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Hayduke Trail Day 38

Yeti — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 02:18:04 +0000

Start: Jacob Lake

Finish: Old Corral on Kaibab Plateau

Daily Mileage: 22.1

Trip Mileage: 682.0

Elevation gain/loss: 3136/2114ft

I didn’t sleep well last night, for the 3rd night in a row. I just go through phases like this sometimes. I probably only slept a couple of hours each of the last three nights. Not the best situation with all the physical exertion from hiking. I need to restore overnight to recharge my body and prepare for the abuse I’m about to put it through the next day.

I was mostly packed already, so I had my breakfast of four cookies from the Jacob Lake bakery and headed out. It was 2.2 miles to the trailhead, and I had waited until it was light out in hopes of getting a hitch. I ended up walking the whole way back to the trailhead with only about 10 vehicles passing. Oh well, not the end of the world. However, I was really struggling this morning. The lack of sleep had me start the day exhausted, one of my shoes had a pressure point, my right hand was still swollen and sore, and I was still pretty pissed off about my food being stolen and not having a good resupply for the next week. I was really down and on the verge of crying on the way to the trail. The immersion in the hike, with it being a long-distance and a lifestyle, not just a weekend trip, can make the hikes a lot more emotional.

Owl Attack the next day

I started down the trail after checking the bear box one last time to make sure I hadn’t missed any of my scraps that the scavengers had missed. The trail went through the woods most of the time on treadway but sometimes on old roads. There was nothing terribly scenic about it; it was the same sparse ponderosa forest as I was in yesterday. I had to take my first stop three miles in since my resupply was bulkier and heavier than usual.

I just kept pushing down the trail. Normally, I’d probably listen to an audiobook, but I wasn’t now since I was straight out of resupply and have a longer stretch of trail this time. Need to make sure my batteries last. I was just using one hiking pole and had the other one put up due to my swollen, sore hand. As I did more and more miles, my mood gradually improved but never got that great. It basically went from bad to less bad.

After hiking through the forest for a while, I entered a huge burn area where all the trees were gone for many miles. I was up on a plateau around 9,000 ft., and the wind was blowing pretty good. It was pretty exposed and not at all scenic walking through the dead forest, so the stretch of trail didn’t do anything to help improve my mood. The one minor perk to this area was in a couple of places I could see the Vermillion cliffs that I was walking on top of yesterday and Marble Canyon, which is immediately downstream of Glen Canyon Dam where Grand Canyon rafting starts. I remember how prominent the Vermilion cliffs were when I did the Grand Canyon 5 years ago, so it’s cool seeing them from a different angle.

I pretty much just charged through the burn area. I got water halfway through at a wildlife trough, and had to take a couple breaks due to my pack weight with the full resupply and water weight. Since I had 50/50 hot and cold dinners, I decided to make this a cold dinner night, which would let me carry less water for half a day. I guess that’s sort of a pro of going stoveless.

Towards the end of the day, I finally reached real live trees again, and what a relief to get back into the forest where the trees protected me from the wind and the sun. It was a cooler day with a high only in the 40s, but I’m almost out of sunblock and couldn’t get more at Jacob Lake, so I need to try to minimize my exposure to the sun.

I was getting pretty tired by the time I got to the forest, but my goal was 2 miles further because I wanted to roughly split up today and tomorrow to put me at the edge of the Grand Canyon tomorrow night. My permit starts the following day. I kept going and took a couple breaks. I reached the large meadow with a lake that I was targeting, but I wanted to go a bit further to get into some trees to protect me from the wind. Meadows also tend to be cold and damp overnight too. There was a little bit of snow in the sheltered areas of the meadow, which I was surprised to see still sticking around. Shortly after the meadow, I found an old corral or something with some fire rings and flat spots. I set up under some trees to shelter me from the wind.

I actually inventoried my food when I got to camp because it just seemed too heavy for eight days of food. However, when I put everything together, it turned out right, so I’ll just have to carry it and eat the heavy stuff first.

My right hand wasn’t as sore as this morning, but it seemed to swell up as the day progressed. I had it bandaged with Leukotape and gauze and applied Neosporin a couple times to try to ward off infection. I was also trying to not use the hand and rest it. Towards the end of the day, I noticed that it wasn’t really hurting anymore. I wonder if it was swelling up since I was just letting it hang there, not doing anything. I was using my other hand with my hiking pole. Tomorrow I might try using both hiking poles again and see how that goes.

Today was probably my worst day on the trail so far. It just wasn’t exciting, and I had the mental and physical challenges that I mentioned. It’s all part of the journey though; every day isn’t going to be the most scenic or greatest day. But it all averages out in the end.

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Hayduke Trail Day 37

Yeti — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 02:18:04 +0000

Start: Double Barrel Arch Trailhead

Finish: Jacob Lake

Daily Mileage: 17.7

Trip Mileage: 659.9

Elevation gain/loss: 2842/1182ft

So I’m reading my Kindle in my sleeping bag while cowboy camping this morning to kill a few minutes before the sun rose. I’ve got one hand holding my Kindle, and all the sudden, something latched on to it hard! It’s dark and I can’t see anything. I shake off whatever it is, and I see a large bird with a tan and black spotted chest flying away from me.

An owl or something had dove in and grabbed my hand with it’s talons for a midnight snack. It was dead silent flying and it was dark, so it must have been an owl.

I cleaned up with alcohol and Neosporin and bandaged it best I could on the trail. I didn’t use that hiking pole today, and my hand is sore. I hope it doesn’t get infected.

How bizarre… I’ve never heard of anything like that before.

After I finally got situated and packed up following my attack, I headed down an old road to Double Barrel Arch. I hadn’t planned to go this way, but looking at my maps and satellite views, it looked like I could cut a corner and see another arch rather than walking the main road. That definitely sounded like a winner to me. I headed down the old track and shortly reached the arch. It was a pretty interesting arch with one arch nested within another. Very unique.

From there, I basically followed the fence line, which had a game trail on it, which led me out to another 4×4 track. I turned onto that track and almost immediately encountered a sign for Pueblo ruins. I had no idea this was here, and I hadn’t seen anything from Pueblo Indians yet on this trip. There were signs with an explanation and some history, and I could see where the old dwellings were partially standing and a bunch of potsherds.

From there, I rejoined the main road that I was avoiding. Just a normal gravel road. I walked on it for a couple of miles to where it met the Navajo Trail trailhead. I needed to get on top of the Kaibab Plateau, and I had found this trail on my maps, which would take me to exactly where I needed to go. The trail was pretty faint but not too difficult to follow. I climbed up a thousand feet to the Plateau, but once on top, it got even fainter. I could see one set of footprints occasionally, and I had to rely on my GPS a bit to follow the trail. From that point, however, I was not on it for all that long.

In this area, the Hayduke Trail follows the Arizona Trail down to the Grand Canyon. However, there was a big forest fire last year, and this section of the Arizona Trail is still closed. The trail was rerouted on some forest service roads on the opposite side of the trail from where I was. There was no need for me to go all the way over there, so I took a forest service road on my side to the Arizona Trail to take me south and eventually intersect with the trail. It worked out perfectly because where my road connected was exactly where the end of the closure was.

I got on the Arizona Trail, and it was a pretty decent treadway, though not as big as some trails. There is nothing really too scenic in here. It was mostly just sparse ponderosa forest. It was pleasant enough but just nothing too jaw dropping. It was a pretty easy stroll to 89A, which is the road that would take me into Jacob Lake.

Before I got to Jacob Lake, I went to grab my cache at the bear box where I’d placed it six days ago. I opened the bear box, and 90% of my cache was gone. Even the garbage bag that I had put everything in and labeled with my name and date of arrival was gone. My stove fuel, all my homemade dehydrated dinners, almost all of my lunches, and all of my electrolytes were gone. In only 6 days, other hikers cleaned me out, even though I had a very clear statement that it was my food and I would be there today to pick it up, and that I need that food for the Grand Canyon. Some jerk was so self-centered that they didn’t care about that and stole all my food. I was obviously really upset. It took me time and money to put all this together and ship it from my home down to Kanab and then drive out here to place the cache. I did that because Jacob Lake doesn’t have a great supply, and will not hold packages even if you are staying there. It’s basically just a camp store with limited supplies and no stove fuel. This really pissed me off, and I was cursing on my way back to the road.

I got to the road, and thankfully the first car that passed me as soon as I got there pulled over and gave me a ride into Jacob Lake. I got there and started looking around the camp store to assess my options. I confirmed that they did not have any stove fuel, so I would definitely have to have some cold meals for this next stretch. As I was considering my options, I ran into another backpacker, The Jesus. He said that there was a big hiker box 25 miles down the road that was going to be pitched, but eventually, I just decided that I would resupply at Jacob Lake because I wanted to make use of my afternoon off since I’ll be hiking the next 15 days straight. That meant that I spent $166 to replace the food that the jerk stole from me. And a lot of it’s not ideal food too, a lot of sugary and highly processed stuff. I’ll do half of my dinners hot and half cold with some replacement bars. Oh joy.

I went to the restaurant to get lunch, and a hiker I ran into at the bear box had hardly touched his burger and offered the rest to me. That was a no-brainer for me, of course I took it, and I ate it. I got a pulled pork sandwich and ate about half of it when I noticed mold on the bun. This just isn’t my day. I complained, and they made me a new sandwich, so basically I had two full sandwiches for lunch. I guess that’s not too bad.

I had a hotel room with two queen beds since that’s all that was available at Jacob Lake. I offered the second bed to The Jesus since it seemed like a waste to just have me in the big room. He accepted and offered to buy me beers and dinner to make up for it. It was great to hang out with another hiker for the night. The Jesus is a double triple crowner. We drank beers, had dinner, watched some TV, and I finished up all my town chores minus laundry since there was no laundry facility here, unfortunately. This really was not my day between the owl attack, stolen food, and moldy sandwich, but at least it finished on a bit of an uptick talking to other hikers.

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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.

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Hayduke Trail Day 10

Yeti — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 01:18:04 +0000

Start: Sweet Alice “Road”

Finish: Dark Canyon

Daily Mileage: 24.1

Trip Mileage: 174.2

Elevation gain/loss: 1183/4925ft

There was a hard frost last night, and both the inside and outside of my tent were coated with it. Fortunately, my new quilt kept me warm, and it was good to see that it performed well. I didn’t have much chance to test it before this trip, but even with a cold, I was able to get up and out as usual. As I started my day, I even noticed a large puddle almost completely frozen over.

The trail went on to wide planes that were slightly above salt Creek and pretty much went from ruin to ruin. There were lots of granaries and pictographs. The trail didn’t indicate where points of interest were, but it was quite obvious when a large side trail went off somewhere that there was probably something to see. The ruins were about half intact. They were sheltered from the weather by rock overhangs so water had probably never touched them. The ruins were a bunch of stacked flat rocks and it looked like they were mortared together with mud or a loose clay. One of the ruins had what looked like squash plants by it but there was no fruit on the plants. I hadn’t seen vines yet like this, and I imagined that they were left over from ancient farmers and had grown back season after season in homage to the ruins.

Once I reached Dark Canyon, I turned and headed downstream, a path I would follow for the rest of the day. The streambed was a dry wash, similar to many others I have travelled, and there was an official trail going down the canyon. The trail mostly stayed out of the wash, going from one side of the stream to the other, though the path wasn’t always obvious for the next segment. It became a bit of a game to find the trail, but it wasn’t a big deal; I could always just follow the wash easy enough.

The canyon started out pretty wide where I entered, with the wash meandering in lazy bends. The rock walls changed as I went, but it wasn’t too exciting. After a couple of hours, I got bored and had to put on an audiobook. The sun also came out, and it got pretty warm, slowing me down until I balanced my electrolytes. The scenery was still good though.

My goal was to rejoin the Hayduke Trail that day, reaching the junction of Youngs Canyon and Dark Canyon. Despite the heat, I made good progress down Dark Canyon. When I got within a few miles of Youngs Canyon, Dark Canyon changed quite a bit. It grew narrower with steeper walls, and eventually, water appeared, flowing down the canyon – good clean water, which is always great to have. The canyon featured a series of ledges or benches that you could traverse for a while until they ran out, and then you had to go up or down a level or switch to the other side of the stream. It was really fun to go through this part of the canyon, facing the challenge of figuring out how to get through while keeping my feet dry. The canyon turned incredibly scenic, being high and narrow with water cascading down it.

Near the end of the day, I came across a cave above the flood line for the canyon and almost stopped there, but I was not yet at my goal of Youngs Canyon. I felt I had a couple more miles in me. It would have been a perfect spot, especially with potential weather coming in tonight, and you could tell that people had camped there previously. But I forged downward.

Right after passing a couple of waterfalls and pools, the canyon got narrow, and there was a way trail up to the left of the stream. Starting on that way trail, I noticed a flat spot overhanging the stream above the flood line and within sight of the small waterfalls. It was solid rock, but I decided to try to pitch my non-freestanding tent there anyways since it was such a perfect, beautiful spot. I staked it out with rocks, which seemed to work well enough until a gust of wind came along and almost blew it over. I replaced the rocks with much bigger rocks and more support. That seemed to hold out right, so we will see how it goes tonight. If there wasn’t the potential for weather tonight, I might have just camped near the stream. But for this reason, it was also important for me to be above the flood line since this canyon often has flash floods, draining a wide area.

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