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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.

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Hayduke Trail Day 49

Yeti — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 02:18:04 +0000

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.

Sadly, it was empty

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!

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Hayduke Trail Day 47

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

Start: Near North Bass Trailhead

Finish: Crazy Jug Canyon

Daily Mileage: 8.8

Trip Mileage: 836.8

Elevation gain/loss: 916/4654ft

I was awake when my alarm went off at quarter to five. I wanted to hit the trailhead at first light, and I had about an hour to get there, so I got up and started packing accordingly. It was a clear, cold night, and I’m sure it was below freezing, but I had the motivation to get this day started so I could tackle its challenge.

I don’t really like night hikes, but it was just necessary here. At least I was just going along the enclosed 4×4 track, not through some exposed scenic vistas. I was constrained to the muted glow of my headlamp but made good time marching along the road. I got to the trailhead just as the sun was starting to color the sky oranges and pinks. I snapped a couple of quick shots and headed down the trail, which would switch back down to Muav Saddle, where I took a brief stop at Theodore Roosevelt cabin. It’s not actually his cabin, but he was rumored to camp at the spot when he was hunting mountain lions in the when he was president. I took off my extra layers and prepared for the hard part of the day.

Today’s goal was to do Saddle Canyon up to Crazy Jug Canyon. Saddle Canyon is the most notorious section of the Hayduke Trail and is considered the most difficult and slowest section of the trail. I had read many journal entries where it took people all day to go five miles to Crazy Jug. That was in the spring, though, when there’s more sunlight. That’s why I wanted to start in the canyon as early as I could in the day to make sure I could get to Crazy Jug.

Saddle Canyon is completely trailless. I started off my descent following a trace of a wash through brush. The brush wasn’t actually too bad, and I did make pretty good time through it. About half the time I was in the wash, and the other half of the time I was skirting the sides when the wash got too brushed in. I pretty much tore through that first area at just slightly below my normal pace. That started to give me confidence that I’d have the time to complete the canyon today. However, I still had a long way to go and the biggest challenges.

I came across a couple of flowing streams from springs early on, which weren’t even in my guidebook. I can’t blame myself for carrying the extra water, but I’m starting to flag stuff like this for future hikers. The bushwhacking alternated between scrub oak and various small thorn bushes, but there was a large section that was burned out where just stubs of former trees remained. Made it easier for me to travel, though the ground was a bit looser, and obviously I would have preferred it was not burned out.

The wash got bigger as I went and became the obvious travel path where I was no longer leaving its course. I navigated around my first three or four pourovers, which just involved some light scrambling around the sides. I kept a sharp eye out for cairns which would guide me around a large pourover. I heard that many hikers missed it and had to backtrack. I didn’t have good data on my maps for this section since it isn’t trail, just pure bushwhacking. The guidebook is wrong, and the other GPS data that I could find is similarly wrong. I found a cairn right where I thought it would be which lead me along a cliff edge to a raised spit of land between two canyons. This was reported to be a very difficult and exposed scramble, but I thought it was pretty easy. Nothing too challenging about it or exposed at all.

Once I got to the top of the spur, there were some cairns and a faint path leading down the spur back into the canyon. I looked at my mileage at this point and now was already about halfway through this trail section in only an hour or two! That led me to take a break to take in the canyon.

It took some winding around to get down the spur but not too bad. At one point, I slipped a little bit and grabbed a bush which broke off in my hand, but luckily I grabbed another one to prevent me from falling down a cliff band. It was a lot of loose rock up there. I made my way down towards the end of the spur and got back into the wash for Saddle Canyon. In this canyon, since it’s trailless, I’ve been able to see Sloppy Joe’s footprints in addition to the mystery hiker ahead of both of us. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his footprints, probably a month or so. I don’t know if he skipped the middle of the trail or if the rain just wiped out his footprints at some point. It’s always good to see other hikers’ footprints that I know, especially in trailless sections like this.

After I rejoined Saddle Canyon, it shortly narrowed down into a slot canyon. In the slot canyon, there were a ton of pourovers. These are the infamous chutes that I had heard about. A lot of the pourovers had a puddle at the end of them, but almost all of them had an easy way to scramble around. One I had to get out my haul line and lower my pack before I did some straight down climbing, but it wasn’t too bad.

For a couple of miles, Saddle Canyon was just a moving puzzle. I constantly encountered obstacles and pourovers and puddles of unknown depths, and I had to figure out how to get around or through them. I kept my feet dry for a long time. Then I came to a pourover where the walls closed in on either side. I saw footprints going through the puddle at the bottom, so I supposed that the other hikers had scrambled on one of the walls, but it was a bit steep and exposed for my liking. So, I climbed down a chock rock which, in and of itself, was pretty sketchy. There was nowhere to even lower my pack, so I had to climb with my pack on. I was able to lower myself down, but the bottom was muddy and sloped away from me. I played slip and slide on the bottom until I decided to screw it and just ended up walking through the puddle, getting my feet wet for the first time.

The pourovers continued, and I came to a few that were basically water slides into a puddle. One of them I pretty much just had to sit down and slide down it into the puddle. I was able to wedge myself on the sides of the chute to have a controlled descent, but I still ended up sitting in the puddle at the end since it was slippery. I had packed all my stuff to where I could probably dunk my pack and be okay, but that was about the closest I got to wetting my pack today. A couple more tricky pourovers, and then I came to another big one. However, there was a trail up some sketchy scree to go around it and eventually drop down. The scree wasn’t too fun since it was really loose. I made it, though.

I was getting pretty close at this time to Crazy Jug but was also starving, so I took a quick lunch break. After lunch, as I was starting to approach Crazy Jug, I saw some big mountain lion prints in the wash. Awesome to see close to where I’ll be camping! I finished, I made it to Crazy Jug, which is where I had to stop for the day for my permit. It’s got a flowing stream, and I found a flat sandy camp spot not far from it. However, it was just after 12:00, so I had a lot of time to go today. Considering all of the daunting information on the internet, I’m amazed at how quickly this went for me today. I do like this type of challenging terrain that’s a puzzle that you have to put together on the fly. I really excel at challenges like this. However, I still don’t like exposed scrambling, though. There was a fair bit of that today. Most of the drops wouldn’t have been too far anyways.

I set up camp, and since I had a flowing stream, I washed my clothes as best I could and washed up myself as well. Then I set to repairing my pack. The brushy trail took a toll on it today. The water bottle holders on each side failed, so I sewed those back up, and my left hip belt pocket got a hole too, which I also fixed. That’s the third time I’ve repaired both of my water bottle holders and hip belt pocket. This trail is just not nice to stuff like that, though it is also an old pack with old material. I had planned that this trail was this pack’s last.

The sun set behind the canyon walls in very early afternoon, and I just relaxed by my remote stream, likely the only person for many miles.

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Hayduke Trail Day 35

Yeti — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Paria Canyon between Second and Third Crack

Finish: Cow Tank on Vermillion Cliffs

Daily Mileage: 18.0

Trip Mileage: 617.2

Elevation gain/loss: 3270/1367ft

It was one of the warmer nights that I’ve had out here last night. I didn’t even have my hat on for the whole night, which is a first since very early on the trip. Also, my socks and insoles dried overnight, though my shoes were still damp. I guess an advantage of the dry desert air. That never would have dried in other places I frequent overnight.

I put my feet into my dry socks and dry-ish shoes and proceeded to immediately cross the Paria River and get them wet again. At least they weren’t wet when I put my feet in them, which is the hard part.

Where I was, the Paria River did a bunch of tight switchbacks. Early on, I found myself looking around and appreciating the canyon a lot more than I was late in the day yesterday, which validates my decision to stop a little bit early since I wasn’t enjoying it too much being tired. The cliff walls were sheer, and as I progressed into the canyon, they got taller and taller. There were some big alcoves like in some other canyons I have seen, and in general, just great rock and views along with a relatively easy “trail”.

I bumped into another backpacker a couple of times in the morning, and when I saw her filling her Platypuses at a spring, I asked if she had trouble with her caps leaking. I replaced one bladder in Kanab due to a leaking cap, but since then, another bladder has started leaking from the cap as well. These are brand new bladders, just used a few times each, and I have no idea why they started leaking so quickly, not due to a puncture. It also really hampers my water capacity since they’re 2.5 liters each. Well, the backpacker had a spare cap which I tried, but unfortunately, it still leaked past her cap so I guess it’s something on my bladder. Oh well, I’ll just have to deal with it.

The Paria changed as I went downstream. The river went through ledges like Dark Canyon earlier on the trail, and became a lot more fun and scenic to traverse. There were also a lot more rock formations with the river cutting closer to the rock.

As I got further downstream, the walls got enormous and very tall. That worried me a little bit since I knew that at some point, I would be climbing straight up them to Vermilion Cliffs. I would be exiting the canyon without any information on water for the next day and a half on the high plateau I was climbing to. I loaded up with eight liters of water. That was quite the load even on flat terrain, let alone a 2,100 foot climb.

I got downstream to my exit point. I cleaned out my shoes and socks and emptied all the sand and wrang them out best I could since this was possibly my last wet river walk. I was following a route that another hiker posted for how to get out of the Paria Canyon. I only found information about 2 groups doing the route on the internet, though there could have been more. The route was pretty much scrambling up scree and rock. It started going up a scree slope, then traversing over to another scree slope where there was a cliff band I had to get up. A little bit of exposure on the cliff band but not bad. The scree was mixed with dirt and definitely unstable at times, and it was extremely steep. I found myself following mostly sheep trails since they obviously know what they’re doing.

the route up

I headed upward with the river disappearing quickly below me. I climbed to a narrow buttress where there were actually a couple of cairns showing the way. They led me to a crack to get over the next cliff band, where I had to take off my pack and carry it because it was too narrow. From that point on, it got steeper, steeper, steeper. I’m not sure who looked at the slope and thought “I can climb that”. The sun was out, and with my heavy load of water, I basically just took it slow and steady with frequent short breaks. I trudged up and up. There was a bit of exposure towards the top, but not too bad either. It was just so incredibly steep and unrelenting, though doable.

the route up

I finally crested the steep part and took a good long break, taking in the Paria Canyon 2,100 feet below me. It was quite a sight, and looking down, it was astounding how vertical it was below me that I had gone straight up with my big load. Just taking it all in, steep slope, the river below me, and the canyon spread out in both directions, I just started laughing, trying to comprehend the situation. It was one of the hardest climbs I’ve ever done, but I beat it! And I’m glad I did; it was well worth the views. I was just so happy and excited to be on top and take everything in.

I had to keep moving, and I had about a mile of cross-country to an old reservoir that used to be a ranch. The cross-country wasn’t too bad after I got my bearings. The reservoir had water in it but did not look or taste the most appetizing. Tasted like a mix of algae and dirt even after filtering. I decided to just take on one more liter in my filter bag and try not to use it. From this point, I’m not going to see water for either 25 or 35 miles, though I think there’s a good chance I’ll see people tomorrow and might be able to ask for some. Either way, I should have enough water to make it 35 miles worse case.

After the reservoir, I did some brief cross-country until I got to a road which I could follow for a couple of miles. The road was a 4×4 track that looks like it’s used by one or two people a year, but easier going than through the weeds and desert growth. At this point, I was looking for a campsite, but was not seeing anything flat or open up here. The road passed right next to an old short water tank with a cement bottom. The tank was dry, and the cement was clean and flat. Looked like a perfect camp spot to me. I set up a cowboy camp, and I could even walk around without my shoes and socks on to let everything air out. It’s hard to do in the desert with all the pickers. It should be a good spot for stars since the moon is new right now and I’m in the middle of nowhere. I’ll hit the harder part of the alternate that I’m doing tomorrow with about 5 miles of straight cross-country. We’ll see how that goes.

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Hayduke Trail Day 26

Yeti — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 03:15:10 +0000

Start: Near Cottonwood Canyon Road

Finish: Hackberry Canyon

Daily Mileage: 22.3

Trip Mileage: 459.5

Elevation gain/loss: 684/1913ft

It got cold last night, and there was frost on my tent this morning. As I expected, the wind died as soon as the sun went down, which is typical. For some reason, even though it was cold, I got up and packed up in one of my quickest times yet. I did want to get some trail done today to set myself up well for my next town step.

I headed out from my protective hill back to the road, which I’d walk for a few miles till I got to my next trail. As I was walking the road, and a ranger pulled up to me and asked me if I was a Hayduke Hiker. I said, who else would be walking on this road? She suggested that I skip Round Valley Draw ahead because she expected it to be muddy and told me about a bypass route. I thought about it as I continued hiking down the road and decided that I would at least give Round Valley Draw a try. It had frozen last night, and the ground was hard, so I thought this might help freeze any mud in the canyon. Worst case, if I couldn’t do it, I could climb some small hills and be at the bypass route that the ranger suggested. So, there wasn’t a whole lot of risk with me at least taking a look at Round Valley Draw.

I got to the trailhead then hiked down the wash to the draw. When I got to the start of the slot canyon, I was confused if I was supposed to drop in straight away or hike down the edge and then drop in. My guide had talked about a log that’s helpful to get into the slot. I saw no logs and hiked down a bit along the edge but could tell that wasn’t going to work since the floor of the valley drops deeply away. I went back to the head of the slot canyon and dropped in to give it a try. There was a big drop to get to the floor of the slot canyon. For the first time of this trip, I took out my haul rope and lowered my pack to the bottom. There wasn’t a place for me to really anchor my line to use it to help me down, so I resigned myself to just down climb. The drop was about 10 feet, and it was almost vertical, but there was a very small crack that I managed to jam my shoes into to carefully get down. Probably my toughest single move yet on this route.

The scramble down

Once I was down in the canyon, I could see footprints, so that was a good indication that I was on the right track. It would have been difficult to climb back out of the slot canyon. I started down the canyon. It was pretty narrow at times but nothing like Peekaboo, and compared to Peekaboo, it was easy walking.

It was a very slow walk, though, because I constantly stopped to take pictures and set up my tripod for some shots. It was a really cool slot canyon winding around with stratifications in the rock, and there were lots of small fun scrambles. The canyon was so narrow and deep that it was pretty dark in places.

The moon was out, floating magically right above the narrow canyon most of the time. Amazing that with such a slim view of the sky, the moon was so perfectly placed.

I thoroughly enjoyed my slow stroll through Round Valley Draw, and am glad that I didn’t listen to the ranger and skip it, but all good things must come to an end. The draw dumped into Hackberry Canyon. Hackberry was only slightly bigger but definitely not a slot canyon. Really scenic, though, with good high walls. It was an easy walk once I got in Hackberry. The wash was very shallow, and there were not even any obstacles.

I took a lot more pictures in Hackberry. The canyon started out as normal with a wash in the middle and then generally a little bit of vegetation on either side where dirt had built up. However, a little ways down the canyon, it changed to where the wash was really wide and typically took the entire width of the canyon. This gave everything a weird look where it was almost as if the ocean was coming up to big rocks or the canyon walls like a cliff. It was an ethereal look and something that I hadn’t seen yet out here, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, the walls of the canyon were rounded in places, and there was vegetation growing on them. Since it’s fall, half of the vegetation was green, but the other half was turning yellow, giving a good general look to the place.

After walking down Hackberry for a while, some more vegetation started to appear, and water started flowing. One of my favorites! Vegetation and walking down a running stream. I resigned myself to getting my feet wet after I stepped in quicksand with one foot which did the job for me. There weren’t really bypass trails higher in the canyon, so for the most part, I just walked straight down the stream. The stream had a lot more quicksand than the other running streams that I’d been down, and I added a couple more observations for how to tell where quicksand is to my mental dictionary. It’s definitely not foolproof, though. Where there’s water running over quicksand I have no idea how you would tell that. You could prod ahead with a hiking pole, which I do, but the spots of quicksand can be very small, and the poles can only do so much. I mainly just poke at specific suspicious spots to see if they’re quicksand. It’s pretty surprising when you’re walking along normally and then all of a sudden you go up to your knee in quicksand.

With the flowing stream in the thick vegetation and needing to keep my eyes on the stream, it was hard to look up and look around at the canyon. I spent a few miles like this, mainly just charging through the stream, and I just don’t enjoy this as much.

However, as I got further down the canyon, it opened up a bit, and there was a trail on higher benches that crisscrossed the stream. The higher benches allowed me to actually see the canyon again, which was awesome! They also mostly kept me out of the stream. I wandered down these higher benches for a while until I decided that I had done enough for the day and set up camp. Today was a true example of the emotions high and low that you can go through on a long distance hike. You can go from the highest highs to deepest frustrations in a very short period of time. It is all part of the experience though, and you keep moving onward down the trail.

My poison ivy has been getting bad. My legs and ankles are swollen in addition to the rash and blisters. I cleaned it yesterday and then again today and applied some ointment to it. I’ve never had poison ivy this bad, but so far this swelling and blisters are my only effect, so hopefully that’s all that I’ll have to deal with. I’ll just have to pay attention to it.

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Hayduke Trail Day 20

Yeti — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Hamblin Arch

Finish: Unnamed 4×4 track in Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument

Daily Mileage: 21.4

Trip Mileage: 379.9

Elevation gain/loss: 3214/1810ft

I had probably my best night of sleep on the trail so far last night cowboy camping. I’m not sure why, but maybe the babbling brook helped. Finally, there was no condensation to wake up to, and it was just a perfect night. I got up and packed up at my normal time, but it was still pitch black when I was ready to go. The steep canyon walls didn’t help with that. It’s way quicker and easier to pack up without involving a tent. It finally got light enough for me to go, and one of the guys next to me decided he needed to cat hole right next to the trail, right next to my campsite. He even gave me the evil eye when I stumbled upon him, as if it was my problem, not his, that he was taking a squat right next to a high-traffic trail. That delayed me for a few minutes waiting for him to finish. Definitely inconsiderate, especially when you’re supposed to be using WAG bags in this area.

I continued up Coyote Gulch, but I think I had passed most of the really spectacular stuff yesterday. This was still a great canyon, but the party pieces were behind me. I continued up the canyon, and today I was going to take an alternate route that I put together. I was going to head up to a trailhead that is commonly used to access Coyote, and from there, do some cross-country traveling. However, looking at my maps, I noticed that there was a stream that paralleled my course, so I decided that I might try going up that instead of the high cross-country.

The stream was labeled as Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch, so you would think it would be dry, right? Well, most of the flow that I had been walking in was coming from the “Dry Fork”. A bit misleading in the name. I had been following easy treadway until I got to the Dry Fork. There were a couple of footprints going up but not much in the way of paths. I headed up the creek anyways, either walking on the bank or on cow paths on either side of the creek. Since I had turned off the trail and this suddenly wasn’t a well-traveled area, I got into my favorite, pushing through brush once again. It didn’t take long on the Dry Fork before I started looking for an opportunity to stage an escape. The walls of the canyon were dirt and steep and didn’t really offer me an opportunity. I continued upstream until I came to a tributary wash and followed that up a bit until I saw a spot where I could climb out of the canyon. I climbed straight out on some slickrock and got into the high country on top of the canyon rim.

From there, I was basically on my previously planned route, which was a simple straight line, so I grabbed my compass and took bearings to work myself across the terrain. Obviously, there’s no traveling in a straight line in just about any terrain; you have to work your way around, across, or over various hills and valleys, but it’s still a fun challenge to make your own path and figure out how to make it work.

It was getting pretty warm up top, but it was totally worth being away from the brushy creek. I had enough of that over the past few days. It’s not that I can’t deal with wet feet, but just the continuity of getting my feet wet and then having wet shoes was starting to bother my feet a little bit, and I wanted to keep them in good shape for the rest of this trip.

The high country is beautiful, and I got immense views of the surrounding landscape as I basically made it to the local height of land. I could see back to the Waterpocket Fold, and the other way to 50 Mile Mountain, which I’ll be crossing after my next resupply. Definitely well worth climbing out of the canyon. As I continued paralleling the canyon it did dry up and it got wide and steep and it looked like it might have been nice to be in the canyon, but oh well. There were a couple of spots where I might have been able to get back down into the canyon, but I would have had to do some exploring first, and it just wasn’t worth it to me.

I did cross-country for several miles until I hit a 4×4 track and made a couple of turns and was in the Peekaboo and Spooky slot canyon areas. And then the tourists appeared. It’s amazing how you can go from no one to a million people in such a short period of time. My route took me up Peekaboo slot canyon.

I think I didn’t fully consider the implications of having a full pack with six liters of water and going through a very tight canyon with many slickrock scrambles. I had to take off my pack for about half the canyon and carry it in front of me or rather push it in front of me through the slot canyon to make progress. Sometimes I had to throw it onto a ledge or something ahead of me and then scramble up after it. Several times it was really difficult for me, even without a pack, to do some of the scrambles because they were slick. I’d have to try to get a running start, but I could make it up some of the steep slopes. I had done the slot canyon before, so I knew what it was like, but definitely did not have a full pack on for that. At my first opportunity, I got out of the slot canyon because it was just so tough with my pack. Also, my pack was rubbing on the narrow walls and making more holes in my poor hip belt and water bottle pockets.

After the slot canyon, there is supposedly a trail that continued up the Peekaboo wash for a while. There were literally no footprints on this trail. Just like people suddenly appeared when I entered this area, they immediately vanished before the trail even finished the slot canyon because that’s the popular loop. I went up the wash and took a break where it ended up and entered a box canyon. The sun was pretty hot, and I was rationing my water since I didn’t expect to see any until tomorrow. The break helped me recharge with my limited water.

My map showed a trail going up the box canyon at the end of Peekaboo, but looking at the topo map and the canyon, I wasn’t sure if I could get out of the box canyon if I entered it. My map showed the trail stopping at the end of the box canyon, and I didn’t know if that meant there was an impassible pour over or that’s just as far as the mapmakers cared to extend the trail. Since I wasn’t sure, I decided to instead climb up the right side of the canyon on the rim and avoid the question.

I think that turned out pretty well because the rock I walked past on the rim was very scenic with lots of swirling designs of many colors in the stone. Beautiful rock. I worked my way over to the head of the box canyon, and there was definitely a big pour over there. There might have been a way around it, but I think I made the right decision to go around the canyon vice up it.

I had more cross country after the canyon, which wasn’t too difficult except there was a huge amount of cryptobiotic soil and no way for me to avoid it. I just had to do my best to follow the game trails to minimize my impact. There were some steep dirt slopes but nothing too difficult. I met up with a 4×4 track, and after walking down it a couple of miles, I found a clear campsite, which was the first one I’d seen in a while. This was around when I was going to stop for the night, so I decided to set up camp.

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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.

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Hayduke Trail Day 12

Yeti — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Hite Marina

Finish: Poison Spring 4×4 Track

Daily Mileage: 26.8

Trip Mileage: 224.4

Elevation gain/loss: 3932/3215ft

It was not a cold night, but there was tons of condensation inside and outside of my tent, even a touch on my sleeping bag. I got a slow start to the morning, chatting with the others, but no problem with that. I hit the road around 8:00 and reached the bridge over the Colorado River around 9:00. The bridge offered great views, and I gave a Hayduke salute. No traffic on these remote paved roads.

I had a quick scramble up some rocks before reaching a 4×4 track. Instead of staying on the Hayduke, I took an old mining road to get to the top of a plateau that the trail would later climb. This allowed me to avoid a purportedly challenging chimney climb, and getting higher more quickly to see the surrounding landscape.

After the climb, I was mostly going cross-country for most of the day, using my compass around my neck to show me the way. There were plenty of signs of old cowboy activity in the form of rusty cans of food. The going was pretty easy since it was relatively flat. At a point, I noticed that I could see for many miles around, but I couldn’t spot any form of human construction—no roads, power lines, or anything else like that. It’s pretty interesting that there are still areas of the country that can be this remote, even when I started the day on a paved highway.

I made my way up and down washes, going cross-country, following the imaginary line of the trail, subject to my interpretation. I took a break at a giant cairn, which was part of an old trail shepherds used back in the day. While on a break, I heard footsteps, and a hiker named Sloppy Joe appeared climbing up to the cairn. He introduced himself and mentioned he’s also doing the Hayduke. He asked if I wanted to hike with him, and I obviously answered yes. It’s always better hiking with a partner, especially in this cross-country terrain.

We shared our backstories as we traversed the country, heading up and down more washes and occasionally crossing between them to get where we needed to go. We reached Fiddler’s Cove Canyon, which was spectacular to look down upon. The top rocks were a yellow-gold color, and there was bright red and white sandstone deeper in the canyon. The canyon also had many tight twists going back and forth as it very casually wandered downhill. After some exploring, we found the spot where we could drop down into the canyon. Other than that one spot, the walls were mostly sheer. The descent wasn’t bad, and there was even a few cairns and an observable treadway, which made it not much of a challenge.

We walked in Fiddler’s Cove Canyon for a while, enjoying the spectacular sights of the curved stone and colorful rock. We had both planned to take the Hatch Canyon alternate rather than the Hayduke Trail, which joined the Dirty Devil River and crossed it many times. With the wet weather, the river was supposed to be running high and typically is a silty, nasty river. The alternate would allow us to skip many crossings of the Dirty Devil, and cross it only once tomorrow.

Hatch Canyon was pretty similar to Fiddler’s Cove Canyon, and we once again went back and forth as we gradually made forward progress. Both canyons were fantastic and the highlight of the day for sure.

We reached the point in Hatch Canyon where we were supposed to climb out of the canyon to join a 4×4 track that ran above it. The start of our ascent was obvious, with big, easily climbable rocks. However, above the rock, the slope turned to a mix of dirt and rock. It was loose enough to kick steps into but also loose enough to not hold when you took a step. We had to be pretty careful on that, and it was steeper than I would prefer. We went up until we hit a wall, so we had to traverse to the right to continue the ascent. This traverse was also on dirt and was immediately above a sheer cliff about 200 ft. tall. I felt like this terrain was playing for keeps, and it was a very uncomfortable traverse. Carefully, we worked our way across and then climbed up to where we found a way trail that made it easier to finish the traverse. From there, we had to climb up a couple of gullies, which weren’t too hard and were more fun.

Looking back on the scramble up

We came to the 4×4 track and started walking along it. This road was my goal for the day, and I was looking for a flat spot to set up camp. It took about a mile, but I found my spot, and Sloppy Joe continued down because he wanted to go a little bit further. It was about 7:00 p.m., and the sun was getting ready to set, so that was plenty of hiking for me for the day. I don’t think I’ll see Sloppy Joe again since he has a more aggressive schedule than I do, but it was great to hike with another Hayduke hiker for half a day. We exchanged contact info, and he walked off into the night. Thankfully, I finally have stove fuel, so I was able to have a hot dinner before I went to sleep.

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