This is Hairy! Use Caution.

My feet have been sweating.

We have been moving incredibly slow. The last couple hundred yards have easily taken us over an hour. The giant toadstool towers we are traversing around are finally just behind us. The ridge is about 25 feet above us. No one has to say it, but we all really want to get back up to that ridgeline. The steps that Shelby has been kicking into the clay sidehill have worked, as in they worked because no one fell to their death, but we would really like to be able to stop using them.

This sidehill is steep enough that you can walk, well, more like shuffle, across it and use your right hand for balance on the wall without leaning over. For those of you who need numbers, that equates to about a 5 foot drop for every 2 feet of horizontal. It’s steep.

And to exacerbate the situation, the canyon we are trying to get into is at the bottom of this ridge. You have 100 feet or so of steep as fuck ridgeline that ends at the top of a slot canyon that is a couple of hundred feet deep. That’s what some like to call exposure.

Part of our slow-moving is dealing with the unknown. There is no path, no trail, no sign that another human has been here for as long as we can tell. Occasionally, the big horn sheep leave something we can follow, but their trails have proven to end at places that don’t seem to make sense. All of our forward progress is punctuated by the fact that we do not know what will come after what we can see which may end up meaning that we get to do it all over again to find another way. We have already turned around more than once.

And so sits our ridgeline. It would appear that it could be a way off this sidehill, but we also have no idea what it will look like if we get up to it. Shelby asks if I think I can get up it. I can, but it will have to be in one go because I will have to do it with momentum. If the ridge goes, it will be well worth it. If it doesn’t, well, I may not be able to get down to where we are safely.

In what probably looked like a tortoise trying to chase a hare, but felt like a herculean effort of scrambling on all fours with a 48-pound pack on my back somehow successfully delivered me to the ridge. As I crest the edge, I am relieved to see that not only does it appear to go, but it’s wide. Well, like 30 feet wide, but that felt like an entire planet of space at this point.

I holler down that it goes and quickly remove my pack, grab the rope and wrap it around a giant boulder. Shelby is able to use it to pull himself up and one by one, the rest of the group makes it up to the ridge.

No one wants to say it, but we are still in the unknown. We can only see another 100 feet or so down the ridge before it drops off so steeply you can’t see where it goes. Not wanting to ruin the moment of relief, we take a breather. It’s well earned.

And as I mentioned, my feet have been sweating.

There is a certain smell that comes out when fear is ripe. It’s a level of BO that can’t be replicated otherwise. I have smelled this way many times before, but the wafts of stench just go to remind me of where I am and what exactly we are doing. I remove my shoes to empty all the dirt that has gotten in while sidehilling. That dirt is mostly clay. When clay gets wet it turns to mud and then it dries and turns to cement. Needless to say, there isn’t much of the clay that I can actually get out of my shoes.

Oh well. Into the unknown.

The Unknown

Adventure is a word that often feels over used. We have come to think of it as having to be big, scary, overwhelming, the thing of dreams that can easily be flipped into nightmares. Many have tried to define the word as to eliminate its ability to be overused. Pushing it into the “too much territory” so that it is nearly impossible to obtain and certainly isn’t common. I personally feel as if it is more common than we like to think.

Modern humans have become ill-equipped to deal with the unknown. We have adapted, researched, mapped out and algorithmed almost every aspect of our existence in a way to eliminate the unknown. Why? Well, the unknown is uncomfortable and humans hate being uncomfortable. Not sure what to wear, grab your phone, check the weather. Are you going somewhere you’ve never been? No problem, grab your phone and let it map it for you. Do you have literally any question possible? Grab your phone, check the internet.

And this is why I feel that adventure is more common than what many people’s definition of it allows. While it can be difficult to universally define, when you have an adventure, you know. It falls squarely in the feels department. This is why a trip through your home town, but a different route or mode of transport is an adventure. And why traveling someplace no one has ever been, almost dying, drinking your own piss and/or having to cut your arm off also falls squarely in adventure territory. The word feels overused because it’s almost all-encompassing.

The one consistent element for every adventure that I have felt, is the unknown. The unknown can be self-imposed, as in I didn’t do any research and am just showing up to see how this goes. It can be the crux of whatever you are doing as in “I know I can’t get to point A from this side, and Point C from the other side, is Point B a possible link between the two?” Or it can be 100% an internal question, how will I feel at mile 22 when I have never gone past mile 21?

You could easily blame the unknown for us standing on the side of this ridge trying to get into a canyon. Mostly because the route I settled on for this was solidified by not being able to find much info. The route had been done, this we knew. There is a video, a description in an old guidebook, but when I tried to find recent beta, well, dead end. This is something that is surprisingly hard to happen these days. Pick a spot on a map and you most likely can find almost endless info on what, where and how. This canyon was a blip in a video and a paragraph in a guidebook that said, “This is hairy.” and “There is one obstacle, a 20 foot drop. Use rope here.”

Can you define adventure as overcoming the unknown? I don’t know, maybe. What I do know is that we had an adventure, I could feel it while it was happening and I can still feel it now. Was it the unknown that made it an adventure or was it the immensity of the place?

I don’t know.

Water

Water is the great unknown.

As Heraclitus taught us, you can never step into the same river twice which is also to say that even once experienced you don’t know what water will do. I would add that you cannot step into any body of water twice. Even a man-made reservoir that seems so dead at times is crazy dynamic. You can put in on a glasslike, placid surface or get tossed around on 4 foot high white caps, same lake? Nah.

It is also the great unknown that defines this landscape. It’s a place often considered to be formed by the lack of water, but most of its beauty is created from the overabundance of it. The complete lack of water can also change in an instant to way too much.

It may have happened, but I cannot recall dropping into a slot canyon without first taking a look at the sky, assessing whatever data points I have to tell me whether that sky is going to stay that way or not and then making a deliberate decision to go in. That decision always sits in the back of my head as the unknown of its quality isn’t ensured until you exit.

Our first canyon was going to be dry. In the sense that we could not expect to find water. This meant we would have to embrace another unknown. I have carried 6 liters of water on my bike before, but never on my back. Add to that the weight of a paddling gear and a rope and it was probably the heaviest pack I’ve ever shouldered. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

The more obvious question that we kept exploring was what version of the reservoir would we encounter. We had three sections of paddling.

The first was defined by the obstacle of just getting to the water. The last 1/2 mile or so of canyon was filled wall to wall with mud. Death mud, quick sand, clay, whatever, you stop caring what it is after a few minutes of sinking in up to your shins and for the last 30 feet, up to your knees. Disgusting, painful, hard and then we sat on a mirrorlike, flat lake and finished paddling through our canyon.

Our second paddle was after camp 2. Sometime around 3ish in the morning, the wind that had been breezy and gaining gusty momentum turned into a full on squall. Boats were flying everywhere, sand was pummeling all of us, a little precipitation dropped and then we tried to get some more sleep. I for one couldn’t help but worry that the lake would be a disastrous, insurmountable obstacle in the morning. Luckily, it was breezy, but it was up canyon and at our backs. Pushing us right to our destination.

Paddle 3 was required to get back to where we started. Down canyon we had the mud and the wind on our minds. Apparently, we had paid our mud dues and our last transition proved to be the easiest. A sunny beach that allowed us to put in without ever sinking into anything. And then the wind reminded us that we were going down canyon and it was going up.

The headwind was gusty and pushing us around pretty good. When our forward progress had come to a standstill, I found a bench that I could see wrapped around to the main channel. I beached my boat and walked around to see if this was even going to go. To my relief, our canyon was windy and the main channel was as well, but both were pushing up canyon. This meant a tailwind if we could just get out of this canyon.

And then chaos smiled upon us. We paddled around the point to a small cove to rest and the wind pretty much died. It stayed calm till we had been in the main channel for a bit and then picked back up to give us a shove right to our terminus.

As we transition back to bipedal mode for the last time, I feel a strange sensation of home. I’ve been to this place many times and it has always felt remote, but now having spent 4.5 days pushing and pulling to get back to this spot, it feels safe.

With the boat and rope and gear strapped to my back, I start walking in those shoes that have clay cemented to the insoles. My feet aren’t sweating and for the first time, I climb up the wagon trail to the top without taking my pack off. It’s a bit uncomfortable but all I can think about is the last unknown, will the beer still be cold?

P. L. and R.