hdt – Page 9 – Sagebrush Trails

Coyote?

HDT 2022 Day 16, April 16, Saturday
Start Escalante River, S6 mile 40.0
End Coyote Gulch S6 mile 62.0
Miles walked:12

Continuing with yesterday’s strategy, I minimized crossing and walking in the river, and dealt with thick brush and climbing over boulders, slow going. Boulders covered about half the elevation of the cliff face, so that is a lot of rock to fall into the water channel.

By early afternoon progress was slow, as channel banks tended to become more narrow and steeper, and climbing around truck-size boulders was tricky.

Escalante?

HDT 2022 Day 15, April 15, Friday
Start Escalante River S6 mile 34.2
End Escalante River, S6 mile 49.0, more than halfway on 25.5 mile river section
Miles walked:14.8

Beginning hiking along the Escalante, the water is clear so one can see the bottom to judge depth for wet-foot river crossings.

One might need to cross when the outside bend of the river gets too close to the canyon wall.

Twist?

HDT 2022 Day 13, April 13, Wednesday
Start S5 mile 42.6, past Swap Canyon Spring 
End base of Red Slide, S6 mile 17.9 
Miles walked: 24.2

This morning on a short road walk, my water bottles froze while I was hiking. The same thing happened yesterday.

The route entered the Capitol Reef National Park, with its own unique rock formations, due to a geology feature named the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile north-south fold in the earth’s crust. We enter at Oyster Shell Reef, and these rocks do have a shell shape.

Next we climb the Burr Trail Switchbacks. A road with 6 hairpin turns is built in such a way that you cannot even tell there is a road there from this vantage point looking at the slope.

If you zoom in, you might just barely spot the roof of a white car going up. Here is looking down on some of the turns.