Hiking the Everest of Long Distance Trails: the Hayduke By Jon Stewart A local teacher and rock climber in Tropic, Utah claims that the Hayduke Trail is the Everest of Long Distance Trails. It is far more than that. I have walked to Everest Base Camp and have hiked the Hayduke. Three thousand people have climbed Everest, but fewer than two dozen have compled the Hayduke. You join a crowd to climb Everest. You walk alone on the Hayduke. Wading ankle deep streams through narrow canyons with vertical stone cliffs towering a thousand feet into clear blue skies, meandering for days alone through pine forests under the pink cliffed rimrock of Bryce Canyon and walking a desert plateau hanging halfway between the towering pine forests of the Kaibab Plateau and the emerald green waters of the Colorado River in the heart of the Grand Canyon is like walking across an aliien planet. The United States is blessed with public lands that have allow the development of national scenic trails like the 2,200 mile long Appalacian Trail, the 2,750 mile long Pacific Crest Trail and the the 3,200 mile long Continental Divide Trail. In the Western United States individuals and groups have published guidebooks highlighting lesser known long distance trails like the Oregon Coast Trail, the Pacific Northwest Trail, the Arizona Trail and Colorado Trail. But the Hayduke Trail, that traverses 850 miles of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, is far less walked and unknown than any of them-for good reason. This route showcases some of the grandest scenery on the American continent as it traverses the length of Arches, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks. It also crosses four remote wilderness areas, two national forests, Grand Staircase-Escalante ( the largest national monument in the continental United States) and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The Hayduke does not follow an actual trail, but traces a remote backcountry route across Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. It is named for a character in Edward Abbey’s famous anti establishment novels “The Monkeywrench Gang” and “Hayduke Lives!” In these two novel Hayduke is a eco-terroist who hides in the remote canyons and mountains of the Colorado Plateau. This convoluted plateau of mountains, deserts and canyons is larger than Germany. It could also be larger than Texas- if ironed out flat -according to Edward Abbey. Hiking the Hayduke is both mentally and physically challenging. It demands skills and perserverence far beyond those required of hikers on any of our national scenic trail system. Hiking a designated national scenic trail rarely involves more than following a series of clearly marked trails and roads while working out the logistics of periodic resupplies at towns along the way. Route finding on the unsigned and unmarked Hayduke through a maze of canyons, buttes, ridges, mountain is a constant challenge, while carrying enough food and water is a logistical nightmare . Detailed contour maps are a must, but common sense and a good eye for detail play a much bigger role in hiking this trail. All too often devising a circuitous routes around pour offs ( vertical cliffs that mark dried up waterfalls carved by flash floods in the Colorado Plateau’s many slot canyons) demands carefully examining a thousand vertical feet of multicolored terraced cliffs above and below the obstacle and then designing your own scramble route around it. This often involves hours of experimentation and backtracking. When a route is finally worked out, it may demand the use a rope to safely lower or lift your backpack around particularly challenging rock climb on a vertical cliff face. Route finding skills, of necessity, evolve quickly. Soon a keen eye may identify a lichen-covered stone cairn placed there by an Anasatzi hunter (whose pictographs and stone ruins still litter this landscape). When found, it can guide the observant hiker to hidden chimneys and scramble routes around the pour offs in the many canyons the trail traverses. Clearly this route is not for the light hearted or thoughtless. The Hayduke quickly evolves into a cotton mouthed survival lesson where a sip of warm, salty cowpie tainted water becomes a blessing beyond belief. Water-or the lack of it- is the greatest challenge on the Hayduke. The Colorado Plateau is suffering from a severe long term drought. Springs, cattle troughs and pot holes are few and far between meaning that the wary hiker will have to carry a system to filter water. Lightweight gear has made backpacking much easier by reducing basic packweights (sleeping bag, pad, tent, clothing, safety gear, pack and water filter) to 17 pounds or less. Add two pounds for each day’s food and this means that today’s backpacker needs rarely carry any more than 35 pounds on his or her back for ten days in the backcountry. A hiker in this sunblasted landscape easily consumes over a gallon of water a day. A gallon of water weighs eight pounds. That means a three day supply of water can weigh over 24 pounds or easily double a hiker’s pack weight. This extra weight, after a long hot afternoon trudging down four wheel drive tracks in ankle deep sand, makes even the smallest salty seep spring truly a oasis in the Southwest desert. The Hayduke route is rougher, far more challenging and much slower going than hiking a nicely graded trail. Thanks to pour offs, iffy water sources and cross country routefinding It takes much longer to hike between resupply points in remote towns like Escalante, Tropic, and Colorado City. This means a hiker often finds him or herself lugging a fifty to sixty pound pack under a blazing mid day sun. A heavy pack throws one off balance when negotiating precipitous class 3 rock scramble , squeezing through dense tamarisk thickets and running across quivering beds of quicksand in remote wilderness areas. Add in strenuous hiking under a noon day sun that is often in the triple digits and campsites at over 9,500 feet where night time temperatures can plummet to 20 degrees below zero and there is a reason why fewer than a dozen hikers have completed the entire 850 mile route. The route iwas sketched out in The Hayduke Trail: A Guide to the Backcountry Hiing Trail on the Colorado Plateau written by Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella a decade ago. It is found in local bookshops throughout the Southwest They never hiked the entire route in one go but designed the route around a series of exploratory pack trips. To consciensciosly follow the route outlined in their book requires a series of remote water and food caches and four wheel drive vehicular support unavailable to most hikers. Thanks to the efforts of Andrew Skurka (famous for circling Alaska on foot and by packraft), Li Bannfors (a fire ecologist at the Grand Canyon) and others who have both thru hiked the route since the publication of the guide book, a series of much more detailed contour maps and route guides are now available for a reasonable fee on the web. Not only do these maps clearly note the realiability and location of water sources but they show alternative routes to resupply points in local towns that simplifies the original convoluted route (that clambers in and out of the Grand Canyon three times). Resupply options now range from post offices in Tropic and Escalante, towns which also have outdoor outfitters, motels, and restaurants, to Colorado City, a polygamist colony that lacks both a food market and a motel. Access to the trail is simplified as well. By using Amtrak that services Green River, Utah and Flagstaff, Arizona, hikers can hire local shuttles to access the re-configured trail’s northeastern terminuse at Arches National Park and it new southwestern terminus at the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park. The Hayduke is an amazing adventure that will test the skill, perserverence and abilities of the most ardent hiker. A century from now it may be rightly designated a national scenic trail to showcase the amazing scenery of the Colorado Plateau. Hiking it today will make you appreciate the luxury of a cold glass of tap water, your soft armchair and reading someone else’s adventure book.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:23:00 +0000
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