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I awoke the next morning a little before 6:00 a.m., to watch
the stars begin to fade away as first light began to spread across the sky. As
I rolled over, I noticed that John was awake, too, and naturally, he wanted to
"play around". We cuddled for a while, but we knew that his parents would soon
be awake…and, of course, they were camped right next to us! "Tonight, we'll
try to camp away from them," John said.
With that, we got up to start the day. After boiling some water, we made
coffee and ate breakfast, in an effort to get our stiff and sore bodies
moving. Then, once we were all alert, we began to pack our backpacks - no
sense in lingering around camp when there was still twenty-six miles left to
hike! We did so quickly and efficiently (which is easy to do when Mary isn't
with us), and by 7:10 a.m., we were ready to go.
And, as soon as we stepped into the river that morning, we all called out,
"ARE WE THERE YET?" This time, John ignored us.
Our goal for the day was to get to Shower Spring, at mile twenty-two - that
would be a total of ten miles of hiking. Like the day before, if we felt like
going on, and if it was still early in the day, we could try to hike the extra
three miles to the next campsite, at mile twenty-five (at the Last Reliable
Spring). If we made it to mile twenty-five, that meant that we were going to
make it back to Lee's Ferry in three days, instead of four. After mile thirty,
there were no other campsites or reliable springs, so it would make sense for
us to hike the last thirteen miles of the canyon on day three and thus
complete the trip. At that point, I could tell that we were all determined to
do that - I, myself, was beginning to believe that I could do the trip in
three days. That also meant that I would be reunited with Mary a day earlier -
I think that was what gave me the incentive to try.
The first few miles of our trek that morning brought us into the Goosenecks,
where the river began to twist back and forth until mile sixteen, at which
point we would reach the end of the Narrows. Here, we managed to hike at a
good clip of 2.0 miles an hour, and a lot of it was on dry land, as we were
fortunate to be able to hike across peninsulas to avoid a lot of the mud.
Of course, John warned us to be wary of those peninsulas, because there was
one in particular where it ended abruptly at a forty-foot cliff, and the only
way to get down from it was to turn back and walk around it. We found it
again, with Bill in the lead. He called back to us to go around, so I did so,
but John ended up walking across it anyway! He did find a spot that was not as
steep, and that was how he got down from it.
Along the way, John and Bill kept calling out "Hello!", each time they came to
an amphitheater. They were looking for the Echo, which they had discovered
last year. Although all of the noises in the canyon echoed off of the walls,
this particular Echo was different, because it would sound off a full second
later! We eventually found it about an hour and a half into the hike, and when
we did, we all took turns shouting out words to hear them come back to us on a
full second delay. (John joked that this Echo was an ideal parenting tool - we
would only have to say "No!" to Mary once, and the Echo would say it for us
the second time!)
At mile sixteen, the canyon began to open up again as we left the Narrows.
Although the walls were still quite tall and continued to tower over us, the
canyon became much wider, and the canyon floor was now bathed in sunlight.
There were also more benches on which we could hike; here, we would only have
to hike in the mud during river crossings. That helped us keep up a good
two-mile-an-hour pace.
Soon thereafter, we came to the first historical landmark of the canyon. Just
after mile seventeen, we found the pump at Judd Hollow. There was an
interesting story behind the pump; apparently, there had been a severe drought
in 1939, and the ranchers needed water for their cattle. Their solution was to
build a pump and bring it down to the Paria River, where they could pump river
water to their cattle. The pump was never tested, though, because soon after
they set it up, it rained. Ten years later, the pump was moved to where it is
today. It was tested once then abandoned. It remains there today as a
historical artifact, a reminder of the early settlers of the Paria Plateau.
As we continued along, we kept up our pace of hiking on the dry shores then
crossing the river when we ran out of shoreline. The river crossings were, at
times, a little hairy, because the banks were quite muddy. We encountered a
lot more of the "Jell-O" ground, which left me to joke that we were on the
"Jell-O-Brick Road" (John congratulated me on coming up with such a clever
pun). We also found more quicksand in some of the river crossings…and that was
when I got stuck in the quicksand!
I tried to drive forward through the muck in an effort to break free from the
quicksand, but the more I struggled, the deeper I went. I sunk hip-deep, and I
now needed something to grab onto to help me pull myself free. I called out to
John to help me, but when he yanked on my arm, he only fell backwards. Bill
then stood in front of me, and I used his shoulder to pull myself free. When I
finally reached the shore, I kept hiking, without taking a moment to regroup.
The next landmark we came to was The Hole, at mile nineteen - the halfway
point of our journey! The Hole was an amazing place, one that we had to take
the time to explore. From the outside, it appeared to be nothing more than a
slit in the canyon wall, but as we entered it, it opened up into a gigantic
room, with high shelves and low benches where we could rest. At the opposite
end of the room, there was a dripping spring, which flowed into a small pool
on the floor of the cave. The walls surrounding the spring were lined with
green plants, as was the floor around the pool.
It was 10:30 a.m. when we arrived at The Hole. We had planned to eat lunch
there, but as it was simply too early, we decided to take a few minutes to
rest and explore The Hole before continuing on. While we were there, John and
I climbed up to the high shelf, where we attempted to take a panoramic picture
of the opening.
Upon leaving The Hole, I announced that it was time to take a group picture,
since we had reached the halfway point - as John pointed out, we were no
longer hiking into the canyon, we were now hiking out of the canyon. My hiking
stick has a camera mount on it, under the wooden ball on the handle, and when
it is stuck into the ground, it acts as a tripod (minus two feet, of course).
I set the timer, and we all posed for a group picture, so that all could see
how bedraggled we were after nineteen miles.
A mile later, we came a side canyon, where Wrather Arch is located. John was
determined that, this year, he was going to find it, having failed last year.
(He later discovered that he was actually standing right next to it; had he
walked about fifty feet to one side, he would have seen it.) However, when the
rest of us announced that we did not want to go, he, too, decided not to go.
Instead, we stopped at the campsite at mile twenty and ate lunch.
For this backpacking trip, John and I experimented with different foods for
lunch. We had become burnt out on the usual cheese and sausage, but we didn't
know what else to buy. While grocery shopping one day, we came across the
little microwave containers of Dinty Moore's beef stew, as well as other
varieties. There were also the "Kid's Kitchen" meals for kids, which were
perfect for Mary because she could feed them to herself. They were also
compact, almost indestructible, and lightweight…but would they work for lunch
in the backcountry?
Indeed they did! Although it took a little work to heat them up, because we
had to set up the camp stove and the cookware, they were very filling and
delicious. It was also a nice change of pace from the usual - we decided that
we would do that more often.
After lunch, we kept going.
It was 1:00 p.m. when we arrived at Shower Spring, at mile twenty two. It was
located in the midst of some reeds and trees, hidden away like a little
treasure. Although John and Bill knew where it was, it still took us a little
time to find it, because we had to bushwhack to get there. While we were
there, we filled up our water bladders with enough water to get us to the Last
Reliable Spring. That involved some work, because the spring was flooded - we
had to wade in knee deep to get to the spring! Of course, it was well worth
the work, because the spring water had a very nice taste to it.
Having just completed our tenth mile of the day, it now came down to the big
decision: do we go on? The next campsite was at mile twenty-five, and if we
camped there, we would almost have to finish our trip in three days. If we
stayed at Shower Spring, we would be sitting around in camp all day. The
obvious answer was to keep hiking; there was absolutely no sense in staying at
Shower Spring, when it was so early in the day. We knew now that we were going
to finish in three days, as John and Bill had done last year. Now, we were
determined.
Onwards we hiked, with three miles left to go until we reached camp. At mile
twenty-three, though, our pace slowed down considerably as we came to an area
of the canyon that was choked with large boulders and other obstacles. Here,
it took everything we had left to find the right route through all of the
mess. There were many, many river crossings - at some points, it just made
sense to hike in the river, although it was beginning to get deeper and deeper
the further we hiked. Sometimes, our route went around the boulders or in
between them. One of them was dubbed the "Verley Meander" and was discovered
by John and Bill last year. It was named for the V-shape that it made its way
around a very large boulder.
After a mile of boulder-hopping and route-finding, we began to grow very
weary. For the last mile, before we came to camp, I found that I was beginning
to drag - I was getting exhausted, and I was having trouble keeping up. By the
time we came to mile twenty-five, around 3:30 p.m., I was ready to drop.
There were a number of campsites to choose from at the campground at mile
twenty-five. We chose one that was under a giant cottonwood tree, but we soon
picked up our stuff and moved it when we discovered the nest of fire ants
nearby. We ended up camping under a mesquite tree, a little bit closer to the
river. Just below the campsite, there was a flat sandbar on which John and I
would camp that night, so that we could be alone together.
Directly across the river from our campsite was the Last Reliable Spring,
which was a dripping seep that came from the wall of the canyon. From our
campsite, we could see the water seeping over the sandbar and into the river -
it was flowing nicely. Once we arrived at camp, Bill and John took all of our
bladders over to the spring to fill them up, so that we would not have to do
it in the morning. He returned after dinner, too, to fill up all of our water
jugs, because we were going to need to carry water with us in the morning.
Since it was now obvious that we were going to be out in three days, the goal
of the evening was to "eat well", so that we didn't have to carry out all of
that extra food in the morning. (We would only have to carry out the trash.)
And that was exactly what we did. We ate all of our Ritz cracker snacks, some
of our cereal bars (saving two each for breakfast), and all of our Jell-O and
applesauce cups. Then, we had dinner, and for dessert, we had a blueberry
cheesecake MRE that we just could not finish, because by the time we started
eating it, we were stuffed!
We spent the rest of the evening watching the sunset turn the walls of the
canyon red and waiting for the first star to break through. Once dusk rolled
around, John and I stole away and set up our sleeping bags on our sandbar.
While doing so, I noticed that there was a small creature flying around
overhead, and it didn't take me long to figure out that it was a bat! I had
forgotten that bats were common in that area; while we were on Lake Powell in
June 1999, bats had chased Janice and Danny out of their sleeping bags one
night, while they were sleeping on top of the houseboat. John and I decided to
warn Erika about them, as we didn't know if she would feel uneasy about
sleeping outside with bats in the air. Fortunately, she was okay with them, so
all was well.
John and I returned to our sandbar, where we snuggled and cuddled and fooled
around until we finally saw the first star. Then, we closed ourselves up in
our sleeping bags and soon fell asleep.
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