Day 57 – 5/9/16
13.5 map / (in a tight canyon, inaccurate and disregarding) GPS miles
850.6 / 923.5 miles total

Another day of slow progress. We finished the last 5 miles of talus hopping along the Colorado River, which wasn’t so bad really, just slow going. We had all discussed sticking out thumbs out in hopes of skipping a couple miles of the slog should any rafters come by, but none did.

On to the next slog: Kanab Creek. At first it seemed nice, towering canyon walls and a beautiful creek with fish and abundant swimming holes.

But soon this became tedious too. So much boulder hopping, splashing through the creek, climbing over, under, around giant obstacles. It took a lot of effort to just barely break 1 mph.

We’d been very excited about Showerbath Spring, which our notes said we could literally take a shower at. This sounded like a great place to get to at, say, 3 or 4pm when we’d be good and hot and ready for a fun break. We had our calendar photo shoot all planned out. But the miles came so slowly that we didn’t reach it until 6pm. By then, the sunlight had disappeared in the narrow canyon. To make matters worse, moments before our arrival, Bubs’ camera got wet, most likely killing it. We half heartedly did our photo shoot anyway. No one really wanted to get wet and the lighting was horrible.

Very much done for the day, we stopped to camp by the spring.

We also needed to tank up here on water for the next 30 miles (it would be 40 miles, but we have a cache at 30). The creek we’ve been walking in is likely to go dry in the next mile, though we have no way of knowing really. Another tough but beautiful day. I’m sure in 2 days we’ll be bitching about the long boring dirt road walk. It’s always something!