Tuesday June 6, 26.5mi/42.7km

Showerbath Spring (712.7/2680ft) to Upper Hack Canyon (739.2/4600ft) (AZ)

Good morning Kanab Creek Canyon! This was the view from my tent when I woke up.

After I packed up, I spent a little while checking out the Showerbath springs. It’s a huge dripping piece of vegetation on the cliff, with quite a surprising amount of water coming off of it.

The greenery that grows there is massive, I think 12 people could fit under there. Up close, it looks like a Dr Seuss plant.

I hiked out at 7:15 and had nice views of the cliffs, while enjoying the shade.

Further up the Canyon, I was able to use some game trails, and cut off some distance across the meandering valley. There were tons of these prickly pear cacti, I’ve never seen so many and growing so close together. I called it cacti national forest, ha.

A couple hours into the morning, I started to lose my shade. It was a combination of the cliff becoming shorter, and the Sun getting higher in the sky.

Surprisingly, Kanab Creek had intermittent water all the way up to hack Canyon. This was supposed to be a dry section of trail, but the thousands (millions?) of tadpoles I saw proved otherwise.

I had lunch at the junction of Kanab Creek and Hack Canyon, under a shady Cottonwood tree. As soon as I turned into Hack Canyon, the water disappeared and I walked in a dry wash.

A few minutes later I was passing through a fence, which I’m pretty sure meant I was leaving Grand Canyon National Park.

The wash was pretty nice to walk in, but surprisingly there were even nicer trails parallel to it, so I took advantage.

It was pretty hot in Hack Canyon, so I took a few breaks in the meager shady spots I could find. I hiked up Hack Canyon for a couple hours on horse trails like this.

I came to Willow spring, which my guidebook says not to drink because it’s radioactive.

Good thing this cow had been drinking from it all day, it ran off when I walked nearby. It sure makes you think twice about eating beef.

I soon crossed another fence and arrived at the end of a dirt road, at the Hack Canyon trailhead.

From there I had a couple hours of easy roadwalking to do, and it was quite enjoyable.

I listened to some podcasts and audiobooks while I enjoyed the scenery. It was such a pleasure to simply walk without having to watch every step I made. Because the miles today were pretty easy, I had covered 26 miles by 7pm. I started looking for a camping spot, and soon figured out that the only reasonable places to camp were in the wash that ran parallel to the dirt road. So I setup my tent in the dry wash, and enjoyed the cooler temperatures at this higher elevation (It was a little too warm for sleeping the last couple of nights).

Given that I’m only 27 miles from Colorado City, tomorrow might be a town day depending on how easy the miles are.