May 4 Mileage: 16 641 miles hiked I wake in the dark for some reason, can’t fall back asleep. Oh well. There are worse places to be awake, watching the stars fade towards light. It’s good to hike before the sun has crested the canyon wall, and everything is still shaded and cool. The Escalate … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 48: the Escalante Route

May 3 Mileage: 14 625 miles hiked Morning is slow and somehow we don’t get to hiking until 8- no matter, tho, in a mile we have to wait for a rafting party to ferry us across the river, and no rafting parties have passed by yet. Ah, the last mile of bushwhacking. Slow and … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 47: Beamer trail of sketch

May 2 Mileage: 10 611 miles hiked We sleep until almost seven and we have a slow morning, don’t start hiking until 8. A mouse chewed a hole in the sidepocket of Dan’s pack in the night- otherwise everything was peaceful and still, and it never rained. We fill up four liters each from the … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 46: Colorado River Bushwhack/Earning the Hayduke

May 1 Mileage: 21 601 miles hiked I sleep terribly in our motel room, perhaps partly because I am wracked with guilt about bailing in the snow. Why did I bail? No, it was the right choice. I shouldn’t have bailed! It was the right choice though. Am I a good hiker or am I … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 45: The Nankoweep trail (in the dark)

April 30 Mileage: 10 580 miles hiked I’m warm and cozy in our tent but we wake again and again to knock the snow off the cuben walls as it accumulates, and by morning I am exhausted. Our sleeping bags are wet; every time we knocked snow off the tent in the night the fabric … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 44: best laid plans

April 29 Mileage: 11 570 miles hiked It’s 7:30 a.m. Hayduke time, 6:30 a.m. Arizona Trail time, when we drop Bubs, DropNRoll and Joey off at the privy in the snowy wood where once we found them. It’s been fun to be around other hikers/humans for a few days, with all of their fresh stories … Continue reading Hayduke trail 43: cruisin in the cold on the Kaibab

April 25-28 Mileage: zero It’s 6 pm when we get a text from DropNRoll’s Delorme Inreach, which allows her to send text messages over satellite. DropNRoll, Bubs and Joey are all in a pit toilet on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It’s 24 degrees, and the snow is falling fast. The weather forecast … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 39-42 that time when it was winter again

April 24 Mileage: 21 559 miles hiked The Arizona trail as it relates to the Kaibab plateau. Ah, what a gentle, ponderosa-shaded dream. Tidy single track through the forest, AZT signage overkill at every dirt road crossing, bonus cairns along the perfectly visible trail for no reason at all. So relax. Such guided, gentle walking. … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 38: the Arizona trail on the Kaibab plateau

April 23 Mileage: 20 538 miles hiked It’s weirdly warm where we’re camped, so warm I can’t even have my sleeping bag on me. Probably one of the warmest nights I’ve had on a trail. My body waits for the cue of “it’s fucking freezing, must burrow into sleeping bag in order to stay alive” … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 37: sanblasted

April 22 Mileage: 4 518 miles hiked The moon is so bright all night and I keep waking as though at dawn but instead of the sun I find the moon hanging there, and the sagebrush casting long moonshadow across the sand and I think The sun has died and so all we have, now, … Continue reading Hayduke trail day 36: In & Out of Kanab