After the Thanksgiving fes­tiv­i­ties, Amji, Yoshi, Greg, Steve, Sarah, Joey and I took off for another one of our adven­tures. We were going to attempt to hike the world’s longest slot canyon (~43 extra-long miles) from Buckskin Gulch (or rather Wire Pass) to Lee’s Ferry. We arrived at the bor­der between Utah and Arizona after dri­ving hours into the night and nav­i­gat­ing a dirt road full of gashes and holes that required the response time of a fighter pilot to navigate.

We set up our tents around 1:00 in the morn­ing and intended to go to sleep. The fore­cast pre­dicted that it would get down to 30 degrees that night. All of our sleep­ing bags were rated to approx­i­mately 25 degrees so we thought we were fine. The night sky was SPECTACULAR! I didn’t bother set­ting up a tent because I wanted to see the stars. I got into my sleep­ing bag but had trou­ble get­ting warm. I stayed up watch­ing the stars and tried to take advan­tage of fric­tion to keep my toes from freez­ing over. It wasn’t all the effec­tive. Turns out that it was 10 degrees that night!

Yoshi, Greg and I left camp early to drop one car off at Lee’s Ferry. Greg came along for the ride because his feet were freez­ing and he hadn’t fallen asleep yet either. It took us three hours to drop off the car and make it back to the trail­head. When we returned the rest of our crew were just get­ting ready. The hike is one of the most beau­ti­ful trails on Earth. I’ve done it before and I was really look­ing for­ward to the sec­ond day — where the Fountain of Buckskin Gulch jets clean drink­ing water right out of the canyon wall.

We brought extra sup­plies and I even brought an inflat­able pon­toon because on the sec­ond day the canyon runs into the Paria canyon, which is filled with a steady flow of clean waist-deep water. We intended to push it a bit with the weight on the first day and float all our heavy gear on the rest of the trip. Steve is a chef and he had pre­pared all kinds of great meals for us — includ­ing steaks, mmmmmmmm.

We explored each bend as the day con­tin­ued and in the early after­noon we ran into a gen­tle­man that was on his way back. He warned us that there was a sec­tion of wall to wall mud ahead that we could not pass through with­out just going through it. We were hop­ing that this time of year would help us avoid any of these muddy regions, but we had no inten­tion of let­ting a cou­ple of muddy spots stop us. So we pressed on. When we came to the muddy spot I took my shoes off, pushed through it, dropped my pack and then came back to ferry the crew on my shoulders.

My plan didn’t work as I had intended. I shut­tled Yoshi across, her pack, Sarah, and then her pack, but by that time I was in the sec­ond stage of hypother­mia. My entire body was uncon­trol­lably shak­ing and I had cut my toes on some sharp rocks. The guys had to fend for them­selves. They all pushed through the cold like champs. Then we took a break to clean up and warm our­selves up. We stopped to eat a really late lunch and then started mov­ing again.

As the sun set I took note of how tired I was. I hadn’t stayed awake this long for years, cer­tainly not on a day that required non­stop hik­ing. It was already start­ing to get cold enough that we couldn’t stop mov­ing with­out get­ting uncom­fort­able. Then we came to another muddy spot. This one wasn’t very long. In fact, we had seen a tree that had fallen from above about 10 min­utes walk back. So all the guys walked back and heaved the tree on our shoul­ders and then threw it over the muddy region. All but Steve made it over with­out get­ting muddy. We kept on.

We were walk­ing with head­lamps now because the depths of this canyon were com­petely dark. Then we hit another muddy region. We decided to just tough it out and go for it. So we put on our neo­pryne socks and quickly dis­cov­ered that we had to tra­verse the mud with­out shoes, oth­er­wise we would lose them. Mud after mud after frozen mud. The ice broke on our shins, and the mud stank of left over feces that had washed down the canyon. Our guid­ing hope was that once we reached the Paria river we could clean up, then make a nice warm din­ner with our stoves, and then get into our sleep­ing bags and warm up (we had hand warm­ers and feet warm­ers set aside for this part).

Delerium and exhaus­tion started to set in. Greg tried to start a mutiny and said he was going back when he saw a dropoff with a sec­tion of wall to wall mud of unknown depth on the other side. I said I’ll try it out and if its not too bad then we can keep going. He agreed to this. It was only knee deep. The mud finally let up and we hiked for another 2 hours. Then the mud started up again. At 11:30 it was 10 degrees, we were all in our shorts, rolled up pants, swim­ming suits, or as in Amji’s case his under­wear, cov­ered in mud almost up to our waists, exhausted from the 85 pounds on our backs, thirsty and ready for din­ner. The end still wasn’t in sight.

Then we hit the drop off — place where we had to climb down with ropes. The only prob­lem was that on the other side of this ledge a mud lake awaited us — one that was so deep that it would require us to take our packs off and swim them across. The group was deves­tated. We were almost at the junc­tion with the Paria river where clean water awaited us and now we had to head back. We could not sleep in our sleep­ing bags like this, we could not hold still for more then 30 sec­onds with­out freez­ing. Our only choice was to head back, through the night, back through all the mud pits!

We broke into two groups, dumped the nonessen­tials and started back as quickly as we could, hop­ing that we would reach the end before we reached our end. Amji, Yoshi and I were in the back group. My new shoes were one size to big and with the con­stant mud they were slip­ping from side to side with every step. It was impos­si­ble to walk fast. We decided our strat­egy was to walk for 20 min­utes and then take a 3 minute break. Over and over we encour­aged our­selves wait­ing for that next break. On the third break we all sat down on ledges that lifted the weight of our packs off our shoul­ders and instantly we were all asleep. The cold got to Yoshi first and she woke up and revived us. We couldn’t believe that we had all reached the dreams stage instantly.

We pressed on and when the sun came up we began hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. We saw peo­ple that weren’t there, I saw huge red drag­on­flies play­ing with each other. Amji grabbed my arm and said “We need to keep walk­ing.” I tried to tell him that I was walk­ing but then I real­ized that I wasn’t. Yoshi was los­ing all feel­ing and needed to move faster to warm her body up. She went ahead of us and ended up miss­ing the only turn on the trail. When Amji and I made it to the exit it was hail­ing on us, Yoshi was miss­ing, and our res­cue ride (the first team) was not there to pick us up. We dropped our remain­ing gear and excuted a plan to find Yoshi. She had pressed ahead and then real­ized that she missed the turn. She turned back and missed the turn again and walked all the way to where we orig­i­nally parted. Then she turned around again and this time found the exit turn. She had dropped her entire pack and tried with all her last energy to make it out. We were all very glad to be back together.

Then we waited and con­tin­ued to freeze. All feel­ing had left my feet over ten hours ago at this point. After two hours a truck drove through and we begged the dri­ver to take us to the near­est town. We looked like we were cov­ered in shit, and tech­ni­cally we were. He tried to be cour­te­ous about our smell, put blan­kets down over his seats, and drove us toward the paved road. Just as we made it to the road we saw Sarah dri­ving my car towards us. We were happy to finally find out that every­one was safe.

The hotel was the best I’ve ever had. Hot end­less water in the shower. Soft beds. Warm! It really helped us see the sim­ple plea­sures in life a whole new way! Life is amazing.