Day 192 (HDT 8)

Day 192 (HDT 8): 19 miles

First thing in the morning we descended back down into young’s canyon following a game trail marked with cairns most of the way. Once we reached the bottom, we totally lost it and took a long time basically walking in circles trying to find a way to efficiently walk in this canyon with brush, water flowing in the wash, and rocky canyon walls. I went exploring high up on a wall on the right side of the canyon looking for a game trail, but then Fancy Feast found a water seep like a quarter mile back on the other side of the canyon. I was really thirsty and needed water so I decided to head back and get some water after hesitation about going backwards. It was the only clean water around since the water flowing in the wash was chocolate milk.

Eventually FF and I got separated and I ended up on the left side of young’s canyon on a middle rim and she was on the right. Lucky for me, I was on the right side and had a decent game trail to follow. She had to double back and get on the correct side of the canyon. I kept going and we didn’t see each other for a few hours.

After I kept going, I heard some voices and looked down to see a group of people which conveniently showed me where I had to descend to. I was surprised to see another person out here, let alone a group of 14 mostly high schoolers. We said our “how do you do’s”and exchanged info about the canyon in each direction.

When I got back to the bottom of the canyon, I made my way down to the confluence of Young’s canyon and Dark canyon. Young’s canyon surprisingly had clear water flowing in the lower parts of it. To people in the future, FILL UP WATER IN YOUNG’s CANYON. I didn’t cause 1. I’m dumb 2. I thought there would be more seeps along the side of the canyon later. But there was not.

I’m not sure where the correct spot was to descend at the confluence but the way I chose was idiotic. I made my way down into a rock that jutted out at the confluence and then got down to the bottom near the waterfall of young’s canyon. It included a lot of climbing down and holding onto rocks I wasn’t comfortable with, and ended with an 8 foot jump down into sand below. I was really hoping it wasn’t quicksand otherwise I would’ve sunk real quick. Thankfully it wasn’t, and I made my way out and up into dark canyon.

I hiked in there for a while before realizing quite a lot of time had passed and I hadn’t seen Fancy Feast. I posted up in a shade spot and she arrived shortly after, having had quite a time getting over to the correct side of the canyon in Young’s.

That was the nice part of the canyon today, we were hiking in the shade a lot of the time which felt nice. What was a little less nice was our speed for the day. We were moving extremely slow in the morning, but really moved pretty slow all day. There was a lot of small hesitations looking for which side of the canyon we wanted to be on, sometimes backtracking cause we chose a wrong way, and a lot of short climbs up and down in the canyon. It was a tough day of hiking.

That being said, it was an incredibly beautiful canyon. My words and pictures won’t do it justice. I’d say go see for yourself, but this place is out there!

When we finally reached the end of our time in the canyon and had to begin our climb out, I was dehydrated and displeased that there was no drinkable water the whole time in dark canyon. The Hayduke is the most ironic trail of all time when it comes to water. We saw a ton of water. The wash was flowing strongly after the rain yesterday, but it was all chocolate milk and would’ve messed up a filter real quick. We passed 2 day hikers who asked us if we had a filter “that worked on this water” I’m not sure that filter exists.

I filled up a liter of chocolate milk before beginning the climb out on the Sundance Trail, but realllllllly didn’t want to use it. It was only a last resort/I’m dying water. The climb out of the canyon was STEEP. I was huffing and puffing, but was relieved when we finally reached the top. But it wasn’t really the top. We seemed to repeatedly climb out of another bowl to only see there was another layer to climb.

Eventually we did reach the old roadbed and where the Sundance trail/Hayduke route used to go. We tried to look for the route for a little bit, but there was a massive rock face which we didn’t see an obvious route over, and it was getting dark. So we opted to follow the official Sundance trail and walk a dirt road which added an extra 3 miles. It would however go by a parking lot and I was really hoping we’d pass some people that could give us water.

We ended up hiking past 9 which was only possible cause it was road walking. Doing any navigation in the dark would be playing on expert mode. I went to bed thirsty, knowing I’d wake up thirsty.

Song of the day: somewhere only we know-Keane