Day 198 (HDT 14)

Day 198 (HDT 14): 24 miles

It was a beautiful 12 miles through Lower Muley Twist Canyon in the morning. It was constant tall red walls around us all morning. They were really too tall to try to capture with a photo for most of the way.

After we exited the canyon, we found Muley Tank after some looking around for a bit. It’s a nice big pothole a little bit off trail. It had a lot of bugs in it but it’s probably the best water we’ve seen in a while.

And we wended up spending an hour there filtering water for a nice long stretch. We’d soon be hopping off the official Hayduke and getting on Skurka’s alternate to go right into Escalante to avoid a tough hitch. There’s less water information on that alternate, but after Muley Tank it looked like we might have water in 31 miles or maybe not until like 38 miles. And there was a small chance of water after I think 21 miles but I wasn’t gonna count on it. Probably still a little on the less cautious side, I left there with 7 liters of water.

Right before I left there, I ate a lot of peanut butter m&m’s. That was a mistake. After 2 years of being a highly powered garbage disposal, my body is really starting to betray me. My stomach soon started churning and I had to stop a lot throughout the day to go to the bathroom, aside from also just feeling bad. My body is really starting to reject any type of peanut butter, even a little. This sucks. Normally PB is like 40% of my calories. Now it’s gotta be 0%. Quite the vibe check.

Because of that I moved much slower, but I also added 2 miles onto my day cause I missed where I was supposed to climb out of the wash to begin heading towards the top of the Waterpocket Fold. And when I did get right, it was some tough climbing and I was going slow. I stopped to take a break and ending up eating too much sugar, mainly sour patch kids. Shortly after, I was getting dizzy while walking and feeling sick and had to sit down for a while.
When I was finally nearing the point where Fancy Feast and I were supposed to meet, it only got worse. Any sense of a sensible route or trail totally disappeared, and it just became a bushwhack though a pretty thick forest by desert standards. And there were so many washes I climbed up and over, only to repeat. I probably added another 500 feet of climbing onto the 2,000 foot climb.

I was moving so slow, and getting angry while doing so, and feeling sick at the same time. I finally reached the top of the Waterpocket Fold (which is a cool geological feature you should look up) at sunset and Fancy Feast has been waiting there for an hour. I had had a pretty bad day. We started the alternate and did just enough to drop elevation to make camp with less wind. It was too dark to navigate, but I would’ve wanted to stop anyways.

Song of the day: bulls on parade-RATM