The Longloopers: Labor Day Weekend

This is what we did for Labor Day. After it all happened I thought... "you know this is blog material." I admit it's a bit long, but believe me, this trip was a bit long.

Here's a teaser if you're not sure you want to read this whole thing:

This Labor Day weekend we went on what we thought was a “day” hike and ended up spending 2 nights in the desert.

–noun (in the U.S.) a legal holiday, commonly the first Monday in September, in honor of labor.That was for my brother who tells me he didn’t know what Labor Day was. I cut him a break because living in Saudi Arabia you don’t pick up on all American holidays.

What we had:

-First aid kit

-2.5 gallons of water between 4 people

-4 head lamps

-2 jackets

-a bunch of fruit snacks and granola bars

-a jar of peanut butter

-smuckers squezzable jelly

-4 pitas

-Protein Gels (you know the type you take to “boost” energy.

-Water Filter

-Clothes on our body.

This past weekend Matt and I (along with two of friends from Camp this summer--- Cash and Splash), went to Zion. We told many that we were going to do the Narrows. Something I was excited about doing. In fact at 4am Friday morning I woke up early to stand in line to make sure we could get a permit for Sunday and Monday. I wanted to do it!

Anyways, Matt wanted to go on a “fun” hike in the wilderness of Zion on top of going downt he Narrows so he did some research and decided it would be fun to do the Right Fork Canyon hike. Matt is VERY good at doing research. If he wants to find something out he’ll read up about and get all types of opinions. When we go traveling he’ll usually bring a list of unique things to do in an area as well as awesome restaurants to attend. It’s awesome. So when he told me he wanted to this hike and it was a bit technical I thought I was in good hands. With that said…. This is what happened.

We started hiking with

our friends Cash and Splash at 11am. A little later than we had expected. On the descriptions of the hike that we had it said it should be a 12 hour hike, hiking 12 miles. We wanted to start out early but time didn’t permit so we decided to take the risk of hiking out at 11pm that night. Not too much of a problem, right? We were off!

We started our trip hiking at the top of Wild Cat Canyon. Not too far away on the other side of the canyon there was a forest fire so we saw lots of smoke and at night we saw trees burning. It was pretty far away so it wasn’t too scary.

(The picture is early on in the trip studying the maps that we had.)

As we bush-wacked for several hours we finally got out of the canyon we had started in. We realized there was probably no way we were going to make it in time for the sun to set so we wanted to look for water. We took a wrong turn and got stuck in a slot canyon for a really long time, that killed our timing as well. We climbed out as the sun was setting and we were still determined to get some water. We hiked several hours more and found nothing. It was dark and we were stumbling around hoping we were going to find anything too dangerous waiting for us. After searching for a while we decided to say a prayer. We all decided we should just find a spot sleep and then get up and look for it the next day. We did just that.

During the night it was FREEZING. I had capris and a long sleeve shirt. The other girl I was with also had a long sleeve shirt but she was wearing sleeves and the boys had shorts and a short sleeve shirt. We all cuddled on the ground, one right next to each other with a fire at our feet and head. We woke up the next morning stumbled up and decided to re-trace our steps looking for that water. The water was a mile behind us, so we lost some time retracing our steps.

(Splash if filling up with water at the Seeps.)

We went onward following the topographic map. When we finally got to where we were going it was GORGEOUS. Red Fork Canyon was BEAUTIFUL.I ended up swimming in freezing cold water for about 100 feet but that was the worst of it. Seriously though, it was pretty freaky. The water was so cold I began to fear if I would be able to swim out of it my arms were seizing up. I like to climb up things and run, but swimming is the least of my skills. I’m sure if you’re a swimmer you would have been able to do it, I’m a wuss in the water.

We saw the Great Alcove, which was MAGICAL. If you haven’t ever seen it you should look it up on Google. (You should Google: Great Alcove Red Fork Canyon ZION.) It was AWESOME. However byt the time we got to it I needed to rappel down quickly because the sun was setting and we needed to do one last rappel that we didn’t want to do in the dark! Freaky. The rappel was pretty fun too. On this tripped I pushed a lot of my boundaries. I know I could do like a 30 foot rappel but I didn’t know if I would be able to do a 100 foot rappel. I did. J

So the Great Alcove was short lived.

The rappel wasn’t as big and it was down the side of a waterfall. By the time that was done we were happy because we were on the last stretch of the trip. On the map and instructions it told us to walk with the river. On the map it looks like you might be able to walk along the river following it. Oh, no… we had to walk in the river. That was the worst part.

We ended up needing to walk in the river, up to our ankles, sometimes our knees, for 7 ½ hours. The water wasn’t too cold but we had to walk on slippery and uneven rocks. I hadn’t realized it was for 7 or so hours. I think it was a blessing from the Lord.

The instructions say to walk until you find a fork in the river and then we were suppose to get our and walk along the river for a quarter of a mile, find a trail and get back to our car in the next ½ mile. I was so excited, we rejoiced and cheered. However, we could never find the trail it suggested. We decided to assume that we knew where we were on the map and to just walk in that general direction of our car. We ended up walking straight up hill, bouldering over lava rocks and dealing with fatigue. By this time it’s about 4-430am in the morning. Our bodies are tired. I’m not going to lie, I started to see & hear things. I’ve never been felt so weird in my whole life. I started also to just fall asleep standing up if we stood still for too long. At one point Cash suggested we needed to climb up the top of the “mountain” to find the road. Essentially we were along the side of a mesa and needed to climb up to the flat part of a mesa, straight up. I was dead tired and someone asked Cash to climb up to see if he could see anything and let the rest of us know. Cash agreed (he’s pretty awesome guy to hike with, seriously.) and climbed up as a devoted mountain goat. With that I decided to lean up against a rock and prop my feet up on another rock in front of me. I closed my eyes and fell asleep immediately. Matt was sweet enough to sleep next to me. I remember thinking, “it’s okay you don’t have to stay with me, I’ll be okay by myself.” In retrospect, I’m really glad he was thinking, because he kept me warm and I would have been afraid to wake up in the morning all alone. It was about 5:15 about the time I fell asleep.

As the sun was peeking above the canyon, probably an hour or two later I woke up, determined to get out. I couldn’t seen Cash or Splash and I started yelling for them. They yelled back and actually weren’t too far a way. They also looked comfortable with garbage bags wrapped around their legs and bodies. They were also sleeping right next to an actual trail. Pink ribbon was tied to trees. I started to walk up and Matt followed close behind. I decided to wait for the others and Matt continued up ward. When he got to the top he yelled that he found the road. Oh happy day!

We got to the top and realized we were about .2 miles from a car, but it was fine. We were actually walking on an established trail and we were walking down hill. It was probably the most relaxing part of the whole trip, walking back to our car. Once in our car we stuffed our faces with bread, fruit snacks, & granola bars and decided to go to Oscar’s Café for breakfast.

On our way to breakfast we stopped to return our gear we had rented. I talked to the guy in the store about our adventures. He smirked and said, “Yeah it’s like a 2 day hike!”

The very first picture above is what we look like once we've found the road. The sun is barely rising and we are posing in front of a trail sign. This is a picture of triumph! After reading this go back and look at the picture. Have you ever seen such happy hikers?!

Below are other pictures: