Sep 16: Poison Spring Canyon

Woke up on whatever plateau we were on, traversed it a bit more, then descended into Fiddler's Cove Canyon, which was neat but short and led us to the Dirty Devil River. It was flowing about ankle deep, which was nice, but it's apparently undrinkable: silty and full of ag waste. It didn't seem silty at first, but got more so as we went upstream. It would have been wonderful if it were a couple inches shallower, we could have easily splashed along in the creek. As is, walking in the water was slow, but the shores were very slick and muddy, and the canyon is brushy otherwise, so we constantly switched back and forth. No major falls into the mud, and we were done in 2.5 hours, so I'll call it a win.

We left the river for Poison Spring Canyon, which has a jeep road most of the length. We took a long lunch and slowly made our way up canyon. Passed an amazing spring set in the canyon wall and walked off with masonry to keep animals out; it felt lovely. This was at the end of the heat of the day, most of the hot section is a blur, other than a funny interaction with the only people we saw all day, two nice and funny 70+ men in a truck stopped and asked me what I was doing. They were blown away at the answer, but then were sorely disappointed that I had never heard of the people of Barrier Canyon. So much so that they drove off. 

Anyway, less than 10 miles to the highway and the hitch to Hanksville and my first resupply box. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adze Picket Co. (I Love the PCT)

Image
Me at the Border I spent the weekend at the ADZPCTKO with Nitro , Tatu Joe, Ducky (the Wise) , Tomato, BearCan't , Mattress, Love Barge, Nano, Sly, Disco , WeatherCarrot, Too Obtuse, Nacho, Tall Paul, Mags , and Wildflower (AKA Icognito Cheeto Bandito). I got a ride down with Firefly. I'm tempted to just end my post there, as it would seem like complete gibberish to many of you. But I won't. The ADZPCTKO is the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kickoff, held the last weekend in April (also known as NFL Draft weekend, where, miracle of miracles, the Redskins, despite Dan Snyder's best attempts to screw it up, actually managed to avoid throwing away multiple draft picks on Chad Johnson and instead traded for more picks. Hallelujah!) at Lake Morena campground, 20 miles north by trail from the Mexican border near Campo, CA. Conventional wisdom says that the weather window on the PCT is such that there's not much point to starting earlier thanks to snow in the S...
Read more

Hardrock 34:42

Image
It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel...
Read more

Should I run UTMB?

That's it, the title is the post. No, of course that's not the post, but I am wondering. My schedule has filled in a bit for the year. I'm now signed up for: Orcas 100 (Feb), Paiute Meadows 50K (May), Scout Mountain 100 (June), TRT 100 (July), and hope to run the fun runs Lupine Loopfest (Feb), Desolate Peaks (August), and Euchre Bar Massacre (October). But the big news is that I got selected in the UTMB lottery. I have until the 29th of January to confirm my registration. For the non-runners: UTMB is a 106-mile loop around Mont Blanc through France, Switzerland, and Italy, starting and ending in Chamonix. By all accounts it is spectacularly beautiful and very difficult, with about 33,000 feet of climbing. For most of my running life I haven't really cared about European races or followed European runners, but I got swept up in the spectacle of it last year. It was the race's 20th year, an American man finally won (Jim), and also finished second (Zack), and Courtney...
Read more