Day 28 – 4/10/16
23.6 map / 25.1 GPS miles
423.6 / 453.0 miles total

What a fun day! We had a bunch more monotonous miles up Last Chance Creek and Paradise Canyon before taking an earlier lunch at potentially the last water for ~17 miles. We took advantage of the sun to dry out our gear, soaked with condensation from the night before. 

Then we decided to explore a waypoint on the GPS simply marked “Yellow Paradise Slot Canyon”. I had a vague recollection of the guy from acrossutah.com mentioning a slot canyon in this section and figured it might be it…and I thought it was an alternate route, meaning you could go all be way through it rather than just explore as an out and back. So we decided to go try. 

Climbing over debris piles and scrambling up pour offs was a super fun break from all the hiking we’ve been doing. We hit a road block at a big wall without much from hand/foot holds. End of the road…or was it? 

There were a bunch of logs jammed up just down the canyon, and we were dumb enough to move them around to use as a kind of ladder up the wall. Bubs climbed up and poked her head above the rim, surveying what was up ahead, but couldn’t tell if we’d be home free or meet another impass, and was worried if she went all the way up she couldn’t get down again. A bit taller, I decided to go all the way up and scout the rest of the slot. It went on a while longer, but it ended in a vertical wall with no way up. I looked around for a side exit, and saw one that might be doable. I went back and reported to the others. In the end we decided the risk/reward ratio was too high and turned back. So, we spent almost 2 hours making no progress, but it sure was fun!

The afternoon was all road walk, so we made up some miles lost to the a slot canyon attempt. We also continued our thumbs up cattle guard game. At the first cattle guard, Bubs and I were a few minutes ahead of Joey, and hid in some bushes hoping to catch him off guard. Would you believe he stuck his thumbs up while crossing?!

 

 
Ominous clouds rolled in, but we dodged the rain for hours. We stopped for a short break just as another cloud closed in on us, and we spent 20 minutes huddled under a juniper hiding from the drops. This was all quite silly, but fun!

 

 
A couple miles further down the road (still wearing my cuben mini dress poncho) we came upon a person….walking toward us. Was he wearing any pants?! As he got closer it was clear he was one of our people: Altras, a cool raincoat longer than his short shorts (I’m assuming), and a tiny backpack with Smartwater bottles sticking out the sides. Obviously, this guy is hiking 40s every day. 

We stopped and chatted for a while, all seemingly glad to have someone new to talk to. Johnny Rocket (JR) had just finished the Arizona Trail, but since the northern terminus is in the middle of nowhere, decided to just hike the Hayduke all the way back to Moab (just ~500 extra miles). I love trail people.