Oct 12: Hack Canyon

Chugged a protein shake, coffee, and water this morning in order to be well hydrated before potentially never seeing water again. Then took off, and the miles came much easier than yesterday. The walls of Kanab Creek were still impressive, but rapidly came down in height as we moved along. We passed a junction with Jumpup canyon and then started finding trails that occasionally cut the corners off bends in the now-dry creek. The trail was occasionally sandy, but a heavy red sand that wasn't that bad to walk on. 

The creek did reappear once, cold and clear just north of Chamberlain Canyon, so I drank more there, but was still carrying 7.5L or so, which was quite heavy on my shoulders. We finally turned out of Kanab Creek into Hack Canyon, and the trail got better, with big cowboy cairns. Obviously just a use trail for cows, but it made following it easy. We only saw around 5 cows total all day though.

There was one more spring, Willow Spring, that had a nice flow and a nice concrete lining, but signs saying the water is not fit for human consumption. Some of our resources say the water has uranium in it. My deep-seeded philosophy of "people are stupid" extends to my own tribe (hikers) so I'm not sure what to make of this claim. Other hikers have definitely drunk it; I carried 1L away for emergency use only, and washed myself in it pretty liberally. Remind me to email BLM about it when I get home. I'd bet (based on absolutely no information) that yeah, it's got uranium, because there's a lot of uranium around here, so don't drink it regularly, but once won't make a difference. 

After Willow Spring we hit a fence and came out at an official trailhead and were then on dirt road the rest of the day. 

All in all we made it about 30 miles today, possibly our biggest day. We are about 30 miles from Colorado City, a polygamist Mormon town. It's supposed to have a terrible vibe. Can't wait!

We did the math yesterday night. We  now have about 30 miles to Colorado City, then 30 from CC to the Zion highway. All good routes to Zion are blocked (landslide took out the Weeping Wall trail and toxic cyanobacteria closed Orderville Gulch) but I'd still like to do the 20 miles out and back to the overlook (I haven't yet convinced Nano of the value of this; he's done that section before). But if we do almost 30 tomorrow (Tuesday), resupply quickly Wednesday morning and do 25 or so miles that day, then we could cross the highway and finish Thursday. Definitely by Friday, and I fly home from St. George Saturday.

There's some question about how hard that last section before the highway is, and where we'll get water (if the Virgin River has bacteria, does the East Fork, which we cross south of the park?) We'll cross that canyon when we come to it. 

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