Day 2: Bush Head Canyon to Cave Camp
Second day on the trail!! I slept pretty well last night, aided by some strategic Benadryl and squishy earplugs. I should imagine my FitBit Sleep score is going to be very happy with me given I got a solid 10hrs sleep! Today’s route is shorter than yesterday, with about 8 miles (although we discovered yesterday that our GPS and FitBits are consistently overestimating the distance – I tell ya, Canyon miles…..), and we will continue to work our way up into the canyon. Breakfast was delicious this morning with our supercool guides preparing a yummy burrito that really hit the spot. There was enough for seconds, so I took mine to eat for lunch later on (apologies for the bag I stored it in).
Everyone was in good spirits and invariably the conversation turned to who had used their Poop Tubes overnight. Alas, it was a Not Yet from me – but it turned out that my Poop Buddy, Amanda (also our fabulous WWE Trip Leader) had already christened hers – twice! Apparently, according to our guides, in each trip there tends to be someone who is a Super Pooper –and early signs were pointing to my Poop Buddy assuming that honorific! To help everyone else along, Amanda decided to host a Poop Drum Circle where – yep – you guessed it, we all gathered round and banged on the lids of our Poop Tubes and chanted, summoning the gods of good sphincters to grant us all swift movements and easy passage.
Part of the fun of doing group backpacking trips is seeing what gear other people have – you always come away with some tips or ideas for new pieces of kit you simply Have to Have. This trip, the guides had this very cute little solar powered lamp that would light up our campsite for dinner – I took a picture and looked it up online -here it is in case you are in the market for one: SOLITE solar puff lantern . Also, Baylee and Shanna (two cute blonde girls from Montana who looked identical – but weren’t actually twins) had ingenuously fixed a curly coil to their phones so that if they fell out of their pockets, they wouldn’t crash to the ground and shatter, but instead would just bounce around, safe and sound. In the same vein, Amanda had a phone pocket attached to her backpack’s chest strap – again, brilliant and simple as it made for easy access to her phone to take photos without having to struggle to extricate it from a side pocket. And most of us took advantage of Clara’s considerable expertise of All Things Backpack (gained while working at REI) and took the opportunity to get our own packs refitted and adjusted.
Today’s route would take us past a couple of highlights – some more petroglyphs and an impressive rock formation called Wrather Arch. Wrather Arch is the most inaccessible natural arch in all of Arizona (and I think there are a LOT of arches here) as there is no way to get to it other than hike through Paria Canyon and then take a side quest (as our guides adorably called them) to hike up the cliff face to get to it. Today there were a lot more slips and falls across the board – but nothing too serious. We spent a LOT of time wading through the river – and apparently will continue to do so as the canyon narrows and the amount of river bank decreases. By this point, though, we were all pros at water crossings and I was very happy that my shoes and neoprene socks were holding up very well – no blisters in sight! (actually, not quite true – I did come into the hike with a pre-existing blister on the third toe of my right foot – but this was caused by jumping around in 4-inch high fringe and sequin boots during our Woodland Creatures show the day before I left, so it was earned in a good cause). On our way to Wrather Arch, we stopped at the Big Horn Sheep panel petroglyph to admire some more ancient rock carvings, etched into the desert varnish – including a picture of a person who seems to be cheerfully indicating the way out of the canyon – GPS, pre-historic style. While some of the petroglyphs are pretty self-evident (especially the sheep!) some of the other symbols are rather more mysterious and no-one really knows what they mean. You can see, fairly frequently, pictures of people where they have their hands up, in a T, or pointing downwards in an upside-down U shape. Apparently, the thinking is that hands UP means ENEMY, whereas the hands down stance means FRIEND.
Several times I wished I’d paid more attention in geography classes and learned more about geology as it would have been good to know more about the various types of rocks we were seeing – both those that made up the towering canyon walls, as well as the kaleidoscope of colored rocks and pebbles making up the river bed. I particularly enjoyed the rocks strewn everywhere that looked exactly like potatoes. If we weren’t adhering strictly to Leave No Trace, at least one of those would have found their way into my backpack as a souvenir.
Another fun side quest was to visit Shower Spring during our lunch break which – as the name suggests – is a natural fresh water spring hidden behind a thicket of tall bushes (can’t remember what the plants were – lets say some type of bamboo, shall we?). While the guides were busy filling up their water buckets (Pika and Ronnie were ON IT every single day, calculating exactly how much water we all needed to carry – both to keep us personally hydrated on the trail, as well as additional water that may be needed for the camp), the rest of us were larking about in the pool, enjoying rinsing at least some of the Paria River stank off us! It was pretty easy to tell if we were properly hydrated or not – if we needed to pee regularly, we were drinking enough! Btw, peeing on trail is a lot easier than pooping – you basically squat down in the river and do your thing – as our guides said to us “dilution is the solution to pollution”. Everyone would either look upriver, to give you privacy, or you would hike back round a bend out of sight. And FINALLY – that evening, I managed to have a poop!!! (I knew you were all wondering). It wasn’t going to win any prizes for Most Impressive Outdoor Dump, but it was something and I felt sooooo much better afterwards. And – no exaggeration – as soon as I stood up after finishing my business, my FitBit watch buzzed on my wrist and informed me “WEEKLY GOAL ACHIEVED”!! Why, thank you, FitBit– I appreciate your encouragement – though am slightly concerned you are tracking my poops now.
Anyway, the trip up to see Wrather Arch took a fair amount of time (it was almost a mile each way) so it was dusk by the time we got to our campsite for the night, at Cave Camp. Pika and Ronnie got to prepping dinner straightaway while we all put our tents up. I was glad that I had stripped back all the non-essentials from my pack – it doesn’t take much time at all to get set up when you only have the bare minimum to worry about. However, I had had a realization earlier on in the day that caused a fair amount of amusement amongst my fellow backpackers – which also led to my (finally) having been bestowed a Trail Name. Trail Names are a Big Deal. You do not choose your own Trail Name – they are given to you. You do not know when or where you will be granted your Trail Name – you may hike for years and never be given one. There are no rules as to what constitutes a good trail name, only that it needs to be earned and bestowed and agreed upon as acceptable by your fellow hikers.
So picture this – its Day 2 and its lunchtime. As you can see from the photos, I had decided to hike in shorts, rather than the leggings I usually wear – mainly because we’d be in water so much, as well as being easier to wear with my knee high neoprene socks. When you backpack, one of the things you sacrifice are superfluous changes of clothing. You have your hiking outfit (in my case, shorts and a tank top), an outfit for sleeping in plus a couple of extra layers for warmth (usually a puffy jacket and/or a woolly sweater) – and that’s it. That’s what you wear the whole time. I know it sounds gross to wear the same thing for 5 days – but you get used to it and everyone else is in the same boat, so there’s no judgement. For my sleeping outfit, I had originally hedged and had both a pair of long leggings as well as another pair of shorts as I wasn’t sure how cold it would get and, consequently, how hot I might be in my quilt. In Mt Rainier, I’d slept in long leggings and had been way too hot, so had switched to sleeping in shorts part-way through the trip and had been much more comfortable. However, in the Great Purge of Monday Night as Pika and Ronnie were going through our bags, I had had to dump a lot of stuff to try and bring my overall pack weight down from 43lbs to under 40lbs. As the weather was forecasted to not dip below 50 degrees, I had made the decision not to bring my long pants. I also dumped out my sleeping bag liner and my Thermorest foldable pad, as well as numerous other items including my Kindle, warm hat and earbuds. I had looked again at my snacks and lunches and took out one item that I had purchased on my Walmart run that afternoon – a pouch of mixed berry jam. I’d bought it to accompany the peanut butter I was going be having on tortillas, as PB&J sounded like a tasty lunch option. But it was heavy, so out it came – along with a pack of cheddar cheese slices. As soon as I’d finished doing that, my pack was whisked away and loaded up on the van, ready for our early start. However, the next morning, as we were getting ready to leave, I was seized by Jam Regret and decided to make the last-minute decision to sneak it back into my supplies as all I could think of would be the Sad Face I would make every lunchtime, with only peanut butter to squeeze on my tortilla, without the jam to go with it. As I was just about to leave, I quickly grabbed the jam from my suitcase and crammed the pouch into my puffy coat pocket. Then, in a final act of insubordination (weight limit be damned), I also grabbed the cheese packet and stuffed that into my inner coat pocket. Laden down with my consumable contraband, I bundled onto the van with everyone else, hoping the guilt was not shining like a beacon from my not very poker-like face. As we unloaded from the van, I slipped both items into my backpack and off we went. No problem.
Except for the first night and breakfast on the second morning. It was cold. Genuinely NOT 50 degrees but somewhere in the 40’s. And there was me, in my sleeping outfit shorts whilst everyone else was in long pants. When asked, I said that I’d had to dump my long pants because of the weight restriction, but it was OK – I wasn’t really THAT cold (I lied – I was freezing). It wasn’t until lunchtime on the second day I was hit with an epiphany. I had just had my PB&J wrap for lunch, so still had the jam pouch out and next to me. It was pretty sunny, so everyone was busily putting on sunscreen (one of our group is a dermatologist, so we were all being extra diligent). As I dug out my travel size sunscreen, I noticed the amount on the tube – 1 fl oz. I then looked across at the jam pouch I still had out – and noticed it was 15oz. I kinda chuckled and made a comment to the group about how I might need to re-examine my priorities and that I’d brought 15 ounces of jam on this trip with me, but only one ounce of sunscreen. It was at that point that one of our group exclaimed “Sarah – do you realize you brought almost a whole POUND of jam with you?”. Well, shit. I hadn’t thought about it like that. In terms of weight, my long pants weighed ounces – but rather than sneaking those back into my pack, I had instead smuggled in over a pound’s worth of cheese and jam! The ironic thing is that I hardly ever eat jam when at home, but now I had a super heavy pack to try and consume within a 5-day period!! And that is what gave rise to my Trail Name of “Jelly” (the US name for jam). I did, indeed, learn my lesson and will never sacrifice pants for jam ever again.
POSTSCRIPT: I am writing this from home and the jam has still yet to be completely consumed….
