Little Package Blog

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2016.05.30
Hayduke, Latergram
Ultra runner on the Zion Rim trail: “You thru-hiking?” “Yep.” UR: “Where you headed to tonight?” “I’ll probably finish.” (A lie. I have learned to not tell people where I’m going to sleep.) UR: “Oh well, that’s a ways… But you might be able to do it if you skip Kolob Arch, that’s half a mile each way and pretty technical hiking. Maybe you could do it, yeah, there might be time.” “I think I’ll be fine. I hiked 800 miles to get here.” UR: “Oh, from where?” “Arches.” UR: “I hiked the Appalachian trail, finished the last 200 miles last year. And last weekend I did the rim to rim in Grand Canyon, that was something else…” “Cool, well I better go.” It’s already like my […]

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Walking through Vegas
Hayduke, Hiking, Latergram
Just walked about five miles through Las Vegas after hiking out of Zion this morning and a few wild hitches through Utah, Arizona and into Nevada. My first hitch was about as terrifying as they come, and I was glad it ended well. My last hitch broke down which is why I was walking. Realizing I wasn’t feeling right and almost puking on the highway shoulder (could have been the 3 milkshakes?), I dove into McDonalds for some ice water. A few minutes later a gorgeous older indigent black man I noticed and smiled at on the curb came in and gave me a sealed gallon of spring water. He said he knows a transient when he sees one and offered me a Pepsi a woman had […]

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Stung by a Bark Scorpion
2016.05.27
Hayduke, Latergram
Nobody told me Instagram upped its video length limit from 15 to 60 seconds! So here you have almost my entire reality TV diary-style scorpion video from a week ago. Before I was stung that night I was only worried about flash floods coming down the Kanab Creek (a real danger, and what I’m alluding to in the video except I was in Arizona not Utah) but now all I’m scared of are flash floods of scorpions! I also I think it’s funny how I was still really wanting to hike those twenty miles even though I couldn’t walk and wasn’t sure if I was a goner or not. Thruhiker priorities are funny/stupid! And sun glove finger tans are funny/stupid. And I did walk 20 miles that […]

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Zion
2016.05.26
Hayduke, Latergram
…Sort of like this is a dream. Is it? Zion somehow still has my favorite flower of the route (and author Ed Abbey’s fave too, as you would have it) in bloom, and I have a little blue sky before the black clouds sweep in and I get wet with rain and tears at the west terminus of the this hiking route, Zion’s Weeping Wall. The smell is wafting this way and that as the weather makes up its mind, and I’m trying to keep moving forward. I’ve now been weeping for a day off and on, thinking, I can’t go back! Well, I can’t go back the way I was, anyway.

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Latergram
2016.05.23
Hayduke, Latergram
Two months ago I drove from Las Vegas to Moab, placing four food/water caches strategically spaced along my hiking route. That allowed me to hike continuously without going into a town for the first 19 days*. I placed one of my caches here in a wash near Hanksville UT, with a view of Mt. Ellen, covered in fresh snow from the big late March storms. This view was daunting. How the heck was I going to walk all this wild and prickly territory!? How was I going to get over that mountain? I didn’t know. I planned/sketched it out it roughly, kept walking West, and the rest is ADVENTURE. Because as I like to say, if you planned it then it’s not adventure. What I didn’t plan […]

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Fumarase Deficiency
Hayduke, Latergram
People ask me all the time, “Aren’t you afraid of X/Y/Z (animal) alone in the woods?” And I say over and over again, I’m much more scared of PEOPLE. And I thought I just left Colorado City but hiking out I realize I still have to walk through another fundamentalist neighborhood in the boonies (pictured up ahead)… And yeah I’m scared. I don’t want to be wife #5! These fundamentalist people are mostly inbred and some of them are really stupid* and yeah, I’m scared. But whatever, keep on walking, quit the gawking. *According to Wikipedia, “The Colorado City/Hildale, Utah area has the world’s highest incidence of fumarase deficiency, an extremely rare genetic condition which causes severe Intellectual disability. Geneticists attribute this to the prevalence of cousin […]

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Party at Pancho’s
2016.05.21
Hayduke, Latergram
…down the rabbit hole indeed. I did some hitch hiking on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon and next thing I knew I was camping the SUPER coveted Pancho’s Kitchen shore and partying with these cool cats. Little did I know that Wednesday was Mardi Gras and that I’d be playing such hard core drinking games as “Hee Haw” and “Stuntman*,” staying up well past hiker midnight and getting pink wig hair and sequins everywhere**. This crew fed me pork chops and scalloped potatoes for dinner and French toast and bacon for breakfast. I had a propane-fueled hot shower with soap (!) right in the Colorado River! Now this was all very foreign to me and overwhelming after two months hikin’ alone, but their friendliness and generosity […]

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Bark Scorpion Attack
Hayduke, Latergram
Further down the rabbit hole: Thursday night I accidentally slept with an Arizona Bark Scorpion, the most venomous scorpion in North America. I was alone in the dark in Kanab Creek, deep in the Grand Canyon without a satellite phone or rescue beacon, so what transpired was… “neat.” I cowboy camped at Showerbath Spring, too close to the spring. Dumb, dumb, dumb. When I rolled over in my sleep at 9:40pm, I was jolted awake by the most awful thorny sensation It felt like I’d been whipped with highly electrified and very sharp barbed wire. JAB JAB! I frantically pulled off my shirt, and suddenly there it was on the ground next to my left hip. It was a little wheat-colored slip of a thing, just like […]

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Sploosh
Hayduke, Latergram
I had anxiety about the plunge pools in Saddle Canyon (within Grand Canyon National Park) because nobody gives too much detail about where they are and how to navigate them (and I won’t either – mwa ha ha). And it was thunder storming when I entered. And I was alone. It was weird, but it was nothing to fear. In fact, I had a great time. They’re slippery rock chutes leading into deep puddles. Slip, SPLOOSH! Like Alice and the rabbit hole… ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where -‘ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said […]

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Off the Bison Path
2016.05.16
Hayduke, Latergram
I just followed a bison path off the dirt road I was walking because some “buffalo” hunters in a jeep sorta gave me the creeps. And I made the mistake of telling them where I’m headed tonight. The bison path led right to a cliff with this view, which makes me wonder… Should we be eating these brilliant beasts? Clearly they’re on to something…. That little pinnacle in the distance inside the Grand Canyon is called the Holy Grail Temple. This side canyon is called Merlin Abyss. And I am dodging thunderstorms (and creepy hunters)… and gaining views (and insight). Not a latergram – this is right now!

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Wilson Update
Hayduke, Latergram
An update on my sweet hiking companion, Wilson (the mini basketball). I was informed by a couple Grand Canyon backcountry rangers (Eston & Della) that Wilson was part of a sports ball stash that has been there for some reason for many many years. I packed Wilson out thinking the balls were trash. Whoops! (Pack it out anyway) So, while meeting with Steve Bridgehouse, a ranger at GCNP 15+ years, I realized Wilson should stay in the park. I gifted him to Steve. Although Steve lives in solitude and professes he sometimes goes days without using his vocal cords, he accepted Wilson and placed him on his bookshelf in his office. Wilson might not get talked to, but he will have knowing company. Steve is very curious […]

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