I just finished 200 miles on the hayduke “trail.”
I spent this time hiking with Physics. Physics works at SLAC (the Stanford DOE accelerator lab), and I first met him while hiking the CDT somewhere around Yellowstone.
Overall, we have pretty decent trail compatibility. But still, hiking with another person creates a very different hiking experience. And new experiences always bring different challenges. It’s not quite as liberating compared to hiking independently. Instead, it promotes dependencies that can both be beneficial and diffiicult. I had a sewing kit for Physics to use to repair his pants when he shredded them on some brambles; I borrowed his pocket knife’s toothpick to clean out my phone’s charging port. Paces, route finding, and passive trail time, however, were trickier to immediately fall into.
But in terms of hiking, the hayduke route is not without challenges. Some obstacles can feel disheartening at times — like when a sandstone jug you’re scrambling on breaks off and you fall tits-over-ass, as they say, down a scree embankment.
The desert scenery is endless. You move from dirt road to dirt road, connecting these roads via random washes, canyons, and the national park system. Perhaps it’s more romantic to view it the other way: the route is a sequence of deep canyons and imposing rock walls that are loosely connected by jeep trails, or what someone could optimistically refer to as roads.
The trail begins in Arches. We flew into the Canyonlands Field Airport outside of Moab, and hiked over the Klondike Bluffs into Arches to the start the trail. For all its grandeur, Arches was somehow one of the least spectacular parts of the trail. Slick rocks, sandstone arches, and desert shrubs gave way to sandy washes that would steal energy from you with every step. As you leave the wash and crest over solid rock, you stare out endlessly into fields of erosion, wondering if the direction you’re headed will yield a cliff, dropping 300-feet below, or a series of ledges that will take you into the canyon system you’re looking for.
From Arches we resupplied in Moab, and journeyed along the Colorado River corridor for 60 miles until we got to Canyon Lands. Of course, traveling along the Colorado River when not in a raft turns out to be an extremely dry endeavor. The river is hundreds of feet below, and access points to the silty substance called water might appear every 30 miles. The once-mighty river carved the Colorado Plateau into sharp, angular cliffs that may seemingly take years, rather than geologic timescales, to further erode.
At Canyon Lands we were able to secure a camping permit along the Peak-a-Boo Canyon trail. After 10 miles of road walking, the trail turned into world class hiking. We scrambled along sloped rock ledges, staring out through rock windows at beautiful spires, desert towers, needles, and precariously situated janga blocks just waiting for the right gust of wind. A quick traverse through a narrow slot canyon revealed the Joint Trail and another long road walk to a different wash that would take us out of the park to a different, passable canyon system.
We followed cow trails, the most hard-packed paths through the vegetation and sand of the Fable Valley. Our feet became emaculately exfoliated and we took regular breaks to drain our socks and shoes in the Sisyphusian task of removing sand. Eventually a steep scree slope with potentially lethal drops gave way to Young’s Canyon. From there, we worked our way across boulders, sloped sandstone, and talus fields before eventually finding the true gem of this 200-mile section: The Dark Canyon ISA complex.
The Dark Canyon is the perfect hiking canyon. There aren’t any forks for miles. The perfectly wrought cliffs cast shade (the good sort), while the plentiful water moderates the temperature. The rick-rick-rick of the canyon’s abundant toads races you through the canyon, following you from one bank of the river to the next. The banks morph into rock ledges that eventually return to the river, where water can displace many days of sand accumulated in your socks.
The 1,100 foot climb out of Dark Canyon returns to all-too-familiar cross country travel. We dodged yucca and cacti in search of the correct mesa or wash that eventually turned into highway 95 through Hite. We scrambled up some rock formations that broke apart at the slightest touch before emerging onto a dirt road that gave way to our next imposing canyon system. We climbed up steep walls that a concerned motorist told us were impassable, and a high-desert mesa greeted us, bringing repetitive ups and downs, gaining and losing hundreds of feet every hundred yards.
As we navigated the mesa to our next canyon, clouds condensed around us and billowed up into the stratosphere. Garmin optimistically chirped, predicting that there would be no rain. But a red sky at morning? Sailors are best to take warning.
We decided to take a high route to avoid the potential for a flash flood leaving us caught in the Dirty Devil’s canyon complex. Instead, our feet remained dry and we chose to navigate the Fiddler Cove Canyon to a road that would eventually allow us to hitch into town.
The hayduke seems like a fantastic route that I hope to get back to.
With love,
Peaches
