Hayduke Trail now completed!!

Hey fellow blog fans!
Yesterday (June 18) I descended the east rim of Zion Canyon and completed the Hayduke Trail. Caron was there to celebrate at the Weeping Rock springs after she had done some dayhiking further up the canyon. We visited the "Whiptail Grill" in Springdale, UT but it wasn't the greasy burger joint I was hoping for (like almost all of the restauraunts in Springdale, it is making an attempt to reel in the yuppies by offering an upscale menu of overpriced, southwestern-influenced cuisine). We eventually worked our way out of yet another public zoo/national park scene and ended up in our favorite little enclave of Escalante, Utah.

The final section was a real mood-swinger. After ascending Kanab Creek Canyon (a final and unique tour of the Grand Canyon's geologic layers), we found ourselves on the arid and desolate Arizona Strip. Fortunately, Caron's vehicle support made this stretch more do-able than it would have been otherwise. Before finally yielding to the Vermillion Cliffs and more Zion-like landscape, the road passes through the very strange and somewhat creepy little corner of northwestern Arizona claimed long ago by the Mormon fundamentalists. There they freely practice polygamy, welfare fraud, and a host of other anti-social activities. I just couldn't get out of there fast enough and the walk turned into a marathon sprint across this isolated and wide-open landscape traversed by a confusing maze of BLM roads. I was happy to see the East Fork Virgin River canyon and quickly disappeared into it only to re-emerge finally at the trail's end in Zion.

The end of a long trail is always bittersweet for me. While on the trail, one anticipates how nice it would be to break away, reflect on the accomplishment, and spend time with friends and family. But this anticipation also carries a sort of emotional sadness about leaving an environment which has become familiar and comfortable-- far removed from the alien surroundings it seemed to be at the start of the journey. On the last two days, I found myself paying more attention to the little details of the trail that were taken for granted while I entertained no thoughts of finishing. The birds and their diverse language of calls, the lizards and their frantic predator avoidance behavior, the cliffrose now forming fruit from the blossoms of two weeks ago, the showy flowers, the sound of the wind roaring up a canyon and dissipating in the branches of the tall pines-- all contribute to make daily trail life so different from time spent in the confines of modern human society.

The blog will continue right up to the final days just described. This blog was much more than a diary and it took far longer than I originally thought to write and upload each chapter. Some of the remaining chapters are partially complete (an oxymoronic statement to be sure) and I'll upload them very soon as I will have full access to a computer while visiting my mom in Durango. The remaining chapters are as follows:

Playing the Slots (from Escalante to the Willis Creek Narrows)
A Three-Notch Mule (from Willis Creek through Bryce and on to the Grand Canyon rim)
The Walls of Time (The journey through the Grand Canyon and out through Kanab Creek)
The Road to Zion (Across the Strip and into Zion National Park)

Stay tuned and thanks for keeping up with the blog on this journey of a lifetime!

Whiptail (sadly, now off the trail)