lifted, and I began to enjoy the hike even if it was wet. I could have done a lot more exploring in this area, but I was limited by time and my food supply, so I had to press through the gulch.

There were a couple of tremendous arches along the gulch. One was actually a natural bridge, and the stream flowed right through it. I had planned to camp there, but when I got there, the campsite was already taken by a huge group. I continued on and resolved to camp at the next arch.

Just more of the beautiful canyon between the arches, and I ended up at Hamblin Arch, where there was a flat spot on the stream bank under a rock outcrop. An amazing spot to cowboy camp. The arch was absolutely massive and a sight to behold. There were some other people camped around the corner, but that’s all right. There’s also a weeping wall on the other side of the stream that let me get some fresh water since Coyote itself was silty. My mood was fully restored by the end of the day, and I was enjoying the gulch and all it had to offer. I can see why it’s a popular hike.

The post Hayduke Trail Day 19 appeared first on Yeti Hikes.

Hayduke Trail Day 13

Yeti — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Poison Spring 4×4 Track

Finish: Hotel in Hanksville

Daily Mileage: 20.0

Trip Mileage: 244.4

Elevation gain/loss: 1784/1358ft

I got up as normal and started hiking down the track, enjoying views of the Dirty Devil Canyon below. It was nice, but I definitely think that Hatch Canyon was way more scenic and a very good alternate to take, apart from the sketchy exit climb. I wandered down the track for a while before I came to the Dirty Devil River, which I had to cross. Sloppy Joe was sitting there, apparently waiting for me, and announced that the river was deep, flowing fast, and didn’t look crossable, at least here. He said he could maybe scramble to another area of the river to cross, but he wasn’t sure what to do.

The river was full of silt and impossible to see through the water at all; it was basically liquid flowing mud. We went up and down the river at the crossing, poking around, gauging depth and water speed. It quickly got deep close to the bank, and the water rushing past our trekking poles was enough to make them vibrate in our hands. Eventually, we decided to just get in the water, feel around, and see where we got where the water appeared shallowest due to ripples. The water was immediately thigh-depth and was pulling on our legs and poles. I started edging my way across the river, feeling with my hiking poles where it was shallower or where there was a rock that I might stand on. It was definitely not a straight crossing, and it got to waist depth. With the speed of that water, that was about my limit. However, I was able to continue edging my way across the river, where it seemed shallowest, and when I got near the other side, I was able to make a dash towards the bank. I made it!

Sloppy Joe was still in the middle of the river and expressed his concern about the safety of the crossing as he was standing waist-deep in water. I gave him directions as best I could to follow the path that had worked for me, and he eventually made it out of the river. We were pretty wet and dirty from the river, and our hiking poles were even full of water and mud. We started hiking ourselves dry, continuing down the 4×4 track, now through Poison Spring Canyon.

The canyon was nice but didn’t quite compare to the spectacular canyons of yesterday. It is all relative though since most terrain out here is more dramatic and scenic than most other trails I’ve been on.

Knowing that I was going to be in town today, I can never quite enjoy a hike as much when I have an end in sight. There’s not much to say about Poison Spring Canyon; it was 16 miles of canyon to traverse. There was some water along the way from a pipe spring protected by a brick enclosure to keep the cows away. It was pleasant walking. Sloppy Joe and I continued hiking together for the rest of the way through Poison Spring Canyon and then Arsenic Canyon until we got to Highway 95, which would take me for a town stop and resupply in Hanksville.

Sloppy Joe is continuing on and not stopping in Hanksville since he had heard it was difficult to hitch in and out of town. We exchanged contact info to stay in touch and went our separate ways when a 4×4 drove up the road we had been walking. I stuck out my thumb, even though I wasn’t quite situated to hitch since I figured this could be an easy way to potentially get to Hanksville. It’s always best to hitch when a vehicle is already stopping at an intersection, and especially in remote country like this. The people said they could take me to Hanksville, so I quickly jumped in after they did a little bit of shuffling to make room. Maybe the easiest hitch I’ve ever done!

I got to town, checked into my motel, and did my typical town chores, including laundry for the first time I was able to this hike (Day 13…) and binge-eating. I’ll leave town later tomorrow just to rest up for a little bit.

Laundry time

The post Hayduke Trail Day 13 appeared first on Yeti Hikes.