Friday, March 19
11 miles?
Welp, not the most miles in a day but maybe some of the most scenic.
Woke up and immediately shit which always means a good start to the day (except for when it means a very bad start).
The scramble back down into Youngs Canyons was slow as fuck mainly because we were following the GPS track which was a little off. We finally consulted the expensive maps we had printed out but hadn’t used until thisl point and found the obvious cairns we had missed.
The trail down was fairly well marked and really fun to go down. It reminded me of some of the Sierra scree scrambles I’ve had to do in the YHR or in Tahoe but a lot easier. Young Canyon was really cool. We were deep in there surrounded by huge Redstone canyon walls. We could see all the layers and geological striatations and other fancy rock stuff.
We went to bench halfway up, went a little too far on it, then back down into it following a little trail between a huge chossy spire. We followed Youngs Canyon for a few miles to the confluence with Dark Canyon.
After a little bit of route finding down to the confluence, we had a long lunch on a little beach. From there hiking up Dark Canyon. A lot of journals I’ve read call Dark Canyon their favorite section and I can see why. It’s definitely my favorite section so far. It’s hard to describe how amazing the canyon was. We did some bushwhacking, some scrambling, some wading, some mud hole stomping, and down backtracking. We even found a little swimming hole and took a dip which felt fantastic after days of hiking.
We hiked through the canyon all day, taking our time to enjoy it. I was feeling anxious to hike faster as I usually do but I’m starting to let that go a little, especially in fun sections like this one.
We had dinner at the base of the climb out of the canyon and settled in for the long hike up. It was pretty brutal. It started off easy enough, not too steep and well cairned but it got dark quickly and the hike got a whole lot steeper. It was a slog getting, a kinda fun one, but a slog nonetheless. I was glad we decided to do the climb out today instead of camping below since that means we have less to do tomorrow. We’ll also get some nice canyon views in the morning before rushing to the marina and our next resupply.
Plants Outside 