| Saturday | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Utah Desert Adventure 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| This was the day of the
toughest hiking. Imagine going down and up a 20+-foot arroyo.
Then imagine doing about five in a row. We probably did
over two dozen in the course of four hours or so. Extremely
wearing. We did find a few points which was nice. Whether
it was worth the two blisters on my right foot, I couldn't say. Once we got back to the campsite, we could see that a storm was coming in. We did try briefly to rekindle the fire from ashes, but that was useless and we didn't want to waste much time on it. We did get some smoke and a momentary flame before we gave up on it. Instead of having anything remotely difficult for dinner, Chris made two canned soups (identical type so he cooked both at once) while he had me apply some moleskin (the guy has some amazing oddities in his truck!) and medical tape to my blisters. We ate and quickly got into the tent (me) and truck (Chris). I tossed Chris a walkie-talkie so we could chat during the storm. Utah usually gets short storms, maybe 20-40 minutes of downpour and heavy wind. I curled up with a book and tried to make the best of it under the light of my mini LED lantern. When the rain kept up for over an hour, I began to get concerned. I finally decided to try to sleep, and managed some sleep, off and on, but the rain noise and the loud rustling of my tent made it difficult. Eventually it became clear that this was some kind of freak monsoon! My tent felt like it was going to break (this tent had already gone through break and repair some years back). I got dripped on via the roof, which was designed to vent and not to receive rain in high wind which could then drop onto me. The tent was on a bit of a slope and as a result I had a hard time keeping my sleeping bag away from the edges. I ended up pushing my dirty clothes toward the edges while sleeping, and they got soaked. As did the foam under the sleeping bag. At about 5:30 AM I gave up on the tent because I was worried my clean clothes and gear would get wet. I rushed to the truck, tossed some stuff in, and huddled and slept for a bit in the driver's seat. In the end, the storm lasted about twelve hours. |
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