Saturday, March 27.
??? miles.
Welp, the best laid plans…
We woke to everything frozen, as expected. I managed to sleep most of the night but felt chilly before dawn. While packing up my cold af tarp, my hands started to hurt so bad from the cold. I just rolled it up and strapped it to the top of my pack where it dripped onto my back for the long probably less than a mile walk back up to the trailhead.
There was some sun praise the lawd near the picnic table where just two days ago we had organized our resupply. While we were drying our stuff out, two older van lifers showed up and we got to talking to them about the storm and the area and how the spot we were in was one of their favorites in all of southern Utah. We had actually seen them before going up the Burr Trail Switchbacks. They were a retired couple who spent a few weeks in various parts of Utah throughout the year. They told us that we didn’t have to worry about water flooding since short storms like the one yesterday got sucked up quick by the desert. They did reaffirm that not heading to the Narrows was probably a good idea though so at least that was validating.
After drying everything out, we headed up the northern alt that would lead us to either a trailhead we could more easily hitch to Escalante from or straight to Escalante itself. The first few miles were easy dirt road walking past some decent canyon walls and a few arches. Nothing as dramatic as the day before but still interesting.
The day got warm quick and all the potholes and running water we had thought we’d be able to get water from dried up fast. We were low on water and didn’t have much beta for the water options on that alt so we had to collect from any lingering potholes we could find, even the really muddy ones. Right before we got off trail I was able to find one with enough cool clear water to camel up at.
We headed off trail again going into a neat little gap between the canyon walls. We had to scramble a bit through it and then head up a really steep hill to exit.
Here’s where things started to go hilariously bad. I was in a shitty mood again at this point. I was anxious about the water situation (I’ve had some really bad experiences running out of water in the desert) and Jordan was pretty cavalier about being able to find some which didn’t sit well with me (we were able to find some, but still). I also thought he was being too slow again, a recurring frustration of mine. I was getting pissed waiting for him heading up the steep climb and was considering telling him that I was going to hike ahead as fast as possible to try to get to town sooner.
I sat to eat lunch at the top of the climb and waited for him for what seemed like too long. He had been right behind me going up and I was starting to worry. When he made it up, he said his hands were really hurting him and that he wanted to get off the route and find a clinic. He showed me his hands and Jesus fuck they were a mess, badly blistered and red. He said he’d started to notice them being irritated a few days ago but the sun made them much worse. Jordan hiked most of the Arizona Trail with a broken foot so I knew if he wanted to get off the route, he must have been in a lot of pain.
I felt like such a fucking asshole. I had been so shitty to him the past few days and he was probably in excruciating pain. He said I could go on without him but I felt too guilty to leave him. Instead, we figured out the fastest way down off the hill we were on and onto a dirt road that lead us back to Burr Trail Road, the only real road anywhere near us.
We got to the road after a bit and sat waiting for what we thought would be a painfully long hitch. There were cars going by since the road is a popular one for day hikers and tourist but none of them would pick us up (one asshole actually shook his head no at us). We thought we were screwed but amazingly a family in a truck stopped and picked us up. They were local cattle ranchers who were very nice and offered to drive us all the way to main road (the irony of us getting rescued by cattle ranchers is not lost on me). The dad told us that he had once waited on that same road for days trying to get a ride so we felt immensely grateful. They drove us all the way to Boulder (Utah) where we hitched again to Escalante.
The second hitch was with a hilarious local who was actually pretty well acquainted with both the area around us and with the Bay Area where his son had lived for a while. He was a self professed “liberal redneck”, a real Edward Abbey kinda former cowboy who hated industrial tourism but still got upset when the rangers told him he couldn’t hit Titleist golf balls in the National Monument anymore.
We took the incredibly scenic highway 12 to Escalante, stopping at a vista point along the way to gawk at the view of the canyons below us (the cowboy insisted). He was straight up chewing chaw the whole time and I smelled what I thought was tequila at one point. He got a real hoot when we told him what we were doing and told us he was glad there were still people out there “doing what the fuck they want when the fuck they want”. Yee haawww.
Unfortunately, Jordan’s hands were still a mess and hurting him through both hitches. He grinned and beared it better than I ever could until we got to town. We got a little cabin at the Outfitter/Cafe/Hotel with only bed and he stocked up on benadryl and cortisone cream and cheeseless pizza which seemed to help a bit.
We did laundry and showered and caught up on our various social media before settling in for the night. We are zeroing here tomorrow while we wait for Jordan’s hands to hopefully get better. There is a clinic in town that’s closed today but Jordan was able to call up his doctor brother-in-law who told him to keep us in the cream and could prescribe him some stronger steroids if they didn’t get better.
Absolutely wild and unexpected two days. Didn’t expect to be in town so soon and we we are now almost a week ahead of schedule. We are going to take an alt straight out of town which will save us another long hitch and few days of hiking putting us even further ahead of schedule.
We’ve decided to not head back to the section we skipped since the hitch would be a pain and we want to come back to explore that area more thoroughly. We already have a nice loop in mind and maybe will even include some pack rafting. We’ve taken the past few days as some kind of divine sign that we should skip it for now and come back another day. So rest now and tomorrow and then back to the trail the day after.
Plants Outside 