Wednesday May 10, 1.6mi/2.6km

Hole-in-the-Rock Road / Escalante town (311.9/4600ft) to Below Fiftymile Bench (313.5/4860ft) (UT)

Sleeping indoors always feels a little weird since it stays dark inside even though its after sunrise. We slept in until 7am and then ate breakfast while packing up and doing laundry. Our cabin is pretty large, so stuff was spread out everywhere.

I ran over to the post office to get my maps, I love that everything in this town is like a 1 minute walk.

After spending all morning packing and relaxing we finally checked out of the cabin at noon and ate lunch at the cafe on the property.

Shadow and I each had a pizza, and while I was waiting I browsed their little library.

After lunch I walked down the street to Nemos takeout restaurant and ordered a milkshake….which took forever to get. Waiting almost 30 minutes for a milkshake is ridiculous, and it was 3pm by the time we started hitching back to trail. The first part of the hitch was tricky, 5 miles on the paved road, but eventually we got that ride. The 2nd hitch down the 34-mile dirt road was much trickier, since so few cars were heading down the remote Hole-in-the-rock road this late in the day. We sat there for 2 hours, and almost called it quits and head back to town, but then 2 women stopped and gave us a ride! Amazing.

They had hiked the PCT in 2019 and knew all about hitching back to trails, and we chatted for the long 1.5-hour drive to our trailhead. They dropped us off at 8:15pm, and by then we had only 30 minutes of daylight remaining.

So we hiked for 30 minutes, and then found a flat spot on the side of the trail / 4wd road.

I can’t believe we actually got a ride down that remote road! Tomorrow, we climb up Fiftymile Bench and enter the wilderness!