Listen to “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimmy Hendrix. I do everything I can to stay in my sleeping bag in the morning. I eat breakfast, brush my teeth, look at maps and meditate all curled up in my down bag; but as soon as it's time to get going I put on this song to get me going and try to have camp broken down and packed up before it’s over.
On April 14th I did 9.5 miles and camped near Cresent Creek. On April 15th I did 20.5 Miles to Trantula Mesa. On April 16th I did 18.4 Miles to Muley Twist Canyon. On April 17th I did 18.3 Miles and camped under Circle Cliffs pass. On April 18th I did 19.3 miles and slept along the Escalante River. On April 19th I did 25.5 Miles to Hurricane Wash TH and went into Escalante the Town.
After exiting Poison Canyon and taking a detour to climb some chimneys and go through a short slot canyon I had my eyes set on HWY 95 once again. My first cache was buried there and after 11 days I felt like getting my self and my batteries recharged in Hanksville 20 miles North. It took me longer than I want to admit to find my cache, I was intially only off by a few feet but when you are certain where you are digging you just keep digging, eventually I started to probe the area like a mine field and heard a thud against the plastic lid and found my food! Elated to have my resupply I walked to HWY 95 and stuck out my thumb. Unfortunately it was a really hard hitch. A car came maybe every 15 minutes going 70MPH and none of them looked even remotely interested in stopping. I actually enjoy hitchhiking and I normally have pretty good luck, but after 3 hours and only 20 cars zooming by I resigned myself to walk. I got about 3 miles down the road before a pickup pulled over and I jumped in the back I was sooo excited to not have to walk the next 17 pavement miles. Hanskville doesn't even have a stoplight and there isn't much to do in town but it gave me a breather to clean and organize gear, get a rough detailed plan for the next 2 weeks and call some friends and family. Its awesome going on a solo remote hike, but I can only pretend to be a misanthrope for so long.
I arranged a hitch out the next morning with a local rancher and started my climb up into the Henry Mountains. I go up and over Mt. Ellen, which is at 11,500 feet and the weather report had wind chill on the summit below zero at night so I had to plan my approach. I took it easy coming out of Hanskville and only did 9.5 miles camping just under 8,000 feet. I figured it would be a cold but surviviable night at that elevation setting me up for a noon summit and time to get back down the other side before dark. I got an early start hoping to walk ontop of the snow before it unfroze causing me to post hole, I was relatively successful and only had to fight my way through a half a mile of soft snow before reaching to top. The view was stunning. On the East side I could see all the way back to the mountain ranges outside of Moab as well as a few of the major passes, and to the West I could see the entirety of Capitol Reef National Park. It was surreal to be standing on blanket of snow looking down at red rock in all directions for as far as the eye could see. As I made my way down Mt. Ellen I kept my eye out for Bison since the Henry mountains are home to one of the last free roaming heards. I looked hard as I plotted my way down and scanned the hillsides for a large beast but somehow they were able to hide in the juniper trees and I only saw their foot prints.
On the Westernside of the Henry's not only could I not find any buffalo, I couldn't find any water. I went by 5 possible sources and all were bone dry. I heavily rationed my water and went to bed with a half liter reserve which I used for breakfast and then was out. Rule #1 in the desert is to never panic (I'll explain the other rules later). I just moved at a reasonable pace to keep myself from exerting to much energy and causing unnecessary sweating, I closed my mouth (mouth breathing looses 30% more water than nose breathing) and I calmly carried on to the next possible source. Unfortunately it was dry too and was nothing more than an old mud bed. By this time I had gone 6 miles, and the next possible source was a small spring that may be running another 6 miles down the trail (by this time it had been 28 miles since my last fill up). I wasn't panicking but the only thing on my mind was water, I could have been attacked by a bison and would have just calmly explained to the animal I didnt have time for this and kept walking. As I got closer to the spring I saw cattails which is always a great sign and after fighting my way through them I found a small spring. I let out a Halleuliah and got my empty bottles out. There were white crystals all around the spring bed which means the water is alkaline. It's not going to kill you, but it's going to clean you out, but I'd rather make a few emergency pit-stops in the sage brush than die of dehydration. I filled up 8 litters and found a tree to sit under and filter the water, I knew the water wasn't going to taste good, but that didn't stop my from chugging 2 liters of it as all of my worries magically disappeared.
After toping of my water I made my way down Swamp Canyon and entered Capitol Reef NP. Go ahead and Google the geology of Capitol Reef, I won't do it justice by trying to explain it and it's truly amazing. I entered Muley Twist Canyon (supposedly it has so many turns in the canyon it could twist a mule). It was nice to be back in a narrow canyon with a flat wash bed which makes for easy hiking and beautiful views. Muley Twist Canyon spills out into Hals Creek Wash where an extremely important stop to the Muley Tanks is required. The Muley Tanks are two large pot holes that fill up with water from a spring on the side of the hill, its a site to see two large pockets of water in the middle of a desert and I tanked up on 6 liters. The Muley Tanks have been a savior for those in need for 100s of years and been the last nail in the coffin for those who missed them and couldn't find them.
After 8 scorching miles down Hals Wash I came upon a large land slide that would lead me out of the canyon. I hiked up 2,200 feet on the slide to the base of Circle Cliff pass, it was full of 1 MPH terrain but had stunning views, I setup camp at the base of the pass. I got a sunrise start and when I crested the pass I got my first true glimpse of the Escalante rivershed and watched the alpine glow wake the canyons up. I also stumbled upon a Bighorn at the top of the pass, which was really cool (I was much happier to see him, than he was to see me).
I made my way down Moody Canyon with great anticipation as I was soon going to hit the Escalante. The Escalante is major river in the area and the reason I'm hiking the Hayduke. Last March my friends Diana and Ran took me on my first canyoneering trip in Harris Wash that terminates into the Escalante, we explored it's banks and side canyons for two days and that's when I decided I would hike the Hayduke. Unfortunately the spot we explored a year ago is ~30 miles north of us and the 26 mile section I am going to walk is completely overgrown. I spent 6 hours and only went 5 miles, I was exhausted after the initial 5 miles as I was giving it 110% of my effort the entire time. The edges of the river are covered in tall thick grass and shrubs that you literally cannot see through let alone hike through. I was actually plowing my way through by just falling forward with my arms crossed. I ended up spending more time walking down the center of the river with water racing above my knees and sometimes waist than I did on the banks fighting the local flora. This wasn't going well. At ~0.7MPH I was going to be low on food trying to do the 26 miles but that wasn’t the real problem, as I can handle being a little hungry. I honestly didn’t think it was super safe traveling. I was pretty cuttup after the first day of trying but those were relatively superficial, eventhough my shirt was covered in blood and I looked terrible. What I really didn’t like was the uncontrolled nature of my hiking, I was pushing and stumbling through the canyon. I was twising my ankles as everything was grabbing on to me, I fell down into the Escalante from the banks atleast 3 times, I was just crashing my way through (because it was the only way) and it was putting me into a less than ideal situation and was getting worse as I was getting tired (yes I occasionally get tired). There is a bailout point of the Escalante through Scoprion Gulch Canyon. This caused me a lot of heartache since I'm not one to give up easily, but this was too much. While I wasn’t thrilled I decided to let the Escalante win and diverted my trip up the gulch and over the slickrock. I ended up doing a big day to re-link up with the Hayduke after the Escalante where I was picked up by a friend named Z (Last time I saw Z, I was standing naked ontop of a Monument at the Canadian border). Z had actually just finished the hayduke (he started March 1st) I asked him if he took the scorpion Gulch alternate and said yeah, its a super common alternate and then handed me a beer.
