March Trip Report

[immortal_ben]

Ok yall, this might be a long one, so hold on tight.

Our original plan was to hit two trails, ending at a place called Taylor Cabin. Distance there and back would have been about 20 miles. At the last minute we decided to do a loop route called Taylor Cabin Loop or Casner Mountain Loop. That loop would also be about 20 miles but the hike out goes through much tougher terrain. We had planned on taking our time and spending two nights on the trail.

We had called the ranger station to see about weather and water out there and were told to expect lows below freezing and no water. I gambled on being able to find or make water, taking only 6 liters for myself and 2 liters in Dexter's bags. One of the guys packed 11 liters because he had the water bladders and water bottles to do so. The third guy packed in 8 liters of water because that was all the water-bearing gear he had.

I have always used no more than 3 liters of water a day (including cooking) even in the summer, so 6 liters would be enough for two days, right? Not this time, not by a long shot.

The hike in was nice with relatively easy terrain. Spirits were high and we chatted as we trekked along. I am in the white hat.



We started the trail at 9am. There was one spot where my friends store bought trail map was a bit unclear so we wasted about 30 minutes trying to decide which direction of a split in the trail to take. I had a really good topo map I had printed, but sections of the trail were ot on my map, and this happened to be one of the sections.

We hit Taylor Cabin at 5pm.


The cabin is well-supplied, but all of the cached water had been used by a family that had arrived just before we did.



By this time (5pm) I had killed my entire first 3 liter water bladder, and Dexter had killed his first liter. The family reported that there was no water to be found in the riverbed. By 7pm I had sucked down another liter and a half. I think it was being sick for a week before the hike, and STILL being sick while on the hike that made me need so much water.

[immortal_ben]

Re: March Trip Report

There were a couple of shovels at the cabin so we headed over to the riverbed to search for water. The outside bend of a river is the best place to start looking for signs of water so that is where we went. We found a promising depression and moved a few big boulders to start digging. There were just too many huge boulders under the surface for us to get more than a few inches down.

We did not have a camera with us because we had dropped all of our gear at a nice campsite about 100 yards from the cabin. I headed downstream to look for water while my two buddies went upstream. About 30 yards downstream I found a small alcove in an outside bend that had a bowl worn into the rock because of a small, currently dry waterfall. I climbed up to the bowl and found about a foot of rancid, sinking water with vegetation, dead bugs, and who knows what else in it. Just smelling the water made me want to throw up. I went and got the guys to show them my find but they were far from happy with the water. One of us (not me) had bought a new water filter for this trip and he went to camp and brought it back while i cleared away most of the surface vegetation. I warned the guy with the filter that he should wait for the sediment in the water to settle before pumping but he was too excited about filling his rapidly emptying water bladders, as were the other two of us.

He pumped about half a Nalgene bottle and stopped to look at and smell his filtered water. The stinch had not diminished and the water was still fairly brown. What?? I looked at his filter and informed him that not only did it not have a carbon element (takes out odor and bad taste) but it wasn't even a ceramic filter. He had a paper element which is useless for even bacteria, much less viruses. I had my Steri-Pen, so I did not care about microbes. The filter was very hard to pump after just that half a liter of water so that told me the paper element was clogged already. There was no way to field clean that element with what we had on hand. The two of them decided to bail on trying to use that water but I had a great idea.

I took my empty Nalgene (which I had brought for scooping questionable water to be used with my Steri-Pen) and reamed out a few holes in the bottom with a blade from my Leatherman. I just now took this picture to show what I did.

Then I went to our campfire ring and roughly ground up a good bit of charcoal to serve as a carbon element of my field expedient water-filter. Then I added some nice sand over the charcoal and finally topped it off with a bit of gravel from the river bed. I then supported the bottle over my Jetboil. I used one of the other guys empty Nalgene to go scoop the rancid water and pour it into my filter.

The water filtered through but the process was not fast by any means. The first run of water came out a bit cloudy from the finest bits of charcoal and sand but when that settled, the rest of the water looked pretty good and barely had any odor to it at all. I then ran my Steri-Pen in it and promptly downed everything but the dregs with particulate matter. Despite being impressed with eh lack of overpowering stench and relative clarity of the water, my two friends were suspect of the water still and did not wish to partake. I filled both of Dexter's collapsible water bottles http://www.rei.com/product/797977/pl...e-cap-34-fl-oz with the new water and drank nearly a half liter myself.

By this time it was past dark and I went to sit by the fire for a bit. My friends decided to nickname me Bear (for Bear Grylls) at that point because I was eating a few worms I had found in the riverbed. The next morning we lazed around, slept in, had some chow, and hit the trail at around 9am.


I had now consumed about 8 liters of water and left camp with one full water bladder. My friends each had a full bladder as well. The trail became rougher and so overgrown that it was nearly like trailblazing at times. It was insane and several times I had to pick up Dexter to carry him across yards of prickly pear cactus. The National Forrest Service website was not lying when it said this is a lightly used trail! I do not have any pics of this because it was simply exhausting, painful work and we just wanted to push through to easier terrain. I now have a fiery, burning hate for buckthorn bushes. We finally hit the riverbed again and my friends map showed that the trail followed the river for quite a ways. This part of the trail was very poorly marked with carins which we kind of expected from reading about the trail, but it was far worse than we anticipated. We lost the trail several times and finally decided to see if my topo map could help us out.

After a few minutes of arguing and me pointing out terrain features and reminding my partners to keep scale of the map in mind, I finally convinced them to keep going and we would find the trail again. They were both unsure, but I am supremely confident of my map reading skills. My estimation of where we would pick up the trail was off by about a quarter of a mile. Not great, but not horrible, I think. By now it was well after 11am and we were well behind schedule.

When we got to the trail, it followed a stream bed in a very narrow and nasty canyon. My partners now understood why I had been telling them to expect nasty terrain. I had looked closely at my topo map and understood that when contour lines are stacked very closely, that means the terrain is STEEP! The canyon was maybe 20 feet across at its widest point. We came to a pool of water in our way, and no way to cross in a dry manner without some type of climbing. The next two pics were taken AFTER we had crossed because we realized we had not taken any pics of anyone crossing.


Ok, ignore the "attached" photo as I do not know how it got there, and I cannot figure out how to delete it... BAH!

[immortal_ben]

Re: March Trip Report

Ok so here is how I Passed the 3 ft deep water hole (full of frigid water).

The other two guys did a bit of climbing off to the side because one of them has shoulder problems and cannot do what I dd. The other guy just did not want to do it my cool way. Dexter crossed on the side where my hands are, on some tiny ledges up above where I am in this pic. It was awesome and I am kicking myself for not getting pics of it!

I was now completely out of water and it was around 12:30. I grabbed the water filter to pump some water while the other two scouted on up the canyon to check it out. One of them was concerned about the time, roughness of the terrain, and being able to make it back to the Jeep on schedule. I had told him to suck it up and lets keep going...

I filled one of my water bladders (another 3 liters) and headed up to meet them. They were coming down and met me after I had gone about 50 yards. The guy with shoulder problems declared there was no physical way he could climb the canyon. The other guy said he was uncomfortable with the terrain and was heading back to the Jeep the way we just came from!

I was pretty hacked off about being turned around when the terrain was just getting to be really fun. I said a few choice words and tried to get them to reconsider. They were having none of it and headed down, leaving me to stare up the canyon, thinking about leaving the group to continue up without them. I considered it for a couple of minutes before following my own first rule of not splitting up the group. I caught up to them at the water hole mad as heck and did not hesitate to let them know about it.

I helped them cross, wore two of the three packs across while playing SpiderBen as before, and got my dog back across. They were trying to calm me down and get going in order to cover some ground. We walked away from perfectly good water for pumping, having very little water between the three of us. How can this happen with two very experienced backpackers in the group!?!

Tempers were flaring and unfortunately no thinking was going on. Let me say this again. All three of us should have taken a step back and calmed down before doing ANYTHING else. Letting emotion overcome you in the wilderness can be deadly. We should have assessed the entire situation, not been focused on covering ground, being hacked off, or having a battle of the wills. In short, we were idiots.

The only good thing was that we knew the route and did not waste time looking for the trail. It was now after 1pm and it had taken about 3 hours just to find the canyon trail after leaving the cabin. We decided to make camp somewhere beyond the cabin and leave the following (third) day.

It took me two hours to run out of my 3 liters of water. The other two ran out shortly thereafter and that was when we realized what we had done to ourselves. I should insert here that I had forgot to wear my good, wool, hiking socks. I was hiking in plain cotton athletic socks from CostCo. At this point I has some pretty severe pain coming from my left Achilles tendon and a bit of pain from the right one. This only added to the running tab of mistakes we were beginning to count. One of those mistakes was the guy with 11 liters of water had forgotten to check that his bite valves were locked closed on his water bladders. As a result he did not actually start the hike with 11 liters, but 8. One bladder had completely emptied in the back of his jeep.

We hiked back to the cabin, had lunch, applied some moleskin to some feet, and apologized to each other for the situation we had created for the hiking rookie with us. We talked about camping right there and heading out in the morning. I recommended staying put for 3 hours or so and hiking back to the Jeep in the cool of the evening/night. Neither of the others wanted to hike so late at night, figuring we could hit the Jeep not long after sundown. I reminded them that staying another whole night without water would lead to us feeling even worse, and we agreed to push through to the Jeep. So, we headed back out into the hottest part of the day with no water at all.

Our pace was extremely slow and there was no banter anymore. We trudged along for a couple of hours, passing a family on horseback heading towards the cabin we just came from. None of us thought to ask if they had any extra water.

Sometime later we met a couple on the trail, obviously doing the ultra-light thing. They asked us about water and we told there the only water was miles and miles away. The couple had one full Nalgene bottle and one Poweraid. They kindly gave us half their water and told us they would camp right there and head back in the morning. They said we were two hours from the trail head. We each took a bit of water (making sure to save a bit for Dexter) and headed out again.

After sundown and after nightfall, we had on our headlamps. It was now three hours since we had met the couple and we figure we HAD to be close to the Jeep. A little while later the family on horses caught up to us and gave us their only remaining bottle of water which we again split. Again we trudged on.

We got to the Jeep around 9pm, I kid you not. We headed to the nearest town (Sedona, AZ) and stopped at the first gas station. One of the guys grabbed a cold gallon of water from the coolers and started chugging, burning his throat with the cold water in the process. Me and the other guy filled water bladders and began sucking them down. We then found a McDonalds and ordered huge meals. My friend with the burnt throat could not eat for about 20 minutes and watched his food get cold, HAHAHAHH!

Anyway I made it home and collapsed into bed after a nice hot shower. It was half past midnight. I am recovering nicely today with medication and bandages on both of my Achilles tendons. The other two guys are doing similarly well.

In the end, the great Sonoran Desert had its ugly way with us. Two of us have vowed to go back and spank that mountain into submission.

[nearlywild]

Re: March Trip Report

What kind of water filter did your friend bring? Great read, I can't believe that you guys didn't fill up with water from the canyon.

[beemerchef]

Re: March Trip Report

Excellent!!! I really read the whole thing!!! Yes... water, always water. It is "gold"... Depending on the distance we have to cover going back we generally leave when down to our last gallon. We do not backpack but the situations are similar. We carry 6 gallons of water and 11G of fuel. plus more for cooking!
So... as we learn every day... wonder what you have learned.
Thanks for the report... and glad that you all made it back safely.
Do you carry a SPOT with a shared web page? a SAT Phone? Being by ourselves we always do. Just a thought.
Be well... stay well... Ara and Spirit

[immortal_ben]

Re: March Trip Report

Yeah, we couldn't believe it either, once we calmed down and thought about it.

[immortal_ben]

Re: March Trip Report

nearlywild, the filter was a Katadyn Hiker. I looked at the website and it says there is carbon in the element, but I cannot believe it after what I saw on the trail.

Ara, we did have a SPOT with us.

At one point my hiking buddy said "Don't you have a $300 water filter?" I said "Yep, but I never bring it anymore." HAHAHAHAHHA!

[GlitterHiker]

Re: March Trip Report

You are certainly having adventures on your outings!

[beemerchef]

Re: March Trip Report

"WATER"... = "GOLD" !!!
I like CO in the summer or Montana / Wyoming as I can always find water. I did not know this but just learned that they have "maps" per State for "Springs"! I thought that is very cool. I am going to look into it a bit further.

I understand also that now the responses from SPOT 911 are not as reliable as they use to be because of so many yoyo's using them as such for a flat tire or some idiotic non emergency situations. I had the feeling that this would eventually happen. I rely on my SAT Phone a lot. It was a special deal from here in Texas. $17 a month for 300 minutes!

Great Adventure Ben!...

You be well... Ara and Spirit

[immortal_ben]

Re: March Trip Report

Glitter, adventure is the name of the game for me. If everything went perfectly smooth, I would not know what to do with myself!

Ara, I have read that about SPOT as well.

We are already planning our revenge trip to that trail, MUWHAHAHAHAH

[beemerchef]

Re: March Trip Report

Glitter, adventure is the name of the game for me. If everything went perfectly smooth, I would not know what to do with myself!

Ara, I have read that about SPOT as well.

We are already planning our revenge trip to that trail, MUWHAHAHAHAH

Fully understandable... It is like I am ready to go back to Death Valley's bowels now with a different knowledge... More comfy that is for sure!!!

Be well... Ara and Spirit

[zack0109]

Re: March Trip Report

You are certainly having adventures on your outings!

I think it's more like a superrtamp in the wild. Glad to hear that you enjoyed a good trip and I love this "If everything went perfectly smooth, I would not know what to do with myself!"