The most fun awesome adventure I never want to do again...

...at least not until my blisters go away and every muscle in my body stops being sore.

For 4th of July weekend, I got invited to go with my cousin Nicki and some of her friends on a backpacking trip to Buckskin Gulch down in southern Utah, almost to Arizona. It's the longest, and maybe deepest (?) slot canyon in the world. There were 7 of us (6 women and 1 man) backpacking 22 miles in two days. It was challenging but a blast. Let me relive the weekend for you...

On Thursday, July 2nd, 5 of us (Nicki, Megan, Kelsey, Julie and me) met at Nicki's duplex in Provo with all of our backpacks and equipment ready to go at 5pm. We loaded all of said backpacks and equipment into Nicki's truck and my car and were on the road by 6ish. It was a more eventful drive than I was expecting. What should have been a 5-6 hour drive turned into like 8-9 because we missed a turn and drove over 100 miles more than we should have. We ended up off-roading for a couple miles which was fun, but it got us to the White House trailhead after 2am instead of around 11:30 like we thought. The two from Arizona (John and Erin) were supposed to get there after us, but beat us there. We pitched a tent and tried to get as much sleep as possible before starting our hike into the canyons in the morning.

We woke up a few hours later, ate some granola bars and oranges, broke down the tent, and took one last potty break in the latrines at the trailhead. John and I left our vehicles at the trailhead and everyone piled in the back of Nicki's truck with our backpacks (I'm guessing most of the packs weighed around 60 pounds). We stopped at the ranger station to pick up our overnight permits and our "human waste" bags (Yeah, you read that right, we had to pack out our poo and TP), then headed to the Wire Pass trailhead to start our adventure.

I was feeling pretty good at the start of the hike and it was probably because I had definitely underestimated how challenging some parts of this trip were going to be. I was in complete awe at how amazing the slot canyons were and how beautiful it all was. The first few drops in the canyon where we had to take off our packs and lower them down before climbing down ourselves was about as difficult as I really expected the hike to be. I was wrong, very wrong. I had done some research, but probably not enough. I was expecting there to be some areas that I might have to walk through water pools, but I underestimated how many and how deep they would be.

John, Julie and I tried to save our socks from getting muddy and wet for the first few pools by taking them off and wading through them barefoot, then putting them back on after we crossed them. We soon fell behind the other 4 and got separated from them for several miles. While walking barefoot across some rocks between pools, I got attacked by a bear! Ok, not really. I slipped and did a face-plant onto the rocks and amazingly only scraped up my leg. That's when I decided to give up on the no-shoes idea, and decided just to get my shoes nasty muddy (I thought I'd try the shoes without socks, which also didn't last long cause I got some nickel-sized blisters on the bottom of my feet). John and Julie lasted a little longer before they too gave up and just wore their shoes and socks through the pools.

The other four eventually started wondering where we were and stopped to wait for us to catch up. We weren't moving too fast because we were starting to get tired, John's shoes were cutting into his ankles and I was limping from falling on the rocks and the blistered feet. I guess they waited for about 45 minutes before we caught up.

We had thought that we would be hiking about 10-12 miles on day one, but it was a lot longer. About 13 or 14 miles into day one, we reached an area in the canyons called the "rock falls" which was a 20-25 ft. drop down the side of this huge boulder that you have to climb down with a rope. That was probably my least favorite thing to do on the whole hike because it's hard to grab onto a rope without your thumb. I was relieved that when I went to the hand surgeon on Wednesday to follow up about my broken thumb, that they took the big splint off and gave me a much smaller thumb splint. So at least I was able to use my wrist again. That 20-25 foot drop would have been impossible for me to do without being able to use my wrist.

Anyway, after about 15 miles, we finally reached the "Confluence" which is where we were camping for the night. It's the area where the canyons we had been hiking through meets up with the Paria River. It's important to camp on high ground in this area because about 12 times a year they get flash floods and there's no warning. When we got there, there was a really creepy group of Asians already camping there. One of them was this guy with a big beer belly who wasn't wearing a shirt and kept taking pictures of us. So we decided instead of camping in that same area, we were going to go a little further up the river and try to find another elevated area to camp. We found one just a few bends down the river that had a big enough area for us to pitch our three little tents and set up camp for the night.

About 1:30 in the morning, we woke up to the sound of water. We all jumped up out of our tents and discovered that the river that was practically 2 inches deep and about 4 feet wide when we went to sleep was now at least 25 feet wide and now looked like a raging river. Luckily our camp ground was elevated enough we were safe from the flooding, but it had us pretty worried for a little while until we could see that it was slowly going back down. I probably got 4 or so hours of sleep total cause it was so hot.

We got a late start Saturday morning because we wanted to give the river as much time as possible to go back down before we started. It was still pretty deep, but we were feeling like we needed to get out of the canyons that day cause there had been weather forecasts predicting more rain that night and we weren't comfortable with the idea of maybe having to camp there another night. So we packed up camp and were headed up river at about 11:30 or 12. The first couple miles were EXTREMELY slow because we were having to zig zag back and forth through the river from one riverbank to the other. Some areas where we crossed were between ankle and knee deep, but a lot of the areas were almost waist deep.

I seemed to have some sort of super-power for finding the holes between the rocks on the river bottom or the rocks that would move the second I put my feet on them, so I fell a lot. My shins and knees definitely took a beating on the rocks and I ended up with mud up to my chest. It was pretty miserable, especially cause I was already limping on my nickel-sized blisters. After a couple of really slow miles, we finally got to some longer stretches of dry land in between river-crossings and the water got shallower, so we were able to pick up the pace. It was so hot I started looking forward to the times that I got to cross the river again just cause the water up to my knees felt good even though it was the muddiest, most disgusting water ever.About 7 miles later, we saw the most wonderful thing. That was when we caught sight of those beautiful, wonderful latrines at the White House trailhead. We were soooo excited that we had completed our mission. We were all so tired, sore and sleep deprived that we were overjoyed to finally reach the end.

We loaded packs and people into the bed of John's truck and I laid out a towel on my car seat, then we drove down to the ranger station to catch the rangers before they closed at 4:15pm. We got there with like 2 minutes to spare. The ranger had told us the day before he'd like to hear how the trip went if we got done before they closed, so we shared the details of our trip and disposed of our "human waste" bags in the dumpsters there. I'm pretty sure there was only one person who didn't have to carry around her "human waste" because she never went. It was pretty disgusting, but at least the bags had deodorizers in them and really good seals so I never had to smell it. Just knowing I was carrying it in my pack was kind of gross though.

Anyway, luckily we had a room at the Treasure Trail Motel in Kanab, Utah reserved for the night, so we headed there to shower up and ditch our packs. Once we cleaned up and changed into non-stinky, mud-free clothes, we headed to Mexican Fiesta for dinner. It was soooo good. As we finished dinner, we started hearing fireworks. So we headed out to the parking lot where we could see the firework show that the city of Kanab put on. We watched for a few minutes (cause it only lasted about that long) and headed back to the motel.

I got more sleep that night than either of the two nights before, but I still didn't get very much. Erin and John left at like 4:30am this morning to try to get back to Mesa before their church started and so most of us woke up to say goodbye and wish them a safe drive home. I had a hard time getting back to sleep after that. We woke up around 8 and got our stuff packed up. We hobbled like 80 year old women a block down the street to catch the first hour of church, hobbled back, finished packing everything back up and got on the road around 11am. We didn't take any detours on the drive home so it took 5 hours to get home instead of 8.

So I'm proud of all of us for finishing such a challenging adventure with no major injuries or accidents. I made 5 new friends that I hope I can keep in touch with and got to know my cousin Nicki a lot better. I got to see amazingly beautiful canyons and got to carry around poop in a bag. What more could I ask for?