Nankoweap & Little Colorado (Days 70-76)

Written 6/15/08

We awoke to a cold morning, and frozen beads of condensation on our bags. We ditched our layers and raingear, the extra clothing useless in the heat of the inner gorge. From our camp on the rim, we had a commanding view of the world below. The canyon walls fell away into a deep chasm of rock and stone. Teapot buttes and Hindu temples jutted up from the gorge, suspended in the middle ground between earth and sky. So much topography, so much terrain.

We began our descent down the infamous Nankoweap Trail, our route into the Canyon. The trail dropped through the upper layers of limestone to the low ridgeline of Saddle Mountain. We beat through thorny locust, and navigated slick patches of snow. Snow in the canyon! In June! With every new bench, we dropped into new strata of vegetation. The trail passed from ponderosa and manzanita, to open forest of pinyon and juniper. We tiptoed around lethally sharp agave – a single trip could easily impale. They had recently put up massive 10-12ft stalks, bristling with small lemon yellow flowers, an impressive structural feat for such a small plant. Black bumblebees buzzed from blossom to blossom; newly hatched cicadas sat drying their wings.

The views changed as we descended. Perspective and scale were in constant flux as we passed through layer after layer. I felt insignificant amidst the magnificence and grandeur, a lowly speck travelling through the rocky folds. The trail wound across a sinuous bench, along the base of a cliff. The route seemed to “slope off towards disaster”, where sections of the trail had broken away leaving little space between the wall and the gaping void. Some definite sphincter-puckering. Footing was treacherous below Tilted Mesa, where the trail was covered in loose pea gravel. It felt like hiking in roller skates. Thank goodness for the trekking poles. We were much relieved to reach the cold flowing waters of the Colorado, the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Down in the gorge, our progress was slow, dictated by the movement of the sun. Mornings began before dawn to beat the heat of the day. We hurried to make early miles as we watched the sunlight inch down the face of the western wall. We could feel our brains cooking in our skulls, as we hiked in a heat-induced drunken stupor. When it got too hot to hike, we sought whatever shade we could find. Daytime temperatures rose to 110F in the shade. It was too hot to explore, too hot to write, too hot to sleep. If we were close enough, there was solace by the river. The Colorado, released from the confines of Glen Canyon Dam, stays a frigid 42F – just tolerable enough to dunk ourselves, before drying off on the hot sand.

We found ourselves drinking 2 gallons of water a day – and we were still dehydrated. In these temperatures, our bodies couldn’t absorb water as fast as we were losing it. In addition to dehydration, there is also a serious situation known as hyponatremia, caused by a sodium imbalance. On our second day, Ben came down with a mild-case and was incapacitated for an evening. Not a fun time to feel miserable. It was an uphill struggle against the elements.

The route followed the west bank of the Colorado, bushwhacking through a difficult maze of Tamarisk and locust trees. We ventured up to the famous Nankoweap granaries, perched hundreds of feet above the river. I found it incredible to imagine that people actually lived down here. A mix of game trails made the going easier, sometimes leading up the steep shale slopes, sometimes dropping down to the river. We slogged across loose sandbars, recently deposited by the Glen Canyon Dam springtime release. After the Colorado was dammed, the seasonal fluctuations in river levels ceased, which lead to eroded beaches and washed out dunes. It was good to see the new management practices were having a positive effect.
We flagged down a passing private raft trip, and they were gracious enough to give us a ride across the river. We soon reached the confluence with the Little Colorado River and its beautiful turquoise waters. Travertine pools backed up behind natural dams caked with deposited layers of limestone, and small waterfalls poured over the marble terraces in pale cascades. Fording was simple, and we managed to cross without difficulty. The Little Colorado turned out to be a popular day trip for commercial raft trips. From afar, we watched nearly 200 tourists march in misery to see the falls in the tormenting heat of the canyon. All were on vacation, yet none seemed to be having a good time. The poor souls.

The Beamer trail was a welcome change to the recent bushwhacking and route-finding. We hiked along a high bench layer of Tapeats Sandstone, contouring in and out of hanging side canyons that poured off into thin air. At times, the trail dropped off into the river several hundred feet below us into the dark green waters of the Colorado, directly beneath our feet. From above, we could see the upwelling of silt and sand as the waters churned and mixed in the current.

We found solace down by the river at Cardenas Creek and Hance Rapids. The Escalante route was a hands-on scramble up and down the bench layers and talus. We shouldered our packs and left the cool confines and shadows of the river for the exposed and parched expanses of the Tonto Bench. From up above, we had massive views of the undulating ridge of Palisades of the Desert and the river below. We stumbled past gardens of prickly pear, as we peered over the edge into the gaping abyss of Granite Gorge.

Our bucket cache on Horseshoe Mesa was intact and waiting. We passed the rusted remnants of early mining equipment. I was dumbfounded how anyone thought it would be a good idea to haul ore and minerals out from the depths of the canyon. At the edge of the bluff on the mesa point, we regained our bearings, and found ourselves seemingly suspended in the midst of the world, somewhere between rim and river, earth and sky.

Section mileage: ~51 miles

Kaibab Plateau (Days 66-69)

Written 6/8/08

We made a brief stop over at the Vermillion Cliffs to pick up a resupply, and to visit some friends at the Peregrine Fund Condor Project. I knew some of the crew after working on the California Condor Reintroduction Project in Big Sur a few years ago. The Peregrine Fund Condor Project is the only release site in Arizona, with the focus of eventually restoring a free-flying flock of birds in and around the Grand Canyon. As of now, the wild condor population is up to 63 birds, with 17 juveniles to be released by the end of the year. The condors seem to be having a good year, with 5 wild nests with chicks. There may be hope for the giant birds after all.

Our visit with the crew was fortuitous. Soon after arriving at the house, we were immediately slammed by a massive sandstorm that whipped the Arizona Strip into a seething fury. A giant low-pressure system had settled over the entire southwest, bringing gale-force winds, lightning and rain. Dust storms roared across the desert; 50mph gusts blew shingles off houses; lightning assaulted the cliffs. The whole house seemed to rattle at its foundations. We felt fortunate to sit out the storm indoors. It would have made for one miserable day on trail.

The crew were gracious enough to give us a lift back to the trail. We got dropped off on the Kaibab Plateau at the juncture with the Arizona Trail (AZT), only a few miles from where we left the Hayduke at Wire Pass. At 7500ft, we were back up in cool climes and Ponderosa forest. In this section, the HDT follows the AZT across the Kaibab, to the rim of the Grand Canyon, our next jumping off point. It felt good to follow a well-marked trail again as we hiked through the trees. We were surprised to pass several tanks and guzzlers full of good water, and concrete aprons for rainwater and snowfall catchment.

We soon encountered the only hiker we met out on the AZT. Her name was Serena, and she was out solo-hiking the Arizona Trail in sections. She had already tackled a major chunk of the southern section, and was now working on completing the Kaibab. The Arizona Trail is in the final stages of ‘completion’, and will bisect the state of Arizona, linking the high northern mountains to the southern deserts. An incredible scenic trail.

We skirted the edge of a burned zone, a section of the Kaibab that got scorched during the 2006 Warm Fire. Charcoal trees soon gave way to grassy meadows and delicate aspen groves. Small ponds glistened in the afternoon sun. The Kaibab was quiet and peaceful. Our presence disturbed a pair of turkeys and a herd of very large deer. The forest opened up to the East Rim viewpoint, our first glimpse of the Canyon. From up above, we could see the notched ridge of the Cockscomb, the multi-hued layers of the Vermillion Cliffs, the desolate flats of the Arizona Strip, and the lightning bolt fissure of Marble Canyon.

The trail took us over low, forested ridges and into the grassy heads of shallow canyons. Walking along a forest service road, we found the surface paved with a wealth of fossils exposed by the road grader. Ancient structures of clams and bivalves were chiseled out of the bedrock, the remnants of a prehistoric seabed thrust to 9000ft. We were walking the topmost strata of the Canyon, the distinctive Kaibab Limestone. We soon found ourselves standing at the brink of one of the greatest natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon.

Section mileage: ~41 miles

Completion of the trail - Updates to come...

Greetings! On July 7th, Ben and I finished our traverse of the Hayduke Trail at the Weeping Wall in Zion NP. The trip was phenomenal, absolutely more incredible than we had ever imagined.

We're out picking up our buckets, and will be back in 'civilization' soon. I'll be posting updates from the Kaibab, the Grand Canyon, the Arizona Strip, and our ending in Zion when I get the chance. Pictures too.

Thanks for reading!

Lower Paria Gorge (Days 61-65)

Written 6/04/08

We made the decision to deviate from the Hayduke Trail to add a twist of our own. Instead of immediately following the Arizona Trail across the Kaibab Plateau, we had procured the permits necessary to travel down the Lower Paria Gorge through the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument to the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry. It was a section the Hayduke creators Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella had done during their reconnaisance hikes across the plateau. This route was so incredible that we felt that we needed to add it to our trip as well.

We headed back down the narrow entrance of Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch. At the confluence was a large panel of petroglyphs with nearly 2 dozen bighorn sheep carved into the wall. Whoever carved the images was obviously intimate with his subject, posing the animals in natural stances, and capturing the nuances of body posture in stone. These people knew their sheep - they were their livlihood out here.

The narrows started right away, and the morning light was radiant on the upper walls, reflecting a tapestry of colors - golden orange, vermillion red, violet. Stray beams of light sometimes penetrated the overhung ceiling of stone. Large logs spanned the gap, stuck 30-40 feet above the canyon floor, silent reminders of the ferocity of water in the desert. In some places, floods had left their muddy silouettes along the wall. Splashes and liquid throes were captured in action as the silt-ladden highwater marks of past floods. There are few places to run in a narrow slot like Buckskin Gulch.

We saw several small groups of dayhikers, including a few big Mormon families. What a place to take a child. A slot canyon is a unique interactive tactile environment, and active learning experience for a kid. We were passed by a large group of shuttled hikers, speed hiking to the confluence and up the Paria to White House trailhead, almost 19 miles in a single day. The people were practially running through one of the most incredible slot canyons around, shooting pictures on the fly, grinding hard to get to the shuttle at the parking lot. Not quite the way I'd want to experience this place. I got to chatting with a dayhiking couple from Kauai, Rob and Elle, who were back home visiting family in the 4-corners region. They were curious when they found out about the HDT, and I found it refreshing to talk to real people who were genuinely interested in our trip. Rob was a cartographer and made his own maps of the islands. It was cool running into them in a place like this.

Most of the canyon ran along a joint fissure in the rock, a long narrow alleyway that would occassionally deviate and jog in another direction. In the deepest sections, light had difficulty penetrating the depths of the chasm. I lost myself in a world of abstract colors and surreal forms. The walls were scalloped and carved by floodwaters in a variety of shapes and repeating patterns. Scooped bowls, fluted hollows, walls of swiss cheese. The floor was cracked with shards of dry mud fitted together into a natural jigsaw puzzle, with bits shrivelled and curled like woodshavings. The world was dark and deathly silent. The flapping of a raven distrubed the still air, as its wings spanned the width of the gorge from tip to tip. I watched an adult swoop into its nest constructed out of flood debris in an eroded hole, to feed a pair of hungry chicks. The canyon was filled with a deafening cacophony of sound.

We crossed into Arizona at the deeply cut Confluence with the Paria. The river was barely a trickle. Nearly all the flow had disappeared into the sandy floodplain below the Box at the Cockscomb. The canyon opened up into a wide gorge of smooth Navajo caught in an entrenched meander, forcing the river into a winding series of bends and S-curves. Sheer walls sloped down to the river, glazed with a sheen of dark desert varnish. Willows and tamarisks lined the sandbars, and shady campsites appeared beneath tall cottonwoods. It was incredible how quickly the atmosphere changed below the junction with Buckskin.

Parallel cracks opened into the drainage, where wafts of cool air drifted down from the shady recesses. The base of the fins were worn thin by scouring floods, seemingly balanced on narrow footed pedestals. In one of the cracks, we were astonished to find dozens of brown morels growing in a heap of damp detritus. Mushrooms in the desert! Back in the river, walk was pleasant in the water warmed by the desert sun. Numerous flowing springs leaked from cracks in the walls, lush with mosses and delicate ferns. We passed several abandoned meanders where the river channel had cut a new passage, leaving the old bed suspended high above the canyon floor.

We stopped for lunch at Big Spring, a gushing flow of cold water straight from the wall. We arrived at the same time as a group of 10 volunteers and folks from Grand Canyon Trust doing vegetation surveys in the gorge. The GCT is a non-proft organization that works on numerous conservation projects across the Colorado Plateau. Specifically, they were surveying the impact of invasive Russian olive and tamarisk along the Paria riverway, and were getting ready to start mechanical removal throughout the corridor. After chatting a bit, we realized we had several overlapping mutual connections. It was cool hanging out with a fun group of folks out doing important restoration work. And what a place for a field site. They wished us luck on our trip and we each headed on our way.

Further down canyon, we entered the Goosebends, a series of switchbacking bends that carved out towering 1000ft overhung walls. It was fantastic walking. My neck was constantly craned in all directions to take it all in. Massive stone ampitheaters, narrow shoulders of stone, streaked walls, and pocked surfaces. We found some great swimming holes where the river had scoured deep bathtubs behind lodged boulders, where small minnows would come up and nibble us in the pools. On the dry rocky benches, we saw some flowering agaves prominently displaying their 10-foot stalks like exploding phalluses. After storing up years of energy, they invest it all in a major effort to reproduce, an incredible feat of plant biology.

At one point, the river slowed and deepened to a thigh deep pool. Beavers had dammed the Paria and were hard at work building their lodge. The dam itself was about 20ft wide, built out of a dense weave of willow cuttings. It was cool to see they were thriving, but they will definitely have their work cut out for them once the monsoons hit and the Paria flashes it out. Below the dam, we dropped packs and explored the side drainage of Wrather Canyon. The draw was full of old cottonwood trees and dense box elders. We followed a trail up the canyon to the impressive Wrather Arch. It was an eroded alcove about 150ft high that left the archway suspended on a single support leg.

We sought refuge in the shade from the sweltering heat. In the open, daytime temperatures were nearing 100F. It was crazy to think we had nearly frozen in Bryce less than a week ago. In actuality, it was a great opportunity for us to acclimate to the warmer temperatures before we began our descent into the Grand Canyon. Luckily, we found a gushing spring with hanging gardens of ferns and willows. Dozens of little Woodhouse toads lept everywhere, and brilliant blue damselflies perched delicately on low branches. We filled up gallons of water and drank heartily to quench our thirst.

The river cut down through lower formations to the top of the erodable Chinle where the canyon really opened up wide and began to drop in plunges. Large boulders choked the riverway, creating pools and small falls. While hiking, we saw Great Blue Heron, Golden Eagles, and even Peregrine falcon. Cottonwoods began to disappear from the banks, and with them, their valuable shade. Rabbitbrush and tamarisk grew up on the sandy terraces, as well as spiny agave and prickly pear cactus. Massive sand dunes eroded at the base of the 2000ft walls, as the river fell away below.

Back near the river, we found dozens of large boulders with carved petroglyphs. Several were carved on multiple faces, and one looked as if it had slid down the slope and landed upside-down. They were full of images of bighorn sheep, hands, people, scorpions, centipedes. Some panels were so dense with carvings, that newer images were etched right over the surface of older ones.

We followed the river down to Lonely Dell Ranch at the historic Lee's Ferry, part of the Glen Canyon NRA. The formidable Vermillion Cliffs rose an incredible 3000ft from the bottom of the gorge. We had travelled the entire Paria drainage from its headwaters in Bryce, down through its major tributaries and canyons, to where it emptied its load into the Colorado. The confluence of the two rivers was Mile Zero and the official start of the Grand Canyon. The last time I had seen the Colorado was back at Hite. I had managed to walk completely around with out actually seeing the tepid waters of Lake Powell. From Lee's Ferry, we were headed west for the Kaibab to begin our approach into the gorge of all gorges - the Grand Canyon.

Section mileage: ~45 miles

Bryce Canyon NP (Days 54-60)

Written 5/30/08

A regional storm system had moved into the area, and it looked like it planned on staying. From on top of the ridge above Willis Creek, we could see a massively sporatic system of storms hitting everywhere around us. The cliffs of Bryce disappeared behind a spotty curtain of sleet and rain, and Powell Point to the north glimmered with a fresh layer of fallen snow.

We followed a dirt road up the drainage of Willis Creek, and passed through a private inholding of land within the monument that had a conservation easement placed on it. Green grazing fields sat between sloped hills of the Grey Cliffs, a very secluded and pastoral ranch setting. On the other side of the property, we intersected the boundary line of the Dixie National Forest, a narrow strip of Forest Service land buffering the park. We walked through open stands of stately Ponderosa pines and Douglas fir, Oregon grape and manzanita. Hiking was easy on thickly padded mats of fallen needles. We scared off a mother turkey and a dozen of young turkey chicks. They scattered in all directions, hiding beneath bushes and cheeping like crazy.

Snow flurries passed through all afternoon as we hiked through the pine forest. We soon crossed over into Bryce Canyon NP, the fourth park of the trip. The silence was broken by the familiar whop-whop-whop of low flying helicopters. Every half-hour, we were buzzed by a dozen sight-seeing choppers flying along the rim of the canyon. We were shocked that they were allowed to fly so low and often into the reaches of a national park. While helicopters don't have the same destructive impact of ORVs, they sure impacted the serenity and seclusion of the canyon for miles around. We realized later that the helicopters were nearly inaudible from the paved roadway and highly frequented pullouts. But from a backcountry perspective, they were an offensive and gaudy intrusion of industrial tourism where the impacts of the steel-bound world should not tread.

We intersected the well-marked Under-the-Rim Trail that ran the length of the park. The trail climbed up into mixed stands of Ponderosa, White Fir, and Douglas Fir, while Oregon grape and mountain mahogany lined the ground. We climbed the Agua Canyon connector trail up the ridge, climbing over fallen trees, low-lying snowbanks, and up crumbly switchbacks through the Pink Cliffs, to the Ponderosa Canyon Overlook on the park highway. It was a bit surreal to be frontcountry again. I hadn't seen pavement since Highway 95 at Poison Spring, and had been deep in the backcountry for 6 weeks. We were looking pretty dirty and grimy compared to the immaculate park visitors.

We hitched a ride to the Sunset campground, where we met our good friend Jeremy Cohen, and his buddies Alex and Josh. The three of them were riding high off an action-packed week in Vegas and were stoked to visit us on the trail. Ben and I were dying for a hot meal, showers and laundry - all the amenities of the developed park concessions. It was completely disorienting being packed in crowds of people after a month-and-a-half of utter solitude. I stumbled through the menu at Ruby's Inn with complete tunnel vision, and ordered overpriced but delicious vegetables. Everything was an overwhelming sensory overload, and we couldn't get out fast enough.

In the morning, we woke to a landscape of snow covering everything. We were glad to temporarily be off the trail in this weather. Ben and I spent the morning running errands, and getting supplies at the General Store, while the guys slept in. We checked out the Bryce Ampitheater and its famous pink hoodoo formations for which the park is known. I could see why early cattlemen referred to Bryce as "a hell of a place to lose a cow."

We met back up with the guys and headed back out to the trailhead. Jeremy was planning on joining us for a few miles of the Hayduke Trail, and we made plans to meet up with his buddies at Rainbow Point the next day. The three of us headed back down the Agua Canyon trail and linked back up with the HDT. The afternoon was magnificent and sunny with great views below the rim. It was hard to believe that we woke to a blizzard. The trail dropped down into a forested basin, where we camped near Iron Spring. The rust-colored water was potable, but tasted very metallic. The spring was surrounded by a dense grove of leafy aspens and mahogany bushes. From above, the electric green canopy seemed out of place in the sprawling cove of pines and fir.

The trail followed the base of the cliffs, offering unobstructed views to the rim above. The spires seemed to glow a spectrum of a thousand shades of pink. We looked up vertical eroded gullies and spotted several weathered arches - all inaccessible to exploration. Climbing the hogsback of the ridge, another blizzard descended upon us dropping a thick veil of falling flakes. The entire canyon vanished into the ether. Brief windows in the weather would open up, revealing the splendors of the canyon walls. By the time we reached Rainbow Point 9115 ft, the rim was fogged in and blowing snow. Tourists looked at us strangely as we apparated off the trail clad in shorts in freezing weather. Luckily, there was a shelter at the observation point where we hunkered down for lunch. Alex and Josh were waiting for us at the parking lot and were gracious enough to bring us some leftover steak and a bag of salad, which we promptly devoured. The beauty of trail magic. The storm began to break up revealing each point northward along the rim in succession, until you could see the entire winding ridge of the escarpment. The sun came out and burned off the clouds, illuminating the freshly cleansed world at our feet.

The guys needed to get going, and were going to stop in Zion on their way back to Vegas. It was great having some company on the trail for a while. We thanked them for their gifts - Jeremy had brought me a new pair of insoles - and they were on their way. On our way out, Ben and I stopped at Yovimpa Point where we had extraordinary views to the south where the trail was headed: Bullrush Gorge, Park Wash, Vermillion Cliffs, and the Kaibab Plateau. To the east, were the Cockscomb, Rock Springs Point, the Kaiparowits Plateau, 50-mile Mountain, Navajo Mountain, and beyond Canaan Peak, the distant Mt. Ellen - 90 miles by direct line of sight. It had taken me 5 weeks to get from the Henrys to Bryce, albeit via a very indirect route.

We left the droves of sight-seeing tourists and rejoined the trail. Along the rim, we walked through stands of limber pine and the grotesquely gnarled bristlecone pines. Bristlecone trees can withstand incredibly inhospitable environments, surviving drought, fire, and wind for thousands of years. The trail dropped down into a deep ampitheater, where we camped in a park-like grove of Ponderosa near the piped and fenced off Riggs Spring. The temperature plummeted over night, and while we lucked out on snow, our Nalgenes froze completely solid. Brrr!

We followed a dirt road out of the park, and continued on down Podunk Creek, and over a low saddle in the Grey Cliffs into Bullrush Hollow. The drainage cut down through the top of the Navajo formation into Bullrush Gorge. Flowing spring water made the going difficult, making thick with mud that stuck like wet cement to the soles of our boots. Hundreds of trees grew out of the slickrock like matchsticks, covering the walls with greenery. The canyon opened up into Park Wash, where we found ourselves at the foot of the White Cliffs. We made a short trip and climbed up a steep goat trail to the top of No Man's Mesa, one of the few inaccessable tracts of rimtop left ungrazed by livestock. Ben set off two midget faded rattlesnakes that were hiding beneath a ledge, and jumped nearly two feet when they started rattling. The mesatop had incredible views of the surrounding area and back up to the Pink Cliffs of Bryce Canyon.

We continued on down sandy Park Wash as it cut its way south back through the formations of the Staircase. Further on, we climbed a low lying ridge and were astonished at what we found. Scores of potsherds littered the ground everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, from the size of a fingernail to an entire palm. Broken mug handles, smoothed edges of a bowl, the curved neck of a pot or vase. The fragments we found came from nearly a dozen different styles. Once on top, we realized we were only combing through the base of a massive trash heap. We found the remains of an entire settlement that had once covered the whole knoll. A whole community of people once thrived here. The canyon was abundant with springs, and the fertile valley bottoms would have been great places to grow crops. The site was perfectly situated along an easily traveled corridor between the different trading regions, and could have been a hub of commerce for miles around. Unfortunately, the site had been heavily looted, indicated by deep holes dug all over the ground. Pothunters had dug up rooms and left the masonry piled in heaps as they searched for valuables. At one point, this site must have yielded some incredible artifacts.

We followed a well-graded road past the still operational Kitchen Corral and Burch Ranches. As we were hiking, a local rancher and his son stopped to talk to us. He turned out to be Mr. Johnson of the historic Johnson clan, and ran the local ranches in the canyon. Their family were some of the original settlers in the region, and had been ranching out here "since forever." Along the Paria drainages, we had seen several cowboy etchings made by distant Johnson family members. They were interested in where we were hiking to and offered us a ride to the highway, but we politely declined. The Johnsons wished us luck on our trip and we parted ways.

We made it to Highway 89 and the race of bustling traffic going by. At the junction, there were several official signs warning tourists that despite what their GPS units might indicate, this road was NOT the best way to Bryce, and was an almost impassible 4WD route. Enough visitors must get lost or stuck to prompt the BLM to put up signs like that. During a short break, we saw two vehicles drive up, read the sign, turn around, and get back on the highway towards Kanab. I've heard stories of semi-trucks following their GPS units down Cottonwood Road, another rough road, to cut through the monument, only to get stuck in mudholes. The fallacy of technological innovation.

We dodged traffic and crossed the highway into the head of Kaibab Gulch. The canyon cut down into the blocky pale Kaibab Limestone. Upon close inspection, the rock was filled with well-preserved fossils dating back to the Permian Era. The ledges were composed of layer upon layer of crushed seashells. I found fossilized remains of tubeworms, corals, scallops, and clams. It was a literal cross-section into the bed of an ancient seafloor. Some incredible stuff.

The gorge cut right through the heart of Buckskin Mountain. We found a peculiar number of cattle bones in the wash, possibly from unlucky cows caught unaware by flash floods. Overhead, the massive powerlines running from Glen Canyon Dam spanned the chasm, carrying the collective fruits of hydroelectric power to God-knows where. The formations began began sinking underground as we neared the uplift of the Cockscomb. The Kaibab limestone disappeared as we reentered the Moenkopi beds and exposed Shinarump member of House Rock Valley road. Looking back over the low ridge of Buckskin Mountain, we could see the progression of transformers and cables marching across the forested plateau.

The wash turned into Buckskin Gulch as we cut back through the angled rise of the Chinle, Kayenta, and deeply layered Navajo formations. We walked through rusty orange colored fins broken by vertical parallel cracks. The sandstone took on a number of different shapes and forms: swirled teepees, hexagonal-cracked domes, slanted tables and arches. Sacred datura flowers grew among mounded coral dunes. The drainage tightened up into a narrow slot cutting its way through the stone. The afternoon light refracted off the canyon walls in an amazing array of subtle colors.

Further down the slot, I heard a strange noise like an electrical hum hovering above me. Looking up, I saw a dense cloud of swarming bees, madly assembled in the upper reaches of the canyon. The swarm buzzed from wall to wall, pulsing as if alive. A bird flying through the narrows saw the mass of bees and immediately turned back the way it came. It was strangely frightening, since there was no where to run if they decided to follow. But I was intrigued by the beauty and eerieness of the experience.

We left Buckskin at the junction with Wire Pass, an easily accessible drainage with the main canyon. We encountered a number of day hikers who were out exploring the narrows, and followed the route out to the trailhead just off the stateline. Digging up the caches, we refilled our packs and readied to leave Utah for the hotter climes of Arizona.

Section mileage: ~69 miles

The Grand Staircase (Days 45-53)

Written 5/23/08

It was joyous reunion. Ben showed up at the cache after hitching a ride in from Cannonville. He had spent the last four weeks in Portland with a number of physical therapists and specialists to get him back on the trail as soon as possible. Now, with a literal pharmacy of tapes and supplies, and some practice hikes under his belt, he was feeling fit and rearing to get going again. He also came bearing gifts from the outside, including a new pair of trekking poles (I snapped one while hiking the Escalante corridor), a set of shoelaces, and a replacement spoon. He also surprised me with some fresh vegetables, salami, bagels, and cheese - a much needed culinary supplement to weeks of bucket food.

We followed the wash down to the entrance of Round Valley Draw where grey walls of Navajo emerged from beneath a thin layer of Carmel. The slot opened up quickly from a fissure in the ground. We lowered our packs into the crack, and chimneyed down 20 feet to retrieve them. The walls were narrow, and ribbed with angled intrusions cutting across the drainage. Fallen boulders required some down climbing and the handing off of packs. It was great having a companion again. The closest we came to swimming was at a deep section of the slot where we found ourselves walking on snow! The snowbank had backed up its own melt water, creating a dam behind it before it broke. Mud still caked the walls and the water-logging had even caused some sections of the wall to collapse.

Round Valley Draw emptied into Hackberry Canyon. White walls of Navajo flanked the dry wash, sloping off into broad shoulders of stone. The sand in the wash was white as snow, like a wide river of sugar crystals. Though the canyon was dry, there were a number of box elder, singleleaf ash, globemallow and paintbrush growing along the sandy terraces. We walked past deep running joints that pinched out into narrow slivers high up the walls. Blackbrush and pinyons grew out of cracks in the rock, seeming to defy gravity. The upper side canyons were full of towering Ponderosa pines leaning drunkenly at odd angles, growing in collected dunes of fine sand. It was a real mindbender to think that the petrified sand dunes of the original parent rock were now eroding back into new dunes only to repeat the process over again.Water began seeping into the wash halfway down Hackberry, changing dramatically from an austere canyon of naked stone to a lush verdant corridor. Thick reeds lined the waterway like a dark green ribbon, and willows and cottonwoods spread their branches along the embankments. Pale minnows swam the running rivulets in the creek, darting beneath our splashing feet. The going was so smooth that at one point we shed the Chacos and hiked barefoot in the wet sand. It was luxurious.

We took time to explore several side canyons, including one called Stone Donkey. Hiking back in the wash, the ground was littered with plate-sized slabs of iron concretions, leeched out of the porous rock. The canyon itself narrowed up into a sliver of a crack less than three feet wide. Hips, knees and elbows were used to shimmy up the tight slot, chimneying over chokestones and flood debris. The roof cut out all light, leaving us with our headlamps in near complete darkness. We climbed all the way back into a small grotto at the base of a 50 foot rappel. It was a sweet slot. It was about as technical of an ascent as you could get without protection or climbing gear. Coming out again, we were blinded and cooked by the direct light, our eyes had grown used to the cool darkness inside the crack.

We continued on down canyon, where we passed several places where chunks of the cliff had collapsed into the creek. One rockfall was so recent that the leaves of the cottonwood caught in the slide were still supple and green. We even witnessed a small slide occur on its own accord, and watched the crash and tumble of rocks come plummeting down the hillside. A sobering reminder of geology in action, and natural forces at work.The canyon opened up into a colorful arching crescent of lower Hackberry. We climbed a steep bench to inspect the Frank Watson cabin, an old homesteader's dwelling from the early 1900's. The roof beams were sagging, and some woodrats had taken up residence in the fireplace, but it was tough to ask for a better location. The canyon cut east through the uplifted cliffs, back towards the Cockscomb, where it had eroded out a narrow passageway. We passed half a dozen dayhikers who were out exploring the wonders of the monument. In the dark corners, I found a few Hackberry trees for which the canyon was named. Throughout the canyon, I saw few invasive plant species, and the effects of grazing were minimal. Overall, the Hackberry drainage was in excellent shape, and from what I could tell, a great example of a healthy riparian corridor.

We exited the canyon into Cottonwood Wash, and met up with the muddied flow of the Paria River. Old timers once said it was "too thin to plow, too thick to drink." Turning up 

the Paria through the notch of the Box, we soon encountered a party of jeeps and ATV-ers roaring along the riverway. When the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created in 1996, off-road vehicle use was prohibited off of all historic and established roads. But motorized recreationalists found a loophole in the monument's regulations, citing that the Paria floodplain was historically used as an important corridor for regional transportation, albeit back then with wagons and horses. Further up canyon, we encountered a volunteer motorized trails "ranger", backed by the county commissioners and state parks - and not the federal management bureau responsible for managing the area, who was patrolling the "trails" to improve relations between hikers and ATV-ers, and to encourage minimal impact by both groups. He argued that the revving sound of his ATV was a minimal intrusion onto the wilderness experience of others, but declined to comment on the long-term effects and soil damage left by vehicles well after their drone had dissipated from the canyons. The use of ORVs on the Paria is a hotly debated issue today, one that the BLM administrators are (hopefully) working to resolve.

We hiked up the familiar braided Paria floodplain. With every storm, the river jumps its banks, cutting new routes, and abandoning old ones. The craggy Vermillion Cliffs and sherbert colored Chinle hills formed the walls of the river corridor. We saw plentiful evidence of people past and present, in the form of ancient petroglyphs and pictographs, numerous cowboy etchings, the old Pahreah townsite, and the abandoned Spencer gold mine.

We spent several days exploring the side drainages of the Upper Paria. We made a visit to an old study site for an ecology project I worked on. Two summers ago, I worked as a wildlife technician surveying spotted owls and trapping small mammals in the monument. It was cool to revisit some of my old haunts and to share some of my favorite places with Ben. We climbed up onto the rim a few times to explore the stone gardens and to take in the views. From on top, we could see the western half of the Kaiparowits Plateau and the terraced formations of the Grand Staircase. We found streaked standing fins and stone teepees, arranged in a powwow of short peaks like whisked whipped cream. We stretched out on warm slickrock and spent hours supervising the passing of delinquent clouds. Violet-green swallows bombed around us like avian fighter jets swooping up insects on the wing. A pair of golden eagles soared overhead in wide parallel arcs, lazily patrolling the world below. Who knew exploring could be so exhausting?

Up near Deer Range Point, we found a remote panel of petroglyphs. The etchings were carved into the side of a narrow crack in a shallow

 drainage. The wall was stained black from the build-up of desert varnish, making the glyphs stand out clearly in stark relief. There were dozens of images of animals, spirals, suns, and snakes. But what was most intriguing was the location of the panel - it was literally in the middle of nowhere. Looking closer at the images, a progression of a half-dozen bighorn sheep seemed to walk across the panel, as if through the crack itself. Then it dawned on us that the panel was carved at the bottleneck of a sheep drive. It would have been possible to corral a group of sheep down off the mesa into the upper fork of the drainage. With the proper planning and communication, the sheep would've been funnelled into the chokepoint between the narrow walls, with no immediate way out. It was a perfect hunting spot, and eerily cool.

Further up the Paria, the walls of the canyon changed from red to white, demarcated by a clear line between the color bands. The white rock had lost all of its iron content, leached out into the plentiful concretions we found everywhere. We found numerous carvings by early pioneers at the turn of the century, as well as old time ranchers and cattlemen. But we also saw several recent inscriptions in the rock dated 12/26/07. Where are you now Mav, Red Dog, Klancy Ott? Their carved names seemed blatantly out of place.

We turned up Sheep Creek and into the towering formation of the White Cliffs. The sheer walls were reminiscent of Zion, which was only 50 miles as the crow flies - but 350 trail miles away. We took a side trip up Bull Valley Gorge, one of the best slot canyons in the region. The etched relief cross-bedded dunes were visible in the wall, stacked layer upon layer for a thousand feet. Ponderosa pines and Douglas fir grew in every direction. Some trees had long sinuous root systems branching out further than they were tall, anchoring them to the treacherous face of naked rock. In a few places, trees had fallen against the opposite wall, still growing upward. The canyon squeezed into a tight narrows several hundred feet deep. Broken logs spanned the gap high overhead, jammed into place by raging flood waters. At the historic bridge at Skutumpah road, we looked up at the smashed remains of an old pickup truck that had slid off the bridge and gotten crushed in the upper reaches of the chasm. Two men died pinned in the cab while a third fell 200 feet to the floor below. Not a nice way to go. The truck had been wedged in place for over 60 years, and was in surprisingly good shape. We returned back down canyon over fallen boulders that choked the upper gorge.

We followed the white walls of Sheep Creek to the junction with Willis Creek. We found an interesting panel of petroglyphs, but they had been vandalized by visitors. I had never seen so much destruction of rock art before, and it really sullied the whole experience. The panel was easily accessible by ATVs and nearby settlements, but that was no excuse. It was disappointing to see. We followed Willis through a short section of hikable narrows. Dark clouds moved in and began to snow on us. We hurried to the cache and sat in our shelter, readying ourselves for a climb to the higher elevations and the Pink Cliffs of Bryce.

Section mileage: ~52 miles

Kaiparowits Plateau (Days 34-44)

Written 5/14/08

Leaving the cache, I began my ascent of the Straight Cliffs and the Eastern edge of the Kaiparowits Plateau, on of the last remaining wild and undeveloped areas in the lower 48. Open space. Desolate country. 

Part of the greater Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, the entire designation encompasses nearly 2 million acres of slickrock and canyons, is home to a wide array of plants and wildlife, and contains an untold treasure of paleontological and archaelogical sites. It truly is an amazing place. The creation of the monument was the keystone piece to linking up the parks in the region, creating an interconnected corridor across the Plateau, of which the Hayduke Trail takes great advantage. I climbed the Middle Pack Trail, an old route carved out of the Straight Cliffs through to a break in the rim. The vegetation changd from stands of juniper, serviceberry, and buffaloberry to thick pinions and mountain mahogany. Patches of snow covered the trail in places where I found some young Mule’s Ear sunflowers beginning to bloom.

From the rim at 7,300 feet I could see the ground I had covered the past several weeks. The wrinkled drainages of the Escalante, my camp in the Circle Cliffs, Mt. Ellen, and the Henry Range, back to the distant Abajo Mountain; to the North, the Aquarius Plateau and Boulder Mountain; and far South to the distant flat-topped mesas of the Navajo Reservation. Further to the West were the forested tops of Powell Point and Canaan Peak. The coral pink cliffs of Bryce, and the white Navajo ledges of the Grand Staircase. Not a bad view.

I crossed the mesa top though dense fields of sagebrush and pines. Several areas had burned, likely caused by lightning strikes during summer thunderstorms, this ridge being the highest point for miles around. I passed up the opportunity to take water from a couple of springs fouled by cattle. The cows had practically rendered them useless, ruining some of the few reliable water sources on the dry plateau. Instead, I filled up my containers with three days worth of water at Mudholes Spring, a fenced off little water hole in a shady grove of bare Aspen. I inspected a nearby supply cabin someone had built, decorated with rusted horseshoes and ranching equipment on its outer walls.

Beyond the Spring, I tried following the remains of a packtrail to the head of Monday Canyon, but it was like trying to catch a ghost. The trail would disappear and reappear, overgrown from years of neglect and infrequent use. It was useless. I ended up crossing overland, my legs scratched and bloodied after beating through the dense sage. Continuing on, I dropped into a side drainage at the head of Monday Canyon. The route to the bottom was dense with pines, brush, and fallen logs, but even with my big pack I was able to make it through. From the canyon floor, the vanilla sandstone walls rose into a series of tiered benches lined thick with trees. Wanting a better view through the foliage, I climbed up a nearby slope to look around.

Beneath an overhand I stumbled upon a ledge that held the remains of half a dozen ruins. Most of the sites had deteriorated into rubble, but one was still partially intact. Constructed in a circle, the ceiling poles had caved into the living area, the ends of the beams still supported by brick walls. The wood was weathered and charred, but the hand cut marks were still visible. Shredded Juniper bark lay draped across the poles; the soot of cooking fires stained the alcove wall. Among the packrat midden jammed into the walls I found dozens of ears of maize, the length and girth of an index finger. The ledge was scattered with broken arrowheads and potsherds of varying types—white clay, black clay, red painted. I even found a worn metate and mano, a handstone used to grind corn. The site was almost completely undisturbed, but unfortunately, cattle had accessed the ledge and left their calling card everywhere. Still it was impressive to come across. Throughout the canyon, I found several more ruins, dwellings and grainaries. I find it astonishing that an entire community of people could survive and thrive in such a difficult place.

The route through Monday Canyon was difficult to navigate. The drainage was blocked by pouroffs, boulders, and rockfalls. Continuing down to Rogers Canyon was more of the same. A vile-looking creek full of brown sludge and greasy mud cut a deep V through loose slopes of shale, the bottom choked with tamarisk. The only way I got through the obstacles was by taking cattle trails. Just follow the trampled path of destruction and splattered pancakes of manure, and you’ll get by. They may be dumb, but cows know how to traverse the landscape.

Lower down, the vegetation thinned out and all but disappeared. The ground was sparsely covered by thorny black bush, hydra-like bladderweed, spring cactus, and the ubiquitous cheat grass. All around were the sunbaked hills of gray shale and oddly balanced rocks. In the distance, I could make out the towering buttes and stone moonlights of Glen Canyon. The land was stark and empty, a desolate moonscape. It was very survival to walk through.

I headed up the drainage of Navajo Canyon, and got halfway through when I heard human voices and the clatter of trekking poles. ‘Who in their right mind would be out in this forbidding place?’ I wondered. Two figures popped out from behind a rock. I turned out to be Nacho and Speedo (their trail names of course), two ultralight thru-hikers Brian Frankel told us we might run into. The were doing a modified route in the opposite direction, going from Bryce to Moab in 5 weeks. Their friends Pepper and Trauma, whom I had been following since Arches, had just finished an East-to-West route in a blistering 35 days. Yikes. 2008 was turning into a big year on the HDT. During our little impromptu gathering we swapped stories, traded trail tips, and discussed the differences between the Ultralight approach of maildrops in towns versus the long term system of bucket caches. Each method has its own merits and advantages. But they require very different philosophies toward hiking the trail. Either way it was interesting to meet fellow Haydukers, especially such accomplished thru-hikers as these. We took some celebratory photos and wished each other luck on our journeys before heading our separate ways.

I continued on up Navajo Canyon, through Surprise Valley and to the water cache we had left on the ridge. In all directions spread the expansive reach of the Kaiparowits Plateau. To the south in the distance I could see across the border into Arizona—the Echo Cliffs, the Vermillion Cliffs, and the sloping rise of the Kaibab Plateau. I dropped down into the pastel-colored hills of Reese Canyon to where the drainage had cut down to some exposed beds of coal. Not too far away in the Burning Hills, a coal seam caught fire when struck by lightning and now smolders away slowly underground. At one point there were plans to mine much of the coal in the area, but the designation of the monument put a stop to that, blocking all resource extraction within its borders. For now at least.

I turned up Last Chance Creek, one of the few reliably flowing streams on the Plateau. Unfortunately, with running water come the bugs. The gnats were almost unbearable, orbiting my head like little winged electrons. I killed dozens at a time just by clapping indiscriminately around my face. It became an all-out war. The like to crawl into the folds of your ears, along your hairline, into your eyes. At some point, it became an unwinnable battle and I would submit myself to the aerial attack. Occasionally, brief moments of respite would come when the breeze would drive them away. But as always, they would return with an aggravated hunger. The relentless hordes were enough to drive a man insane.

Fortunately the wildlife more than made up for the bloodshed. I listened to the predawn howl of coyotes, and the sad long rueful coos of the mourning doves. I caught whiptail and leopard-nosed lizards, and even a fat 3-foot bull snake basking in the wash. Tadpoles filled the creek by the hundreds, writhing and feeding the soft mud. In the evenings, I walked the stream bed by moonlight, following the chorus of calls coming from the creek. I discovered reclusive Spadefoot toads singing away beneath the river stones, and dozens of spawning red-spotted toads mounted in amplexus. It was a springtime orchestra of love, and I let the lovers be.

I followed the creek up to our supplemental food cache for the section. We buried the bucket high up out of the wash, but when I got there the entire embankment was gone. Disappeared. Washed into the creek by the winter floods. I was stupefied. Luckily Ben had the fortuitous foresight to tie the bucket to a tree in case something like this did happen. I found the bucket balanced on the brink, 15 feet above the wash, still tied to the juniper that was ready to fall over itself. Nacho and Speedo had seen the cache and salvaged two of our water bottles—but the rest was history. The problem with caches is that you are completely reliant on their contents being there. Had the cache failed, it was nearly 40 miles in any direction to get anywhere. I would’ve been up Last Chance Creek without a paddle. The bucket was fine, but the whole situation was cutting it a little too close for comfort.

I took a much needed rest day, giving my legs some time to recuperate, my first day off since Hite. I camped out beneath a leafy cottonwood, relaxed, and just enjoyed myself for a day. Before leaving, I cached the bucket in a more secure location, and set off up the creek. I turned up Paradise Canyon, where I filed up with enough water to see me through the last 25 miles to the end of the section. Following a dirt road, I left the lower drainages and climbed out to the rolling arid benchlands of the western Kaiparowits Plateau. It felt great to be out of the canyons for a while and away from the bugs. I cruised along through branching junipers and fields of sage, and relished walking on a freshly graded road.

Along the way I met some BLM paleontologists on their way out to a dinosaur dig site. There were excavating some Hadrosaur skeletons out of the Kaiparowits Formation, but they also commonly find Triceratops, and the occasional Rex. This area is rich in dinosaur fossils. On par with the Badlands in Montana and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, the Monument is unique in that it contains formations throughout the Mesozoic Era, from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. The entire dinosaur fossil history available in a single location, and enough to drive a rock hound wild. I was tempted to jump in the truck and join them. Growing up, my childhood occupation of choice was to be a paleontologist. But I had to keep on moving.

Crossing the bone dry washes out of Tommy Smith and Wahweep Creeks I made my way towards the Cockscomb, a long upthrust escarpment marking the Western edge of the Kaiparowits. Looking back from the ridge, I could see all the way back to the Straight Cliffs, and the miles and miles of open plateau. I hiked through The Gut of the Cockscomb, and descended into Butler Valley, where I stopped to spend some time at Grosvenor Arches. A delicately eroded double arch, it looks like a broken pretzel turned on it side. I sat and marveled at the unique spectacle of geology as I contemplated the nature of my journey. I have hiked almost 400 miles across the Plateau, mostly along, and have seen some pretty amazing things. Half the time I have to convince myself that this is all real. And now at the approximate midpoint of the trip, I look forward to the miles ahead, and the anticipated return of my hiking partner. I continued on down the road to the trailhead at Round Valley Draw, where I anxiously waited for the arrival of a hopefully healed Ben.

Section mileage: ~81 miles