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- Aug 9, 2007
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Sometimes you just have to have something on the calendar to look forward to. On December 3, 2014, I sent Dan an email proposing a backpacking trip the first weekend in March. We'd done it the previous year on the same weekend and had a blast, but what made me want it so bad this time was the total knee replacement I'd undergone a few weeks earlier. The doctor's promises of "you'll walk the same day" juxtaposed with the realities of copious heavy narcotics and weeks on the couch were hitting me like a ton of bricks. It was hard to imagine doing much walking any time soon, let alone for miles with a backpack on, but something to plan for in 4 months seemed like a good goal.
Dan responded enthusiastically, "Start riding that bike! Good luck on recovery" and then the months slunk by. Recovery was tougher than I'd ever imagined. With about two weeks to spare, I was feeling pretty nervous about the idea. I was limping hard - so bad that I was getting all sorts of "what the hell is wrong with you?" kind of questions from colleagues at a large physical therapy company I do web work for. They knew what I went through and they knew I should be doing better. Add to that various other medical issues that plagued me since my surgery and I was really getting frustrated. I decided to try eliminating some things in my diet to try and reduce inflammation. I already eat pretty a pretty strict diet, so the first thing to go was dairy. Like a miracle, within 36 hours I went from barely being able to walk across the room to being able to do a little sprint across the yard. It's like all the inflammation just vanished overnight. YES! Backpack ON!
The plan shortly before the trip was to go down to Escalante and do a repeat of Fiftymile Creek. But Monday of that week Escalante got 11 inches of snow, making our chances of driving all the way down hole in the rock road slim to none. So we went back to original plan; Trachyte Creek.
Here's a map of the route we did. It turned out to be close to 14 miles of walking which seemed like a good target for my first trip, but I totally forgot the kind of terrain out here. It felt a lot longer.
@slc_dan and @NateGeesaman starting down the seldom-travelled North Fork of Trachyte Creek.
It started out slow in a shallow wash, before arriving at this big dryfall. We bypassed on the distant slope center right.
Below the dryfall the canyon takes a few more turns before a shallow slot begins to emerge. The recent storms had sent plenty of muddy water down into it creating plenty of waist deep pools. We did our best to avoid them.
Nate working his way over one of the deeper ones.
The slot is shallow but pretty. Good walking.
A little deeper and some nice reflected light.
As if the water wasn't cold enough to wade through, now it was frozen.
After a few hours we arrived at the confluence with Trachyte Creek. The next order of business was to locate a suitable campsite for the night.
No leaves on the cottonwoods yet.
But they were close...
We chose a nice slickrock campsite with a view down into the canyon. The only trick was avoiding the giant pothole on the left of the photo. It was a good 10+ feet deep and would have been extremely difficult (if not impossible) to get out of.
Last light above Trachyte.
The next day we continued down canyon, hopping through miles of granite boulders that wash down from the Henry Mountains. In retrospect, this probably was not the best hike to break-in the new knee. Not the easiest walking.
The canyon gets wide and not too spectacular in the upper reaches, but soon the wingate walls start to grow.
We tried exploring this side canyon but the brush was too thick. It seems beavers enjoy the area.
Further down we noticed five huge cairns leading out the right side of the canyon. We hiked up and poked around but found nothing.
Happy canyon.
More beaver activity below a dryfall from a side canyon. Those sticks looked super fresh.
Poking around on the benches.
I love wingate walls.
Late in the day Dan & Nate went off to explore another side canyon and I decided to just sit. The mileage was wearing on me and my legs were feeling a bit wobbly.
We decided to start looking for a campsite next. As we rounded a bend, I noticed some marks on a dark varnished wall. Upon closer inspection, it was loaded with cowboy glyphs and some genuine ancient petroglyphs.
I couldn't get a very good shot of them, but these looked like a couple of little backpackers. Hopefully @NateGeesaman will share the better shot he got.
There's a pretty large bighorn sheep petro out toward the edge with a half dozen bullet holes in and around it. Lots of really faint stuff all over the wall.
I did some googling and learned that Frank Hatt was coming through here bringing mail from Hanksville to Hite. His name was on the wall at least 3 times.
Notice the five figures in the background? Some of the similar figures were definitely legit, but these looked odd.
The latest date on the wall from Richard Ekker in May 1947. Gathering cattle, apparently. The oldest on the wall was from 1893 but I later read there is an inscription from Joe Swasey from 1885 somewhere in Trachyte Creek.
Looking down canyon from the wall. Time to find a campsite.
We camped nearby that night at a nice sandy spot near a couple of large cottonwoods. The next day we loaded up for the final trek to Maidenwater Canyon then up to the highway.
Not even a mile up Maidenwater, I was just walking along admiring the light dancing on the walls when I took a spill. I had no chance of catching myself so I went into 'save the camera' mode. I was successful, but when I rolled over to accept a hand from Nate, I realized my hand was not looking quite like it should.
I'd lost close to an inch of length in my pinky and there appeared to be something very much sideways in there. A knick in the skin bled a bit at first but then stopped. I was pretty freaked out and loaded with adrenaline. I knew we had at least 2-3 hours of hiking left plus the nearest medical center was a good 3+ hours away. So I decided I'd try to reset the bone so we could maybe splint it. I grabbed the end of it and pulled as hard as I could. It definitely got longer, but it always snapped back to the mangled mess It had became. Without much else to do, I just started hustling the best I could. My legs were pretty toasted from the hike so far, but I actually felt strong as I rushed up the canyon. I encouraged the guys to linger and take photos as I'm sure they could still do that and out hike me in my current state.
I even stopped for a few, although pulling the DSLR out of my chest pack was one of the most painful things I could do.
There was a ton of wading in Maidenwater, as usual, but the deepest pool was gone. Now only ankle deep. There was still one more about thigh-waist deep right at the top of the water section though. It's a beautiful canyon, but looking back on this, it's much better to wait until it greens up. If you haven't already, check out the greener photos from my first trip through Maidenwater in 2012: http://backcountrypost.com/threads/maidenwater-canyon.735/
The leaves were further along in Maidenwater than anywhere in Trachyte Creek. It was a nice sight to see.
Nate and Mya in a very photogenic slot in the dry portion of the hike.
And then things got ugly. The pain in my finger was lighting up like crazy and my legs were cooked. A nice break would have been the solution if I wasn't rushing home to seek medical care. The next part of the canyon had about a dozen or so small obstacles to climb over. None of it very difficult if you have two good legs and two good arms, but I had one totally useless arm, a stiff replaced knee on one leg and a freshly rolled ankle on the other. Lucky for me, Dan grabbed my pack at this point and carried it from here all the way to the car. It took some work but I worked my way through all the obstacles with only moderate amounts of screaming and cussing.
And then the ~40-foot fourth class dryfall bypass. It's an easy climb, especially with a handline, but man it freaked me out this time with my lack of sufficient grip and agility.
Above the dryfall we were on the home stretch. I was toast but I just kept going. Dan kept carrying my pack (thanks so much man). You can see him double packing it in this shot. I guess if there was ever a time to carry my pack, this was it. I'd gone pretty light on this trip. I think on this last day my total pack weight was somewhere around 13 pounds.
It took us a little over 2 hours from where I messed up my pinky to get to the car. Instead of stopping in Price at the hospital, I decided to just head home to SLC so I could get better care and no one had to wait on me. I finally arrived at the ER around 7:30 that night. The doc looked at it and immediately assumed it was a compound fracture that had broken the skin at the spot it had been bleeding. High risk for infection which meant antibiotics and so on. Ugh...
But to make it a little better, we had friends working in the ER that night and it was slow, so it was almost like getting together for a drink or something. Except instead of a drink, I had some intravenous morphine!
Lucky for me, the x-ray showed that I hadn't actually broken a thing. My pinky was just dislocated. This can usually be fixed by manually popping it back in. After injecting a nerve block the doc came in and started wrenching on me. He was pulling and pushing so hard it damn near could have pulled me out of bed. He tried and tried and nothing. Shit. He tells me that most of the time this works, but sometimes a piece gets in the way and then they have to operate on it. He made some calls and came in and tried again and still nothing.
Meanwhile Audra is texting her friend who has some connections. They call in someone on-call over from Primary Childrens to take a look. Audra's friend says she is good and she asked her to take good care of us. By the time she arrives, my nerve block is starting to wear off, but I told her to just go for it. It hurt but not too bad yet. More yanking and bending and twisting ensues and still my pinky looks like the Michelin Man. They're starting to talk about not if but when they might be able to schedule an operating room for me. What the hell?!?
Finally she decides to bring in a portable video x-ray type machine. It was kind of neat, we could look on a screen and see her manipulating my bones in real time right there in the room. Not 30 seconds into it I felt a nice pop. Success!!! I was beyond thrilled. The last thing in the world I need right now is more time at the f~#+*ng hospital. Unfortunately, in all that wrenching they pretty well obliterated the supportive and connective tissue in there. My hand is all wrapped up and immobilized where it will stay for the next couple of weeks. Going into the doc for a follow up tomorrow. The rest of me is sore as hell (even reverted to crutches a few times today), but the knee did great and I'm sure I'll be feeling better than ever in a couple days. More backpacking and boat camping in the very near future. Happy spring.
The x-ray of my pinky:
My wife's reaction to another trip ending at the ER:
Full photo album can be found here if anyone wants to see a little more:
https://plus.google.com/photos/1135...s/6124462409479762097?authkey=CKiAq46r15KygwE
Featured image for home page:
Dan responded enthusiastically, "Start riding that bike! Good luck on recovery" and then the months slunk by. Recovery was tougher than I'd ever imagined. With about two weeks to spare, I was feeling pretty nervous about the idea. I was limping hard - so bad that I was getting all sorts of "what the hell is wrong with you?" kind of questions from colleagues at a large physical therapy company I do web work for. They knew what I went through and they knew I should be doing better. Add to that various other medical issues that plagued me since my surgery and I was really getting frustrated. I decided to try eliminating some things in my diet to try and reduce inflammation. I already eat pretty a pretty strict diet, so the first thing to go was dairy. Like a miracle, within 36 hours I went from barely being able to walk across the room to being able to do a little sprint across the yard. It's like all the inflammation just vanished overnight. YES! Backpack ON!
The plan shortly before the trip was to go down to Escalante and do a repeat of Fiftymile Creek. But Monday of that week Escalante got 11 inches of snow, making our chances of driving all the way down hole in the rock road slim to none. So we went back to original plan; Trachyte Creek.
Here's a map of the route we did. It turned out to be close to 14 miles of walking which seemed like a good target for my first trip, but I totally forgot the kind of terrain out here. It felt a lot longer.
@slc_dan and @NateGeesaman starting down the seldom-travelled North Fork of Trachyte Creek.
It started out slow in a shallow wash, before arriving at this big dryfall. We bypassed on the distant slope center right.
Below the dryfall the canyon takes a few more turns before a shallow slot begins to emerge. The recent storms had sent plenty of muddy water down into it creating plenty of waist deep pools. We did our best to avoid them.
Nate working his way over one of the deeper ones.
The slot is shallow but pretty. Good walking.
A little deeper and some nice reflected light.
As if the water wasn't cold enough to wade through, now it was frozen.
After a few hours we arrived at the confluence with Trachyte Creek. The next order of business was to locate a suitable campsite for the night.
No leaves on the cottonwoods yet.
But they were close...
We chose a nice slickrock campsite with a view down into the canyon. The only trick was avoiding the giant pothole on the left of the photo. It was a good 10+ feet deep and would have been extremely difficult (if not impossible) to get out of.
Last light above Trachyte.
The next day we continued down canyon, hopping through miles of granite boulders that wash down from the Henry Mountains. In retrospect, this probably was not the best hike to break-in the new knee. Not the easiest walking.
The canyon gets wide and not too spectacular in the upper reaches, but soon the wingate walls start to grow.
We tried exploring this side canyon but the brush was too thick. It seems beavers enjoy the area.
Further down we noticed five huge cairns leading out the right side of the canyon. We hiked up and poked around but found nothing.
Happy canyon.
More beaver activity below a dryfall from a side canyon. Those sticks looked super fresh.
Poking around on the benches.
I love wingate walls.
Late in the day Dan & Nate went off to explore another side canyon and I decided to just sit. The mileage was wearing on me and my legs were feeling a bit wobbly.
We decided to start looking for a campsite next. As we rounded a bend, I noticed some marks on a dark varnished wall. Upon closer inspection, it was loaded with cowboy glyphs and some genuine ancient petroglyphs.
I couldn't get a very good shot of them, but these looked like a couple of little backpackers. Hopefully @NateGeesaman will share the better shot he got.
There's a pretty large bighorn sheep petro out toward the edge with a half dozen bullet holes in and around it. Lots of really faint stuff all over the wall.
I did some googling and learned that Frank Hatt was coming through here bringing mail from Hanksville to Hite. His name was on the wall at least 3 times.
Notice the five figures in the background? Some of the similar figures were definitely legit, but these looked odd.
The latest date on the wall from Richard Ekker in May 1947. Gathering cattle, apparently. The oldest on the wall was from 1893 but I later read there is an inscription from Joe Swasey from 1885 somewhere in Trachyte Creek.
Looking down canyon from the wall. Time to find a campsite.
We camped nearby that night at a nice sandy spot near a couple of large cottonwoods. The next day we loaded up for the final trek to Maidenwater Canyon then up to the highway.
Not even a mile up Maidenwater, I was just walking along admiring the light dancing on the walls when I took a spill. I had no chance of catching myself so I went into 'save the camera' mode. I was successful, but when I rolled over to accept a hand from Nate, I realized my hand was not looking quite like it should.
I'd lost close to an inch of length in my pinky and there appeared to be something very much sideways in there. A knick in the skin bled a bit at first but then stopped. I was pretty freaked out and loaded with adrenaline. I knew we had at least 2-3 hours of hiking left plus the nearest medical center was a good 3+ hours away. So I decided I'd try to reset the bone so we could maybe splint it. I grabbed the end of it and pulled as hard as I could. It definitely got longer, but it always snapped back to the mangled mess It had became. Without much else to do, I just started hustling the best I could. My legs were pretty toasted from the hike so far, but I actually felt strong as I rushed up the canyon. I encouraged the guys to linger and take photos as I'm sure they could still do that and out hike me in my current state.
I even stopped for a few, although pulling the DSLR out of my chest pack was one of the most painful things I could do.
There was a ton of wading in Maidenwater, as usual, but the deepest pool was gone. Now only ankle deep. There was still one more about thigh-waist deep right at the top of the water section though. It's a beautiful canyon, but looking back on this, it's much better to wait until it greens up. If you haven't already, check out the greener photos from my first trip through Maidenwater in 2012: http://backcountrypost.com/threads/maidenwater-canyon.735/
The leaves were further along in Maidenwater than anywhere in Trachyte Creek. It was a nice sight to see.
Nate and Mya in a very photogenic slot in the dry portion of the hike.
And then things got ugly. The pain in my finger was lighting up like crazy and my legs were cooked. A nice break would have been the solution if I wasn't rushing home to seek medical care. The next part of the canyon had about a dozen or so small obstacles to climb over. None of it very difficult if you have two good legs and two good arms, but I had one totally useless arm, a stiff replaced knee on one leg and a freshly rolled ankle on the other. Lucky for me, Dan grabbed my pack at this point and carried it from here all the way to the car. It took some work but I worked my way through all the obstacles with only moderate amounts of screaming and cussing.
And then the ~40-foot fourth class dryfall bypass. It's an easy climb, especially with a handline, but man it freaked me out this time with my lack of sufficient grip and agility.
Above the dryfall we were on the home stretch. I was toast but I just kept going. Dan kept carrying my pack (thanks so much man). You can see him double packing it in this shot. I guess if there was ever a time to carry my pack, this was it. I'd gone pretty light on this trip. I think on this last day my total pack weight was somewhere around 13 pounds.
It took us a little over 2 hours from where I messed up my pinky to get to the car. Instead of stopping in Price at the hospital, I decided to just head home to SLC so I could get better care and no one had to wait on me. I finally arrived at the ER around 7:30 that night. The doc looked at it and immediately assumed it was a compound fracture that had broken the skin at the spot it had been bleeding. High risk for infection which meant antibiotics and so on. Ugh...
But to make it a little better, we had friends working in the ER that night and it was slow, so it was almost like getting together for a drink or something. Except instead of a drink, I had some intravenous morphine!
Lucky for me, the x-ray showed that I hadn't actually broken a thing. My pinky was just dislocated. This can usually be fixed by manually popping it back in. After injecting a nerve block the doc came in and started wrenching on me. He was pulling and pushing so hard it damn near could have pulled me out of bed. He tried and tried and nothing. Shit. He tells me that most of the time this works, but sometimes a piece gets in the way and then they have to operate on it. He made some calls and came in and tried again and still nothing.
Meanwhile Audra is texting her friend who has some connections. They call in someone on-call over from Primary Childrens to take a look. Audra's friend says she is good and she asked her to take good care of us. By the time she arrives, my nerve block is starting to wear off, but I told her to just go for it. It hurt but not too bad yet. More yanking and bending and twisting ensues and still my pinky looks like the Michelin Man. They're starting to talk about not if but when they might be able to schedule an operating room for me. What the hell?!?
Finally she decides to bring in a portable video x-ray type machine. It was kind of neat, we could look on a screen and see her manipulating my bones in real time right there in the room. Not 30 seconds into it I felt a nice pop. Success!!! I was beyond thrilled. The last thing in the world I need right now is more time at the f~#+*ng hospital. Unfortunately, in all that wrenching they pretty well obliterated the supportive and connective tissue in there. My hand is all wrapped up and immobilized where it will stay for the next couple of weeks. Going into the doc for a follow up tomorrow. The rest of me is sore as hell (even reverted to crutches a few times today), but the knee did great and I'm sure I'll be feeling better than ever in a couple days. More backpacking and boat camping in the very near future. Happy spring.
The x-ray of my pinky:
My wife's reaction to another trip ending at the ER:
Full photo album can be found here if anyone wants to see a little more:
https://plus.google.com/photos/1135...s/6124462409479762097?authkey=CKiAq46r15KygwE
Featured image for home page:
