[photos and reference links coming in May]
Morning after the rain storm, lovely. The air still cool and wet, the sun in and out of fluffy cloud forms, fragrant sagebrush decked with droplets, a family of several dozen house finches chattering in a big Gambel oak. One circles out to check on me and I see his red breast. I spent the first hour of daylight asleep, the second packing up (okay, with all the dried poop that campsite was more like a 5/10 — adequate to keep out rain), and the third following a trackless side canyon with singing spotted towhees, bushtit contact calls, a dead end, mistake. So it’s 9AM before I’m making progress up Chesler Canyon. Hoping to get to Beef Basin today.
The birds are loving this morning. Mountain bluebird, northern flicker, Woodhouse’s scrub jay, hairy woodpecker, rock wren, ovenbird??? I thought I heard a canyon wren, which would be the first of this trip and is one of my favorite songs, but I was half asleep so maybe it was a dream. All in a complete wilderness of phallic spires piled up like castles. The tip of each phallus is squashed flat, creased with the unique thumbprint of its own guardian spirit.
How the hell am I going to get over them? The only possibility seems one very long, steep “ladder” on the left side of the bowl. By the way, as far as I know, Barthe never tested this alternate — only proposed it. The only source I have saying the route goes is a random guy’s Facebook comment. Once I start going up into the bowl, it’s like climbing a Sierra pass — one with no trail or even tracks, where the non-technical route is just a rumor, with loose soil and rotten rock and constant enticements to climb into dangerous situations. A few times I did; a 50-lb boulder broke off and grazed my right ankle as it tumbled down the sand. Fragile but punishing terrain. I guess there are two main differences with the Sierra: here, there are trees and everything solid is made of crumbly sand.
I found a vertical stream bed and progress was simpler until I hit a rock climb I wasn’t willing to do without protection. I tested the beginning, but no. Took my pack off, descended a bit, contoured west around the base of the cliff band. It was many times my height, all sheer rock or cracks leading to nowhere. One potential spot. I spent 15 minutes trying. It’s not that I couldn’t have done the climb — probably 7 times out of 10, if pressed — but the other three times would have ended me. Several dozen feet of exposure with only rocky steeps below. I was already free soloing to the point of nervousness. My rule is not to do anything where I feel in danger. I strayed beyond that boundary at a few moments.
Shit. I will either have to try the ramp I saw from the canyon bottom hours ago, east of here — all the way back down, then up a speculative route — or go all the way back to where I diverged from the Hayduke yesterday evening, adding roughly a full day to this leg. I scramble back to my pack, mulling it over. Notice two new ways to boulder up the cliff. They’re not good, but they’re a full level better than anything else so far. Less airy, a fall would be manageable with caution. The climb involves negotiating boulders wedged into a dryfall. I’m reminded of the 127 hours guy, who was in a similar situation when a boulder slipped and pinned his arm until he broke the bone and hacked off his hand with a pocketknife — just across the river from here in the same Canyonlands National Park.
Up I go. I explore packless to prospect for a route down the other side. It’s the same kind of vertical maze, but at least I know I can retrace my steps if I must. I return and haul my pack up the bouldering section with cord from my tarp. There are a few faded footprints up here from others this crazy. Half past noon.
There’s nothing like a death-defying escape from the Needles to make a person appreciate walking down a flat sandy wash on a beautiful day. Birds are singing. Breathe deeply. In honesty, though — that route wasn’t so different from the Hayduke as a whole, or wilderness travel in general. It’s always about entering unknown territory and figuring out how to deal with what comes. That’s part of the appeal — the dramatization of life at large. Higher highs, lower lows, starker stakes, gobsmacking beauty. I don’t think I made a bad or wrong decision in doing that alternate, even though I wouldn’t do it again… probably. (Although I do think taking one rando on the internet’s word that it “goes” was a bad idea.)
Confronting actual losses does change your perspective, though. Lost time, food, water. It’s not hard to imagine graver losses on that climb. 99% of the time I never have to reckon with the downside of outdoor risks I take — a good thing, because it means I’m managing them, but it also builds up a kind of ignorance.
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The original Hayduke route up Butler Wash has a lousy reputation as long, sandy, and not as good as its alternatives, but I liked it. Someone had placed an elk antler half the weight of my pack on a rock. Seldom Seen Bridge was so cool and had some gnarly, fun pouroff climbs right after it! While crawling on hands and knees through the brush to get out of the drainage, I found the smallest cactus I’ve ever seen, the size of a cornichon. And that valley after the top! And then!!! Have you ever experienced something so lovely, so idyllic that it made you afraid, as though you’d stepped too far from your own sphere?
Cresting the divide, Beef Basin all silvery green and rolling between me and the setting sun. Shadows of mountains on the horizon. I had to give thanks out loud.
For some reason Beef Basin reminded me of the PCT. Maybe it’s the grassland — I haven’t seen much of that type of terrain on the Hayduke. Or the ability to see so far, or the way light graces the savanna. Millions of golden grass stalks, each with a shining down feather curled at the end. Unfortunately, it’s not named Beef Basin for nothing. As I moved farther into the rolling hills there was plenty of cow excrement and trampled dust. Still, I couldn’t stop taking pictures. It really slowed me down. Orange rays of sun in avenues through pinyon pines. Cacti — purpurescent prickly pear, long leaved bluish agave, barrels sized from pincushion to watermelon. Coyotes yipping not so far away from my cowboy camp under the stars.