Day 11 – 3/24/16
20 map /20.6 GPS miles
194.2 / 199.6 miles total

Holy moly this trail destroys gear. Last night my tent zipper bit the dust (actually it was probably he sand), then today my pants ripped out at the butt and my 2L platypus (water storage bag) sprung a leak.

We started the morning with a 1200′ climb straight up out of Dark Canyon.

 

 

 

It was fun, except that we were all hauling about 5L of water.
Flashback to 2 week ago when Bubs and I placed some food caches. We put one off Highway 95 near Hite Marina. Like all our caches, we just threw in 1 gallon of water for each person along with the food, figuring that would be a nice thing to have too. Except we didn’t actually look at the map or water notes that went along with the area. From Hite it is 27 miles to the next (drinkable) water. That means more than a day, and therefore 1 gallon per person is not enough. So we had to haul supplemental water all the way from the bottom of Dark Canyon, another 16 miles from the cache, making a total of 43 miles. Yikes.
After leaving Dark Canyon we were on dirt road almost the entire day.  Normally we hikers bitch about road walking, but after all the cross country of this trail, it was kinda nice to have the mental break. I even found myself feeling like I was getting a rest day
in…what is wrong with me??

Anyway, it was a good road walk, nicely packed dirt with very few cars (I think 4 passed us the whole day) and GREAT scenery!

 

 

 

At our cache 16 miles in, we swapped our trash for new food and sundries and tanked up – 7L of water each. Yikes.

 

 

 

 

In camp I sewed my pants and patched my leaking platypus. Tune in tomorrow to find out if they make it past the first mile!