No Canyon Like Dark Canyon

What an adventure!

Wow, this post will just give some basics. If you want specifics call me or Skype me.

Day 1:
We got off to a late start. Heber met us at the trail-head at about 2:30 and we didn't start walking til 3. We had a trailer to shuttle one of the cars over, about half a mile down the road we hear screaming and yelling and honking. Heber was leading and was quite a ways in front of us. Josh, my father-in-law, and I were taking up the rear so we high-tailed it the half mile back to the cars and tried to fix the problem. By 4:30, the problem was deemed unsolvable and we just hiked. By now the lead group was at least an hour or two ahead of us without any idea where we were. so the first 5 miles we ran trying to catch up. Oh, there were 34 people! Only me and Heber had been before.

We caught them at the Indian ruins, and some of those guys were already eating dinner...it was about 6 o' clock. Me and my father-in-law just walked on through taking all who wanted to go with us. Heber was pretty sure we were not going to make it to dripping springs before dark, but my dad taught me how to hike with determination and speed. We took off and I said if it got too dark I would set up camp...but in the back of my mind I knew we could make it. Well with little or no breaks, the lead group hit dripping springs at 8:45. We set up camp and while everyone else was resting I started a fire and encouraged everyone to eat something before they settled down. But our groups were messed up...I had the only stove for the lead group...17 people straggled in before dark.


After dark no one came in. We slept separately that night.

Day 2: I got up the next morning and started backwards to see where the others were. I found them about 5 minutes back sleeping on the hard rocks. They were in an interesting state...Heber thought he took them up the wrong canyon and everyone was a little stressed by sleeping on the rocks...oh, and the night was freezing cold. so not much sleep. So Heber starts telling me he thinks we are lost and I replied, well dripping springs is just around the corner. That makes them happy and they recounted their night. Where they slept there was no water so they had to hike back about a mile to a stagnant pool in the dark (remember, we were just 5 minutes ahead with fresh water). They filtered a lot of water and Heber guzzled 64 ounces of rat-water...as they finished filtering the water Josh Terry looked up at the head of the pool and there was a decomposing rat.