Day 203 (HDT 19)

Day 203 (HDT 19): 22 miles

We started off the morning with about 5 miles of cross country to reconnect with the actual Hayduke route from our alternate. It was slower going than I expected, but eventually we made it back down to the Hayduke on Cottonwood Canyon Road. We walked this about 5 miles to Grosvenor Arch which was cool. What was even cooler was that there was a pit toilet there. These are rare things on the Hayduke. We took a break there and grabbed some water from a dam nearby that was kinda hard to access with slick mud on its banks. While taking a break near the arch, a guy gave us a each a beer and chatted for a while.

We then hiked another 5 miles in dirt road to the trailhead for Round Valley Draw. Shortly after the trailhead, we reached the Draw. FUTURE HAYDUKERS BEWARE: the mileage in the guidebook and Skurka’s bundle is wrong for when to descend into the draw. It says that you descend 2.9 miles into the section, but that’s not the case. As soon as you see the slot Canyon start, that’s when you descend.

When we got there, I took a look down but didn’t like what I saw, and I thought our descent was a little later. So we hiked like a half mile along the rim of the canyon and the canyon only kept getting deeper and more terrifying so I had no idea how we were gonna get down at the 2.9 mile mark like the guidebook said. Eventually we determined this had to be wrong and turned around after wasting a lot of time.

We descended when we got back to the original start of the slot canyon, and this is when the day really began. I thought only the initial descent would be tricky, and then we’d be on the canyon floor cruising along. But it turned out to be the most intense section of a “trail” I’ve ever done. Round valley draw made the Mahoosuc Notch look like a bitch.

The initial drop was 10 feet but it wasn’t too bad. You could leverage yourself between the 2 sides of the canyon and comfortably work your way down. Immediately after that, there was a hole that was basically a 12 foot slide with a mud pit at the bottom
Fancy Feast went first and once she got down I dropped our packs down using a rope. She had been complaining about carrying this rope and said we wouldn’t need it and said that she wanted to send it home for a while now. But I always said don’t do that. We’re gonna need it. It was nice to finally have my “I told you so” moment.

When they were down, I started to make my way down (which is the first picture.) I did not like it. This was only the first descent of several that were on the edge of my comfort level, if not surpassing it. I tried to get solid holds as much as I could, and descended as much as I could, but once I got maybe 5 feet from the bottom, it was just slippery mud and near vertical so I slid down into the mud pit.

After this, there were so many sketchy descents, mud pits, and general discomforts, I couldn’t keep count. If I had to guess, there were maybe 15-20 descents and maybe 2-3 that made me really uncomfortable. It also took us over 2 hours to do a mile.

We reached a point where after a descent you had to fall into a body of disgusting water. I went first. Given that it was a dark yellow/orange, we could not tell how deep it was at all. I was also worried what the bottom of it would be like, aside from how deep it was. It was unpleasant. It was extremely slippery, but also thick and engulfed my legs up to nearly my knee. The water aside from being gross, was freezing cold and went up to my waist. It was like going in slow motion in ice cold water cause of the dirt at the bottom. It was like walking through primordial ooze. We had to walk through a few more of these disgusting bodies of water but they weren’t as bad as this one.

There was a couple times where there really was no option to climb down so we just had to kind of lean out from the crevice and jump down like 6 feet to the ground below. I was just asking for one of the bones in my feet to snap or pop. Luckily they didn’t. This all was fun at times, frustrating at others, astonishing most of the time, and straight up scary sometimes. I’m not a climber. I’ve never leaned to climb. I don’t practice climbing. I don’t have experience climbing. This was outside my comfort zone. Yet here I am.

This all was cool shit, although we hardly captured any of it with pictures or video for a couple reasons. The first one is that we were so consumed with the process of safely descending this slot canyon that we didn’t have time to worry about pictures. But the bigger reason is that we were completely covered in mud and working a phone would have been impossible. Our hands were covered in mud. Our legs are covered in mud. Our shorts are covered in mud. Our packs and gear are covered in mud. The mud was neverending. It was impossible to escape.

It’s times like these on the Hayduke that nobody can really see or understand unless they’re there doing it themselves. I really need a 3rd person to come along solely for documenting the ridiculous things this trail has you do. It would help if they would be able to levitate or have Spider-Man’s powers to climb rocks. I’m sure somebody in the past has done a much better job of camptiring the experience of around Valley Draw in video, but it certainly wasn’t us. So if you wanna see what it’s like so a little search on the ole google machine, cause our pictures capture about 2% of it.

Song of the day: it’s been a long long time-Harry James