A Year Ago June 2, 3: Paria Canyon

Jeff stands at the base of our first campsite.
Our bear bag, really just functioning as a mouse bag here,
is hanging about 4 feet off the ground across the ankle-deep river.

Paria Canyon is a remarkably secluded place, government-owned, managed by the Bureau of Land Management and smack in the middle of Navajo Reservation lands. The BLM only issues 20 permits for any given day. They can be reserved on the first of the month four months prior to your hiking month, meaning Jeff got our permits for June on February 1.

Hiking through a secluded canyon, just listening to cicadas hum, looking up to see canyon wrens and hawks nesting above us, and feeling sweat dripping down our faces was a little eery. The only things to do all day were hike and examine the life and geology around us. We would get to camp after a few hours, eat dinner and put our food away, then read. Backpacking off of popular, well-traveled routes is a completely unique experience. The quiet invites contemplation, which we so often avoid in urban life.

We encountered a team of 6 ecologists who were finishing a 3 week study for the BLM, and almost no one else. Late in our second day we started seeing pretty fresh Chaco tracks and soon found they belonged to two very relaxed and slightly grungy looking guys. We leap-frogged each other all day 3 on the trail, but for lack of adequate campsites, ended up sharing some space on our last night. So often on the West Coast backpackers maintain an amiable distance from each other and preserve their own (solitudes). In this case it was quite pleasant to buck the trend, share some different food, thoughts and stories.

This desert lizard and I had a staredown. The lizard won.

The two guys--Ryan & Ben--were ecology graduates from Oregon just a few years older than us. They were through-hiking the Grand Canyon system, mainly following the Hayduke Trail. Their packs were pretty light, but far from true ultralight style. Food and miscellaneous supplies had been meted out beforehand and either cached near trailheads or sent in mail drops, keeping town-store purchasing to a bare minimum. I hadn't met any other through-hikers before, so the opportunity to pick their brains a little about backpacking logistics was really novel and fun. But it wasn't just us blindly lapping up their advice, they were in awe of the trip we had planned (so much driving together!) and were particularly intrigued by the PVC pipe we were carrying, so we explained what it was. Basically, having heard stories from Jeff's sister and brother-in-law of starved desert rodents chewing through their human waste bags, we made PVC poop tubes which enjoyed their first outing in Paria. (yet another reason my dad saw the trip as the ultimate relationship test) We carried brown paper lunch bags with a few scoops of kitty litter in them, and once used these were deposited in ziplocs and stored in the tube. The contents could be left in any pit toilet. As ecologists, Ben & Ryan were very excited to find a lightweight solution to further minimize their impact.

Lessons from Paria:
stay out of the sun during the hottest hours, drink tons of water all the time and eat snacks. I got mild heatstroke and was irrationally fussy until Jeff sat me in the shade and went to filter water. I immediately fell into a deep sleep and felt like I had been drugged when Jeff woke me up 10 minutes later. He made me eat a Luna Bar we had packed as an emergency ration and drink at least half a liter of water; I quickly regained my sanity.

Sandflies in Paria look roughly like this Stealth Fighter.

I was too busy swatting them away to take a warning picture.

I also learned that sand flies do not care one whit how much deet you put on. They will continue to bite you and make you positively miserable. They will bite through your clothes, but they will get tangled in Jeff's leg hair so he can swat them and not get bitten himself. Lesson: either grow a dense labyrinth of leg hair or wear loose fitting clothes that cover your whole body.

In less painful lessons, Ben & Ryan shared some of their better backpacking food ideas: couscous, trader joe's indian food packets, and minute rice with sugar, dried fruit and powdered milk. They also showed off their extremely lightweight, unfinicky alcohol-fueled penny stove.