Thursday, April 22.
31.7 miles.
Longest day on the Hayduke woooo. Long day but short entry because it’s late and my body is chaffing and I need to get up early to get to town in time to get two meals.
Fast miles today. Woke up near the wash and cruised on that for the first part of the morning. The rocks were still a pain but there were cow use trails that cut off the bends in the canyon which helped. Cut offs were soft sand which was also a trudge sometimes but not too bad. Faster than the wash. Lots of cactus patches all over. All the cactus reminded me of being a kid and my mom cleaning up nopales, cutting away all the needles and the thick outer skin then cooking strips of it with eggs. To be honest, it’s disgusting and I never liked nopales but it was very nostalgic.
We had a long breakfast break while we waited for Jack. Jack is low on food this section and has been more exhausted than usual. I don’t think we realized how slow the miles were gonna be in this section. I knew from reading all the journals and still barely packed enough food. Probably still not enough.
We reached the confluence with Hack Canyon, the main canyon that would take us up to the Arizona Strip and our last cache. The canyon had the same use trails throughout but with oddly large (and unnecessary) cairns all over. I don’t know why anyone built so many and so large cairns through that section but okay?
Those cairns led us to a wire gate trailhead and the dirt roads we’ll be on for a few days. There was register at the trailhead and we saw that there were two other Haydukers ahead of us. I know one is already finished and another is maybe jumping around sections. There were also complains about cow shit all over the wilderness area with people whining about the BLM allowing this. I wonder how many of those people still eat meat.
Speaking of cow shit, wow there was so much cow shit in that canyon. The canyon opened up and there were big open areas just totally filled with cow shit all over. Maybe the worst section for cow shit though Hackberry is still a strong contender. There was a sprint near the trailhead we didn’t check because it’s suppose to be radioactive but Jack did and said it was covered in cow shit too. That’s great that cows are drinking that radioactive water then people are eating them. No problems with that whatsoever.
Cow shit aside, Hack Canyon is pretty cool. Reminded me a lot of the early parts of the Hayduke. Long dirt roads with big sandstone walls all around. Much more open than the Grand Canyon. I loved the Grand Canyon but I always definitely felt a slight claustrophic feeling being in there. When you are in the Grand Canyon, you always feel like you are in the Grand Canyon.
Some storm clouds started rolling in earlier in the day and it rained on and off in the afternoon. Nothing too bad, just drizzle with the occasional down pour. At lunch we huddled up under an alcove near a mine and waited out the rain. The area near the mine smelled kinda weird, like gas maybe (or uranium?) but it was the only semi protected spot from the rain.
We hiked on roads more and the rain kept coming down intermittently. At one point we started hearing thunder. Not gonna lie, I got a little spooked. I spent a good chunk of the Colorado Trail getting dumped on my summer monsoons and thunderstorms and man, I do not like them. The thunder wasn’t near us but it still startled me every time.
It did clear up eventually and we reached our cache. I’ve been kinda anxious about this cache for weeks. When we dropped it off 7 weeks ago, the ground was too hard and we couldn’t bury it so we tied it to a tree and stacked rocks on it. We also had a few gallons of water that we weren’t counting on but were still worried about. I’ve had animals get to a water cache on the Lowest to Highest Route and was worried that might happen again, especially after such a long time. But it all worked out. Both the food and water cache were there, praise be. We loaded up on food, ate a bunch of the extra, and gave a lot to Jack. He ate over 1000 calories from our extra bars and immediately felt better. He even wanted to hike all night to get to town faster.
After we loaded up, Jordan and I argued a bit about the bucket we had our food in. He wanted to leave near the road thinking someone would take it since “people always need buckets” but I thought that was dumb, lazy, and irresponsible. He wouldn’t carry the stupid bucket so I’m carrying it for now. It’s actually not heavy and I can strap it to my pack easily enough and it’s not too cumbersome. Plus I can use it as a chair so it’s not a big deal.
The area got way more open. We got out out of the canyon onto a flat expanse of land. After so much time in the Grand Canyon it felt good to be able to see for miles. Thankfully it was still a little overcast and not too hot. We hiked until after dark and night hiked some more after dinner. There’s no shortage of flat spots but very little protection except from some thorny bushes.
Both my feet got bad hot spots/blisters on the forefoot and were bothering me the last few miles. My ass also chaffed badly despite stopping to lube up repeatedly. My feet and ass are so uncomfortable that I had to take an ibuprofen before bed. The first one I’ve taken this whole trip. Physically I feel fine other than that. Today was the most the most miles we’ve done on the Hayduke but with low pack weight and on much easier terrain compared to the previous few days.
We hiked enough today that we should have an easy half day to the road to Hurricane. Jack met someone earlier that offered him a stay in a cabin in town so we’ll see if that pans out. Otherwise we’re all gonna split a hotel.
That’s about it. Time for bed.
Plants Outside 