Hayduke Trail – Day 9
March 22, 2023
Miles Today/ Total: 0 / 122.9
It snowed on and off throughout the night, but very little accumulation. But as we started packing up it began to snow pretty heavy and continued throughout the morning.
We headed back toward the pour-off we needed to ascend to get out of Fable Valley and we noticed their was much more water running down the wash. As we approached the pour-off a heavy stream of water was now pouring down from above. All thoughts of us ascending were crushed. Our option to continue were pretty dim as well. It would be a 2 day delay to backtrack and work another way out of the canyon or wait 1-2 days for the water to subside and hope we could climb out. In either case we didn’t have enough food for a 2 day delay.
Even if we could get up the pour-off we would be facing similar issues in Young’s Canyon and Dark Canyon with even fewer opportunities to get dry and out of the water.
We decided to hike the 2 days back to Needles and catch a ride into Moab. Our Hayduke hike is over. The snow, rain, wind, mud, and full washes has made in unsafe in our minds to continue.
We turned back walking through Fable Valley in the flooded washes, snow, wind, and mud By mid-day we were both getting cold and decided to stop, set up our tents, and get out of the cold for a few hours.
While waiting the cold out, the clouds thinned and the sun began peeking through. We packed up and continued on hoping to get close enough to Needles to get back to civilization tomorrow.
We set up camp near Bobby’s Hole just as the sun began setting and climbed into our tents to keep warm.
