Day 39 – 4/21/16
18.3 map / 39.5 (haha! Not counting) GPS miles
607.3 / 649.6 miles total
The energy level today was considerably lower than yesterday. We felt almost hungover from all the excitement and fun of yesterday. It didn’t help that I drank a caffeinated drink mix this morning and felt awful from it. Also I had to pee every 20 minutes. Sometimes I do fine with caffeine, sometimes not. I normally avoid caffeine on trail but didn’t notice when I bought the drink mixes. Bubs and Joey got the rest of the pack.
The entire day we continued following the Paria downstream through its beautiful canyon, which gradually widened out a little bit. Note that this is the same river we previously walked upstream for some 20 miles. It was warm overnight and got downright hot today. Even the water felt not cold. We had a fairly easy 11ish miles down by lunch. Not bad.
We had lots of notes about springs along the way. Shower spring particularly caught our attention as we pictured a large stream of water, cascading over a rock face and plummeting many feet down to the ground. A literal shower we could stand under. We dreamed up many great photo shoot ideas. The spring turned out to be so completely dry we couldn’t even tell where it was supposed to be. It was a real blow to morale.
The afternoon dragged and we finally reached our climb out of the canyon, some 2000′ up in one mile, at 5:30pm. We knew we had this climb, we just didn’t realize the route finding would take so long. There was even one move where we had to haul packs with a rope. We finally reached the top and made camp at 8pm.
Purdy, Purdy, Purdy, but no thanks to the Bush Head route.
Wonderful pictures. Never tire of seeing those cannon walls. That climb was awesome. Am breathless.
I did Paria both going down and coming up. Beautiful place. I have not done Buckskin Gulch. Did you do The Wave and White Canyon. They are both in the same area. Although Paria is said to be the #1 canyon I consider Coyote Gulch the best. What do you think? Keep on trucking.
Both Buckskin and the Paria were great! I personally liked the Paria more than Coyote Gulch. The sheer walls and colors of the Paria combined with way less people made it a better experience for me. (It as spring break when we were in Coyote Gulch).
That looks so fun and rewarding! To climb out of a canyon and look back and down into and have just a little sense of what happens in its folds. Best light comes on the long days.