Oct 11: Kanab Creek

Couldn't have scripted it better.

I woke up, and immediately my stress over having to haggle about route choices dissolved because Nano and I agreed we should just start walking and stick out our thumbs/furiously wave hankerchiefs at any passing boats. So I washed off in the creek and we started following crummy game trails downriver. (There really isn't one at first, just walk the water's edge until you get to the boulder field, the whole reedy area is a big seep.) Ten minutes of that, and some use trails across a boulder field, and we started smelling bacon. Literally, from across the river, we smelled the bacon of the river group camped the closest after Deer Creek Falls. And the water was flat there, so there was no noise, and we could hear them. 

OK Nano, how do we do this? Make a joke about smelling the bacon. Done. They respond jokingly, but no "where are you headed?" to segue to the truly important topic. Oh well, nothing to it but to do it: "uhh, if you have room for two extra, we could really use a ride six miles to Kanab Creek, 'cause there's no trail over here and we'd happily skip this section." And that was it. That's all it took. We waited on a beach on our side for them to pack up camp, then got a wonderful, splashy, actually quite chilly ride through two named rapids to the mouth of Kanab Creek. We were positively giddy.

We said our goodbyes to the Colorado and started up Kanab. We crossed frequently with no hope of keeping our feet dry, with huge red walls towering above us. It was like Stephens Creek, or Coyote Gulch without the people, or the upper Pariah again: incredible. We took a short break to jump off a boulder into a gorgeous pool, then took a short diversion up a side canyon to see Whispering Spring, which was well worth it. A narrow canyon that ends in a giant overhanging headwall and the spring is a hundred feet above you in the ceiling of the grotto, dripping down on you and forming a beautiful blue swimming pool. 

Only the boulders kept coming. And coming. House and truck sized boulders stacked up against each other creating small pools, often deep enough to require either swimming or climbing around. Usually we climbed, though I waded up to waist deep numerous times to avoid scrambles when possible. Wading in the creek was surprisingly easy, given that the rocks were wet, round, and slimy--somehow they weren't very slippery. Scrambling over giant boulders was harder, and sometimes I fit in or under cracks Nano couldn't so I enjoyed it a bit more than he did. Did I mention this was an entire body climbing workout that lasted from 11am to 7 pm and we were moving one mile per hour? God I loved it. If I wasn't going to run out of food and wasn't worried about finishing the trail before my flight home, I wish every day was like this. I mean, there's water, and sand doesn't steal your forward progress! What more can you want?

Toward the end of the day we passed Showerbath Spring, a second overhanging spring of the day, and the creek really lost a lot of its power. Knock on wood, the boulders became a little less numerous and less difficuly to get around. We're camped by the creek, but expect it to dry up soon, and we need to be carrying a lot of water for the 60 miles left to Colorado City.