[photos and reference links coming in May]
Snow!!! On my first night! Woke around 5 to find the already too-low tarp pressing down on my quilt, both slick with water. Like I said, the lessons are coming thick and fast. I’m barely a mile from tourist trail and already feel very much “out there.” From starry skies when I went to sleep, to several hours of light rain, to an inch of snow, to morning calm. A Western meadowlark sings and it fills the whole valley floor. A moment’s silence, soon joined by a rising chorus of Say’s phoebes and quorking ravens.
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Salt Valley looks flat from afar, and it was where I crossed it yesterday. A different story coming back over today, some miles farther down. The map route follows a line labeled ‘Pipeline’ straight across. There was no sign where it branched from the road I’d been walking, just an area with sparser vegetation than the surroundings. I was proud to notice it. Minutes later, I lost the pipeline as the terrain buckled into a maze of incipient drainages. Never found it again — instead, a tiring series of mini-ups and downs, trying to avoid steep narrow watercourses choked with juniper or spiky tumbleweed. On flatter ground, the tumbleweed piled up around bends and clogged the entire wash bottom. Easy to get pulled off a bearing in such twisty country.
At the dirt road crossing at the bottom of the valley, I paused and felt more alone than at any time so far on the Hayduke. Naturally, I stopped to pee, pulling my pants all the way down to my knees in the mid-afternoon. This was not only pleasant but has a preventative medical function, since my crotch will sweat a lot and have few opportunities to air out. Of course, a vehicle rounded the bend 10 seconds later, setting me furiously fumbling.
I pulled out the map as a matter of habit as I started up the far side of the valley. Discovered I had been aiming at the wrong “ramp” up the cliffs, .5 miles down-valley from where the pipeline apparently crossed. Between the two ramps were only sheer scarps, so no cutting corners. I decided to swallow at least a 30 minute inconvenience and get back on-route, hoping there was a good reason to follow the pipeline that would save time in the long run. This was probably the first time that I needed CalTopo to tell which way to go. The scale on paper was just too small for me to tell the difference between the two ramps. I’m glad I’m making these mistakes now. Hopefully it teaches me what to watch out for.
So far any inch off-route has involved substantial crust-busting, I’m ashamed to admit. I try to follow mouse highways, trackways in the dirt an inch narrower than my foot, but a lot the time there just aren’t any. It’s a constant calculus of how much more detour is worth it to avoid crypto or tumbleweed or hold out for a path of lesser resistance.
Finally rejoined the pipeline, a long low mound you’d miss if not looking for it. There were trail runner footprints — not many, and they looked old. All the animal tracks I’ve been following look old too, though, and some must not be. Right? In a wash bottom I saw carnivore poop that looked too big for a coyote.
I walked through an amazing diversity of environments today: snowy pinyon-juniper rock garden, maze of red fins and arches, blackbrush flats, crypto-tumbleweed badlands, sand dunes, potholed rocky creek bed, endless sea of slickrock hummocks. What they say about the sand on this trail is true: it’s inescapable. Inside my shoes it forms little pillows under my toes and sprays out every time I step forward.
Had expected/planned to get to Moab early-midday tomorrow, but I will probably arrive tomorrow night or the next morning. My body feels good, just sore in a thruhikey way. My pinky toenails don’t have much longer to live. I’ve been getting lost, honestly, more than I expected. Not the “Shit shit, I don’t know where anything is” kind, but the “ugh, I’m not where I expected to be.” Aware that the second can become the first. That’s what CalTopo is for. Luckily, my phone is new and has good battery life. Oh, wait.
This evening there were more shenanigans with the DIY elements of my kit. My stove extinguished itself twice and the pot never came to a boil. Not sure how the heck the people on the internet get it to work. Theirs look the same as mine. And the tarp must have taken one hour to set up. I’m camping on slickrock tonight because I’m doing a Barthe alternate — I’m curious about the climb down the “Great Wall”. But I couldn’t use stakes on the rock, so I had to find 6 heavy stones. None nearby, so I carried them up from a wash one at a time, wondering how the hell everyone else does this. I felt like a Boy Scout, the ones you see hiking with leather boots and pump-action water filters. The wind has been high all day, which made me nervous because wind means weather on the way. It calmed down right around sunset. The stars are near their best — I almost fall up and in.