Saturday May 20, 20.0mi/32.2km

Bullrush Gorge (472.9/6180ft) to Start of Buckskin Gulch (492.9/5300ft) (UT)

Since we camped in a less-than-ideal campsite (bottom of a valley, not under trees, etc), we both woke up to wet tents. It was 6:45am and the sun wouldn’t hit us for at least an hour, so we packed up most of our stuff and walked down the canyon to a sunny spot to dry our stuff. Yard sale!

After 30 minutes of drying, we packed up again and had an uneventful walk down Park Wash. Occasionally there was a dirt road thru the wash.

This water source was a nice surprise, and I thought it was a pretty clever use of an old tractor tire.

Cows were everywhere. They usually moooved out of the way, but these blocked our path.

Hi cows!

There was an old “cowboy shack” nearby so I went to check that out.

It was a beautiful morning for hiking, and we fortunately found a cattle track, which was better than walking in the soft sand of the wash.

Further down, the wash was easier to walk with firmer sand.

I loved seeing this old-timey windmill. It was attached to a motor to pump water to a basin for the cows.

The landscape was surprisingly green in this area.

Our dirt road joined a bigger dirt road, and I had to take a photo of the junction. Who names these things?!?

We stopped for lunch at another nice green area, and watched the puffy clouds get bigger.

All afternoon it was a nice easy roadwalk, thru increasingly cloudy skies.

I heard thunder and looked behind me…yikes. I walked faster.

Ahead of me still looked pretty nice.

We had roadwalking for about 3 hours, with the sound of thunder echoing around the valley.

Eventually the entire sky was covered in thunderclouds and there was lightning, wind, and a few drops of rain. No photos during that chaos, it was a challenge just to stay warm. Around 4:30pm we crossed the big paved highway 89, which leads to Kanab.

Most Hayduke hikers would exit here and hitch to town, but we are hiking thru another 2 days to the resort village of Jacob’s Lake, AZ. Shadow has a friend in Kanab who is picking us up there, which is really generous of her, it’s like a 45 minute drive!

We crossed the highway and went thru the huge wildlife fence, which had a complicated latch mechanism.

We camped a half mile later, at the start of Buckskin Gulch.

We setup our tents and had dinner, and then an hour later, the dry wash became wet! I heard flowing water, and emerged from my tent to see the leading edge of a small flood coming down the wash. The rainstorm had been in the mountains 4 hours ago, and the runoff had finally arrived down here. Amazing!

Tomorrow is our last day in Utah, then it’s on to Arizona!

Friday May 19, 24.6mi/39.6km

Under-the-Rim-Trail @ Dixie NF border (alt 33.2/7760ft) to Bullrush Gorge (472.9/6180ft) (UT) +1.6mi Rainbow Point

I woke up after a great night’s sleep, it was a perfect spot to camp in the trees. We left just before 7am and hiked thru the morning light.

We were still on the Under-the-Rim-trail for another 8 miles, and every time it crested a ridge I had a great view of the rim. The white stuff in the foreground is sand, the faraway white is snow!

We crossed out and back into the national park briefly, and the trail had these strange vertical ladders to get over the fence.

Slowly we climbed up toward Rainbow Point…

And further up…

As I neared the top I could look down on the leftover snow patches.

And there were even some tiny snow patches next to the trail!

It felt cold up at 9000ft, but the views were superb.

I caught up to Shadow, and we made the short side trip to Rainbow Point.

Someone had made a couple of tiny snowmen on the overlook railing, ha!

The sign said we were at 9,115ft / 2778m elevation, that’s the highest I’ve been on the Hayduke.

We had a long break on a bench, and Shadow even made a coffee. There were quite a few people around.

We checked out the overlook, and it had views to the northeast and northwest.

After 45 minutes we departed, and hiked back downhill, this time on the Riggs Springs Trail. It traveled through a burn area, and along with the clouds, gave it an eerie feeling.

The view to the south.

We descended for an hour and then had lunch. It was threatening to storm but no rain came.

After we packed up from lunch, we had another hour of hiking to get to the park boundary. It rained briefly for 10 minutes along the way, umbrella to the rescue! Of course at the park exit, we had another fence to climb over.

We passed a strange concrete object, which shockingly had nice clear water in it. I didn’t need any water, but as we were pondering the next water source, another hiker walked up!

His name is Malto, and he had hiked the Arizona trail, connected it to the Hayduke, and is planning on hiking home to Durango (CO). Cool. We chatted for a bit about upcoming water sources, then continued on to the trailhead.

The next hour was on a roadwalk, which was nice. Someone had hung a piece of cow skeleton from a tree. Creepy.

We passed by two water sources, both of which were not listed on our guide. The first was a piped spring!

The second was a metal tank, which had very clear and cold water.

At the end of the roadwalk we entered Bullrush Hollow….

…. which became Bullrush Gorge.

It was a nice gorge, surrounded by colorful cliffs and easy walking in a dry wash.

We found a campsite where the Bullrush Gorge joined the Park Wash, and set up away from the floodplain.

It was also near these very fragrant wildflowers!

Today was a fairly relaxed day, tomorrow should be even more so, since we are limited to 20 miles (there is a 6-mile-long no camping section after that).

Thursday May 18, 23.1mi/37.2km

Tropic town (alt 12.3/6300ft) to Under-the-Rim-Trail @ Dixie NF border (alt 33.2/7760ft) (UT) + 2.2mi GPS correction

We left the Red Ledges inn at 8am and began our 3mile roadwalk. It was a perfect temperature for hiking.

After an hour we arrived at the trailhead for the Tropic Trail, we entered Bryce National Park!

At first there were no people, but that quickly changed as soon as I got to the Red Rock and hoodoos.

Apparently this is supposed to look like a queen.

More cool hoodoo formations.

As I climbed higher towards the rim, I started to get a sense of the size of the park.

I thought these hoodoos were like the three stooges.

I finished the climb and got to the rim, the view from Sunrise point was great!

15 minutes later we were at Sunset point.

This little tree was stubbornly hanging on, haha.

Shadow trying to look like one of the hundreds of tourists.

There were so many hoodoos!

I had to get my own photo.

I think this was taken from a spot called Inspiration point.

More gratuitous hoodoo photos.

We hiked on a nice trail over to Bryce point.

The sign says we were at 8300 feet (2500m) elevation!

The little lookout point was swarming with people, and I thought the clouds gave the valley an interesting look.

The hoodoos as seen from Bryce Point.

As soon as we left the rim, and got on the Under-the-Rim-trail, there were no more people.

It was just quiet and easy hiking on a nice trail.

After an hour, we came to a little spot called the Hat Shop.

All these formations looked like a ton of hats perched on top of the pillars. These two were especially pointy.

We had lunch on the ridgetop at the hat shop, and it was still a perfect temperature with no thunderstorms. After lunch we descended to Yellow Creek.

The rest of the day we hiked on the Under-the-Rim-trail, which was easy walking with great views.

We would descend into a valley, then climb up to a ridge, and repeat. From the top of the ridges, I could see the rim with more hoodoo formations.

We were up at an elevation of almost 8,000 feet, so there were big trees up here.

Our final climb for the day was up Swamp Canyon Creek.

At the top of that climb, we hiked through a burn area for a half-hour.

In order to legally camp, we needed to get to the boundary with the Dixie National Forest. As soon as we got to the gate at the park boundary, we started looking for camping.

And within 5 minutes we found a spot under some nice huge pine trees and sheltered from the wind. Perfect!

Tomorrow we will continue on the Under-the-Rim-trail, which will rejoin the Hayduke in a couple miles. (today was an alternate route, to see more of Bryce NP).

Wednesday May 17, 0mi/0km

Tropic (UT)

Today was just a very relaxing day. I slept in until 7am, sauntered over to the motel lobby for the free continental breakfast, and then picked up my maps at the post office. I made a quick stop at the general store for some snacks, I love how compact this town is, everything is less than a 5 minute walk.

Back at the motel room, we did various gear repairs and cleaning (this trail is very hard on gear!) while watching episodes of Seinfeld, South park, Archer, and old 90s movies like Clueless and Jurassic Park. Shadow bought a new z-rest sleeping pad, and like most people he cuts off the extra sections. So I was gifted a new sitting pad!

I walked over to the pizza place to get lunch, and they had a sign with puns….my favourite.

I had a great lunch of salad, a hoodoo ale, and fish n chips.

After lunch I bought a few remaining items from the grocery/general store, and then we mailed our extra food & gear ahead to the next town, Kanab UT. I spent a few hours making various phone calls while doing laundry, and before I knew it, it was dinnertime! Shadow and I went to Rustler’s, a western themed spot with pub food. It was delicious, but the service was sloooowww. Eventually we got back to the motel room and did some final packing while more movies played. Tomorrow we head out early, as there is limited camping for the first 30 miles. Bryce National Park requires a permit to camp in the park, but to get a permit you need to have a bear canister. Since we don’t have a canister, and don’t have a way to return a borrowed one, we need to camp in the nearby Dixie National Forest where no such rules exist.
Great zero day!

Tuesday May 16, 21.4mi/34.4km

Paria River @Deer Creek Cyn (429.4/5160ft) to Skutumpah Road (441.7/5960ft) (UT) +9.1mi roadwalk to Tropic town

It’s a town day! We started off at 6am with headlamps, which we only needed for maybe 5 minutes.

The sunrise colors in the Paria River Canyon were pretty glorious.

Shadow usually hiked up ahead, but both of us are motivated and excited for town food.

After about 4 miles, we turned off into Sheep creek canyon, still heading upstream. The creek was very twisty and made some deep corners in the rock cliffs.

I hiked up Sheep creek for 2 hours, and it was easy, and pretty soon I turned off into Willis Creek Narrows.

The canyon became skinnier….

And pretty soon it was just 3m/10ft wide!

It widened briefly, and I saw a group of four horseback riders heading in the opposite direction. I have no idea how they fit thru this narrow canyon!

The textured wall of Willis Creek Narrows were fun to touch.

There was a surprising amount of muddy water running down the canyon, most photos I’ve seen had a dry canyon.

More cool narrows photos!

As I climbed upstream, the canyon walls were getting shorter.

Which was fortunate, because I soon hit this obstacle and had to scramble out.

As soon as I scrambled out, I was at the trailhead, and a dirt road. From there, it was a long dirt roadwalk (9mi) to the highway.

At least the views of Grand Staircase-Escalante were pretty epic.

Halfway thru the roadwalk I passed a junction. Getting closer!

I saw some weird things along the road, including a shipping container “house”, someone watering the desert trying to farm, and this weird sculpture.

I arrived to the highway at 1pm, and then hitched the 5mi to Tropic, as it felt too dangerous to walk that 65mph road. Shadow had arrived a couple hours ahead of me (he skipped the Willis Narrows), and had gotten us a motel room at the Red Ledges Inn. Sweet.

My first stop was food! I ordered a bison burger and fries at the Sinclair convenience store, which were only mediocre. At least the two milkshakes were great. Shadow showed up (it’s a tiny town), and we walked over to the motel. I showered, and we got an early dinner at “IDK barbecue” which was really fantastic. After an attempt at grocery shopping (I’ll have to finish tomorrow), we relaxed in the motel room and watched free movies.

Tomorrow is my first Zero day (zero miles hiking) on the Hayduke, I’m looking forward to doing nothing!

Monday May 15, 24.7mi/39.8km

Hackberry Canyon (404.7/5360ft) to Paria River @Deer Creek Cyn (429.4/5160ft) (UT)

We got started at 7am, and the the very first thing that happened was I stepped in deep quicksand. It was up to my knee and I immediately pulled myself out, Shadow tested the depth with his hiking pole.

The rest of the morning hiking down Hackberry Canyon was much less eventful. Just walking in ankle deep water.

Eventually the canyon walls turned from white rock to red rock.

The green Cottonwood trees combined with the red rocks really made for a dazzling color combination.

We passed by the Watson cabin, an historic shelter that is being restored by the BLM.

I loved that cacti were growing on the roof.

The inside of the cabin was small, so we took a snack break outside where there was more room.

The views heading down Hackberry Canyon continued to surprise me.

The lower part of Hackberry Canyon became much narrower, and it was much easier walking without the brush or boulders.

And it felt so cozy!

Pretty soon I came to the end of Hackberry Canyon and emerged at a trailhead. The note about the dead cows really helped explain the terrible smell I detected a few miles back.

I walked along Cottonwood Creek for a couple miles, and then came to the Paria River. I hadn’t seen Shadow or his footprints, so I decided to wait for him at this junction. Coincidentally he was waiting for me nearby, and neither of us realized it for 45 minutes, ha!

After we reunited and had lunch, we hiked up the muddy Paria River.

The rocks in the canyon were much more red. And the big storm cloud building to the north caught my attention as well.

A couple miles up the Paria River, we ran into a kid named Levi. He is on a 4-year transcontinental journey from his home in Susanville (CA) to the Atlantic ocean. He has a small team of horses and mules and is learning a ton of skills along the way. Sounds pretty cool!

We continued up the Paria River all afternoon.

I’m not sure what kind of bird made these tracks, but it must be pretty huge.

And then we came across the strangest object I’ve ever seen on a trail….a cow skull, spraypainted blue.

Who brings a can of spraypaint many miles into the wilderness? And what happened to the cow? So many questions. We moved on. Most of the hiking was right on the riverbank, on nice firm sand. Occasionally though a trail would cut across one of the riverbends as a “shortcut”. Except these shortcuts were full of soft sand that was terrible to walk in, and they didn’t save any time or energy.

We crossed and re-crossed the Paria River probably 50 times. It was barely shin deep, so pretty easy to cross, but it looked like chocolate milk so you couldn’t see the bottom.

Every once in awhile there was a unique little rock formation in the river, this one looked like a toadstool.

We had hiked up the Paria River for 13 miles, and called it a day at 6pm near Deer Creek, which was a nice water source.

Shadow and I discussed plans for tomorrow, since it’s only 19 miles to the town of Tropic (12mi on trail, and 7 on roads). We decided to hike all the way to town, arriving probably at 2pm. That’s pretty late in the day to get everything done, so we will take a zero day the next day to fully relax in town.

Sunday May 14, 25.3mi/40.7km

Dog Flat Plateau (380.6/5840ft) to Hackberry Canyon (404.7/5360ft) (UT) +1.1mi detour around slot canyon

It had rained overnight, and we packed up our wet tents and started our roadwalk at 6:45am. It looked like a beautiful morning.

The sky behind us didn’t look as welcoming, good thing we weren’t walking that direction!

It was almost 9 miles of easy hiking to get to Grosvenor Arch, and we had some pretty good views along the way at the highpoints. Looking back to the east:

And looking ahead to the west:

I hiked down the hill and caught up to Shadow, who was 10 minutes ahead of me. There was a little picnic area at the trailhead, and he had already exploded his pack and started drying his stuff.

I did the same thing and pretty soon we had a full-on yard sale! There was even a long-drop toilet, and a trash can, so we emptied out all of our food trash and lightened our packs. I strolled over to the Grosvenor Arch to check it out.

It was only 10:30am, so we got back on the roadwalk and headed to the next section of the Hayduke. There were a ton of cows along the way. Hi cows!!

We got to the Round Valley trailhead at noon and had lunch. I signed us into the register and saw a few other Haydukers, one of them was just one day ahead of us.

After lunch we hiked down the Round Valley wash to the slot Canyon.

We dropped into the slot Canyon and got past the first obstacle….

The second drop looked much higher and steeper. The guidebook and other sources say there is a log here to assist with the descent, and sometimes there is a rope too. Neither of those things existed, and we couldn’t figure out how to get down the 2nd drop.

So we reversed our steps and climbed back out of the slot Canyon, and saw that the sky had turned very dark with thunderstorms. Yikes, not a good time to be in a slot canyon with potential flash floods!

So we found a detour around the slot canyon, which traveled high above on the canyon rim.

The view down into the slot Canyon was impressive.

After a mile, we took a side canyon, and descended into the main slot canyon. It worked much easier than I anticipated, and there was very minimal brush or scrambling.

Once we were back in the bottom of the main canyon it was pretty open and wide.

We spent all afternoon hiking down Hackberry Canyon, about 9 miles in total.

The rock and the cliffs were so cool looking and multi-colored, it kinda reminded me of Muley Twist Canyon from last week.

The canyon weaved back and forth for miles and it was quite a sight.

Eventually Hackberry Canyon opened up a little wider, and some sunlight came through. It was a little hot.

We came to the spot where there was supposed to be a spring, and it was dry. No water. So we just kept walking until we started seeing greener plants and cottonwood trees, a good signal for water.

Half a mile later, Hackberry Canyon had a small flowing stream in it, and we filled up our bottles. Since it was 6pm, we also decided to stop and camp. After setting up and making dinner, I checked my phone and realized we had hiked 25 miles today! It’s pretty unusual on the Hayduke to do more than 20miles, since most of the terrain is rough and/or requires navigation. A good day!

Happy mother’s Day!

Saturday May 13, 25.6mi/41.2km

Last Chance Creek Canyon (355.7/4640ft) to Dog Flat Plateau (380.6/5840ft) (UT) + 0.7mi Paradise Slot Alt.

We were hiking up Last Chance Creek at 6:45am, and followed it all morning. It was nice seeing water again. Little waterfalls!

Eventually the canyon became greener, the cottonwood trees were growing everywhere, this water must be perennial.

For about a mile the canyon narrowed and the cool rock walls returned.

But mostly it was an easy walk up a dry wash, with the intermittent stream making an appearance.

Shadow demonstrating how to sidestep the slippery mud, which sometimes would catch us by surprise. It was infrequent, but often enough that I was using mental energy to avoid it.

Just after lunch we found this huge rock overhang that kinda made a cave. It was nice to get out of the sun, and also fill our water bottles in the nearby trickle.

About a mile later, we came to a junction and decided to try the Yellow Paradise alternate route, which goes thru a slot canyon. It started off easy …

But soon it required some ducking under short rocks …

And climbing up short 6ft/2m ledges.

Looking back on the slot we had just climbed out of.

After a half mile, the slot appeared to come to an end.

This was unexpected, since the guidebook info from Jamal Green’s “Across Utah” site (a wonderful resource!) described this alternate as connecting thru, and rejoining the main Hayduke. But with no other info, and finding no obvious ways to climb out, we backtracked and exited the slot canyon. We made a shortcut detour back to the main Hayduke, which was on a roadwalk for the rest of the day.

The afternoon thunderstorms were building, and I could hear thunder. Cool clouds though!

At a road junction, I was reminded how close we were to the end of this section, at Grosvenor Arch! (10 miles away).

The clouds became darker, and for the first time on the Hayduke, I felt a few raindrops. I even got out my umbrella!

A mile later we found a campsite nestled in the trees, to block the wind. It’s one of the few non-sandy campsites we’ve had, and I like it already. There are some cow pies scattered nearby, and I hear a cow in the distance, but I think it will be a quiet relaxing night.

Friday May 12, 24.5mi/39.4km

Rogers Canyon (331.9/4560ft) to Last Chance Creek Canyon (355.7/4640ft) (UT) + 0.7mi GPS correction

Another nice day for hiking! It seems the weather is always perfect out here in Utah springtime. This was our view as we started off at 6:45am.

The terrible rockiness and brush of Monday/Rogers Canyon soon ended, and we cruised on a nice gravel wash.

After a couple miles we turned and went up Navajo canyon. It was easy walking on a nice firm gravel/dirt surface. No soft sand here!

It started off as a really wide valley…

…and then soon narrowed to a proper canyon.

Walking in the piles of shale was interesting.

Shadow almost stepped on a rattlesnake, this little guy was not happy about our presence.

There was a very short 30-minute section of boulder scrambling, which was slow going but thankfully it was over quickly.

At the end of the boulder section was one final obstacle, it wasn’t difficult once we figured out the puzzle, but we had to search for the exit for a little while.

We climbed up out of Navajo canyon and had lunch at the top of the climb, on a little dirt road. Right after lunch we descended into Reese Canyon. There was an old 2-track road that descended into Reese Canyon.

And pretty soon we were in the canyon floor.

Reese canyon was enjoyable walking on gravel, and not much notable happened. Just 3 hours of walking downhill and a few neat rock formations.

We left Reese Canyon and turned to go up Last Chance Canyon, and at the junction was this creepy old trailer. In the middle of nowhere!

There was supposed to be a water source at the junction of the two canyons, but it was dry. So we hiked up the canyon, hoping to find water on our way. We stopped and filled a liter at this cool dripping moss.

But that took forever and we soon found a big pothole to fill from. There was definitely more water as we walked upstream, and the sand was frequently damp. Some canine had left prints in it!

It was easy walking in Last Chance Canyon, except occasionally there was a couple steps of slippery mud. I quickly got used to identifying the trouble spots and mostly could avoid them.

Shadow found a swimming hole! It looked murky.

We walked up canyon until 6pm, and found a nice sandy bench to camp on.

Hopefully the miles keep coming easily like today’s 4-canyon day!

Thursday May 11, 20.4mi/32.8km

Below Fiftymile Bench (313.5/4860ft) to Rogers Canyon (331.9/4560ft) (UT) +2.0mi GPS correction

We had an early 6:30am start to the day, since there was a big 2500ft climb up to Fiftymile Bench. It looked big from where we were camped just below it.

The morning temperature was perfect for hiking uphill, a nice 50F/10C. It was on a dirt road but still slow. The view halfway up was great – everything we had already hiked was visible – The Escalante river, the waterpocket fold, the Henry mountains.

Dirt road hiking is nice, it’s just like a wide trail.

The climb continued and it seemed we were aiming for this gap in the cliff, it looked so improbable.

And of course that was the route, the road degraded to a singletrack trail, and went right thru that gap. On the hike up I saw the strangest piece of trash, a half-full bag of sidewalk salt.

We got to the top just after 9am and then the trail disappeared – time to hike across the sage bush plateau! It was flat walking, but slow due to weaving our way thru all the sage. After an hour we arrived at a neat little cabin, and our only water source for the day.

The water was piped from an underground spring into a big trough, it was pretty good.

There was a main cabin, and a shed.

And it was surrounded by this cool aspen forest.

And there was even a picnic table! Shadow and I were both so excited. We took a nice long break at the table.

After the cabin we had another hour of walking thru the sage bush, it was slow but I found a cattle trail to follow, and that helped.

And then we began our descent into Monday Canyon. It started off as a wash…

And after some very vegetated hiking, we were in a wider wash.

Shadow looking thru a window in the rocks.

The canyon deepened, and at one point it became so choked with boulders that we had to scramble up a bank and walk on a shelf just above. Slow miles, but good views.

The hiking would alternate between easy walking….

…and boulder scrambling.

For the last hour of the day, we mostly walked directly in the wash, which at this point had a little water (undrinkable) in it. It made for some surprisingly deep mud.

We saw a flat spot, and even though we hadn’t hit our mileage goal for the day (about a mile short) we decided to stop and camp there.

I washed off my feet, made dinner, and pretty soon fell asleep. It was a long 13 hours of hiking for only 20 miles!