The Hayduke is, in my opinion, step-for-step the most adventurous 800-mile walk one can do in the contiguous USA. If you want to know why I’m doing this and you don’t have more time, that’s why. (And if you disagree on the title of Most Adventurous, I would love to know your pick!)
In the hallowed words of the Hayduke’s creators, Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella:
“The Hayduke Trail is an extremely challenging, 800-mile backcountry route through some of the most rugged and breathtaking landscapes on earth. Located entirely on public land, the trail links six of the National Parks on the Colorado Plateau in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona with the lesser known, but equally splendid, lands in between them. Encompassed in the route are Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and numerous National Forests, BLM Districts, Primitive Areas, Wilderness Areas and Wilderness Study Areas. The Hayduke Trail is not intended to be the easiest or most direct route through this incredibly varied terrain, but is rather meant to showcase the stunning Redrock Wilderness of the American Southwest. Named after George Washington Hayduke III, a fictitious character in Edward Abbey’s novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, the trail seeks to pay homage to Abbey for his tireless defense of these fragile and threatened public lands and to heighten awareness and promote the conservation of the wild places that he and so many other people have come to need and love.”
“Warning! Because of the extremely challenging and dangerous nature of this route, you must be a very experienced desert backpacker in peak physical condition before attempting any section of the Hayduke Trail! Thru-hikers beware! The Hayduke Trail traverses intensely rugged terrain, is largely off-trail, is not signed and ranges in elevation from 1,800 feet in the Grand Canyon to 11,419 atop Mt. Ellen’s South Summit!”
Mitch and Mike introduced the route in a guidebook in 1998, the year I was born. Brian Frankle was the first to traverse it in a single expedition, in 2005. 2 days ago, my cashier at a cafe in Moab had never heard of it. I’m not in the know, but my impression is that ballpark 100 people will thruhike it this year. That’s not too bad for the age of Instagram.
Many people ask if I’m going alone. I am, although I don’t know what that word means if I’m carrying a satellite communication device and an iPhone 8 and hitchhiking into towns to buy food and walking in footprints that could lead to other hikers just around the bend. The few who might have joined me are sidelined by school and work. I have dared comparably audacious journeys by myself before. The rewards of those expeditions have left me in awe. Of course the extraordinary, transcendent scope of the journey sets the walker apart from others. That said, I would love to meet kindred spirits out there and I likely will.
I have poured the last 2 months of my life into making this expedition a reality. To fund it, I worked mindless, repetitive low-wage jobs that hurt my back, behind the cheese counter at Whole Foods and at a bar on 2nd Avenue. I took a single day off work in February, to interview for the Watson Fellowship (for which I was a nominee but not awarded). I must have done hundreds of hours of prep and research. When I went to bed each night my mind raced with permit To Do’s and a to-cache-or-not-to-cache debate. I pulled too many near-all-nighters to count and one actual all-nighter for good measure. Except for 2 days visiting L, over this final pre-departure week I have worked on my maps, alternate routes, gear, water data, and resupply all day every day.
For those of us who feel that urge to trace the Earth’s contours and gather its places and learn its shape, I propose that there are 3 overlapping categories of long-distance expeditions:
1. Landscape Crossings (L2H, BCT, BB100). Trips defined by their elegance of route, the ideal of a “clean line” between features deemed significant in the landscape. More “objective”-driven, often tend toward the athletic or testing the mettle of the traveler.
2. Surveys (PCT, AT, Camino De Santiago). Journeys explicitly imagined as such, linking numerous landscapes to provide an even larger sense of culture, geology, ecology, and/or civilization. More conducive to marinating in one’s thoughts or perceptions, thus the ideals of Quest and even Pilgrimage are nearer at hand than on a landscape crossing. There is often a democratic/everyman/all-gone-to-look-for-America vibe to Survey-type expeditions that can marginalize rugged individualist woodsman types or catch them off guard.
3. Highlight Reel (HDT). “The journey is the destination.” As its creators explain above, the Hayduke is envisioned to “stun” walkers while “showcasing” what makes the Colorado Plateau “incredible.” That’s why it veers crazily back and forth, greedily bagging canyons, rivers, arches, washes, alpine peaks, petroglyphs, hoodoos, forests, grabens, pour-offs, spires. I want that overflowing bounty from my expedition. I’m hungry for it all.
Obviously, these categories are just a fun little game I invented and anyone could disagree with them, but they help explain the flavor I get from the Hayduke in comparison with other trails.
When I started researching this hike, the first thing I learned is that “the Hayduke isn’t a trail, it’s a route.” I will not be walking down a 2-foot wide path over the ground each day for months, although I’ve done that, would do it again, and recommend it to you. For those who would traverse the Colorado Plateau, more is required. On the Hayduke I will scramble, bushwhack, climb, swim, and yes, crawl on hands and knees if I have to. I will use my entire body to write an essay (a tribute, a mantra, a benediction) in slickrock, sand and blood. I will come to know this part of the world by moving through the land as I find it. I will become a wild thing in the redrock jungle.
Not a trail, but something more twisting and penetrable and occult. In the words of Carrot Quinn — which I have never forgotten since I first read them years ago — a walker is not so much on the Hayduke as inside it. By all accounts, to attempt this journey is to enter the Labyrinth.
Excited yet?
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WHY AM I DOING THIS?
If you believe you have a better opportunity for a driven, curious, highly adaptive fresh college graduate, let’s talk. 646 430 2563. In the meantime:
I have been waiting to do the Hayduke for a long time. I’m not sure exactly how long, but probably since around 2018.
EXCELLENCE
To make my own power. To stake all my chips. To fashion my own puissance.
On this journey I will do something unassailably magnificent.
I was raised and educated to love and pursue excellence. It worked and I do, but alas — there was a freak accident on the production line. Managers throwing up their hands in dismay, a few of the workers grinning to themselves. Out popped not an excellent sheep, but an excellent wolf. I discovered the thrill of being a beginner. Of pushing, improbably, into unfamiliar country.
About a month ago, when I should have been spending time doing more applicable things, I read Shackleton’s account of the Endurance expedition. Excellence, man. Courage, excellence, grace. I admire that guy so much.
SOLITUDE
I have the sense of entering a fraught period of time.
It seems as if life is just random and chaos, meaningless. I’ve lived recent years as a story of redemption and swashbuckling. I triumphed over the worst moments of my life by using them to slingshot me in the directions I most wanted and needed to go.
Those storylines, and their ability to sustain me, are petering out. I got the biology degree, so what? I wrung washcloths until my knuckles dried up and cracked, I made my bosses love me, I got home every night and ate my main meal of the day sitting on the floor because my back ached, and what changed? Part of me feels like I wasted my time doing all of it. I am just as uncommitted as when I started, except now time feels against me. As for the relationships I might rely on to navigate uncertainty, my friends are scattered across the country and my family may go next. I’m already battle-tested. Why must I bear more tests?
To put it in a more productive way: I have so many ideas, but no IDEA where to go. I want a moment to be outside and think.
Walking is a decision making tool; pacing the labyrinth is a form of meditation. “Thought is an epiphenomenon of walking.” This walk can help me think and figure out what’s next.
EDUCATION
I have done hundreds of hours of research to prepare my equipment, resupplies, permits, and maps. I will navigate using paper maps and compass as a way to increase the self-reliance factor and hone my skills. (If I get lost, on my phone I have a CalTopo track where I can locate myself in relation to the route, no phone service necessary. I must have spent days making this track.) Although I’ve pored over advice and journals from at least a dozen previous hikers, I don’t want to just plug and chug someone else’s instructions. I want to be the author of this expedition. I will come out this trip with a wealth of new strength, knowledge, skill, and experience. Plus I’ll tick a new state, Utah, off my get-to-know list.
ADVENTURE
It’s hard to choose one word. Curiosity. Freedom. Dream. It’s not about escapism, it’s about stuffing the days of life to the brim with experience.
The experience of purpose, freedom, possibility, and awesome beauty is a combination I will never forget.
I’m from the world’s other great canyon country — Manhattan. Can I do this? What’s going to happen?
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I left New York last week as dawn’s rosy fingers slipped through the East side’s towers of glass and concrete, washing the sky brand-new. The end of an all-nighter, perversely hopeful and beautiful as always.
Now again it’s later than it should be. My family are all asleep. They will drop me off on the way out of Moab at first light.
Tomorrow morning the sun will rise from behind the La Sal mountains, deep in snow. The seething sounds of a sea of troubles will recede, and now there is only an animal, rising, on foot, toward the light.