Day 188 (HDT 4)

Day 188 (HDT 4): 25 miles

I woke up in the middle of the night last night feeling like I might vomit. This also happened the first night of the trail. The common denominator was that both nights I ate from the same jar of peanut butter before bed. Idk what it was, but that jar is dead to me now. I hardly ate anything all day cause my stomach was upset. I’ll be rolling into our resupply stop tomorrow with multiple days of food still left.

We got an early start to the day (got up at 6:30 which I say is early) and had a good day. The day was a little bit of both dirt road and cross country before descending down into Rustler Canyon. We didn’t see a couple water sources that were supposed to be on our route, but thankfully there were some surprise potholes of water from the recent rain. And some of it was even good and clear! And some was realllly salty and kinda bad.

The day really got going when we descended into Rustler Canyon and Indian Creek. For a second, we were looking down at the canyon below us and thinking “How the hell are we going to get down there?” But the route soon became apparent. It did require a full length body extension to reach a pile of rocks below, but it wasn’t too bad.

In the canyon, it was beautiful but muddy. We were constantly looking for a route to keep our feet dry, stay off sensitive soil, and ideally avoid mud. But we weren’t always successful. I slipped on some slick mud and ended up doing the splits which “elicited a laugh out loud and clapping gesture” from Fancy Feast. I’m glad she enjoyed it cause I didn’t. Later I also sunk my whole foot in quicksand and got my foot soaked.

The climb out of Indian Creek wasn’t too bad and once we got out, we were high up and had fantastic views of Canyonlands all around. We entered the park for about a mile near the end of the day but then exited again before camping. Fancy Feast did meet a ranger earlier in the day and was talking to him for an unusually long time so I thought I should head over. She was kinda confused made it sound like we were going to camp in the park without permits which displeased the ranger. Then I explained that we’d be in Indian Creek Wilderness tonight and get our walk up permits tomorrow which pleased him. Then we got some water from him which was nice.

We finally left Bear Ears National Monument today but I really enjoyed my time there. There’s not easy access which is probably why it’s not well known, but that was a really cool place.

Song of the day: stay-post malone