…My goal? Or my limit? All I can say is that my body is tired.

Today was overcast with a very bland sky. I explored the drainage between Checkerboard Mesa and Crazy Quilt Mesa. I told myself multiple times that I’m just going to turn around. The first time was when I reached an obstacle, backtracked, and followed a rough path up a steep hillside covered with loose dirt and rocks with lots of brush to boot. I didn’t know when the end would be in sight. I climbed back down. Then I went back to the obstacle and scouted the hill. Oh there’s an easier path. So onward I went. My body was really feeling the effects of the exertion of the past days.

Something interesting happened the other day. I was in a spot where I knew that I should look for my exit point and right after that I happened to see that someone had piled up rocks into a small cairn. So today after I came down a place where I thought wasn’t going to be very obvious during my return I made a small cairn.

I came to the head of the drainage and was looking at a tall hill. No way. I thought this has been difficult enough. I’m going to turn around. I just don’t have the energy. So obviously I started climbing. From the bottom you can’t always tell what you’ll find when you reach the highest point you can see. Sometimes the route continues up and up. But I was right in thinking that I was looking at the top of the saddle.

The view looking north from the saddle was great. Unfortunately today’s light wasn’t great so I didn’t get any good pictures. I looked down to the south and the vista isn’t quite so good in that direction. I decided that I was just too tired to continue down that way. I had told myself that I was just going to go as far as the saddle. And of course I continued down. I told myself that it was just for a short distance so that I could see if views opened up. Well that short distance continued until I had climbed down quite a way and rounded the back side of Checkerboard Mesa. The views back there were spectacular too. Too bad I didn’t get any good pictures.

I got to the viewpoint of Checkerboard Arch and this time I really did decide to head back. I could have continued to what I had read was a good viewpoint of Parunuweap Canyon, but I just didn’t have the energy and I still had to get myself back to my car. Besides I know that I want to come back some year. Up until I had reached the saddle I felt that this was going to be a one time hike. But once I got up there I knew that I would need to come back on a day when I could get some nice photos. So whenever that happens I’ll go to the Parunuweap viewpoint as well.

On my way back I ran into a couple of canyoneers headed to Fat Man’s Misery. I also happened to get my second wind. I was dragging a whole lot less. Maybe I should have hiked farther after all. The climb back up to the saddle wasn’t too bad. Going down on the snowy side was a little slippery. I had just taken my Yaktrax out of my pack yesterday before my night time hike to the Canyon Overlook.

Oh I should mention that last night I was very glad that I had made a recon hike to the Overlook during the day. It was a whole lot easier finding the route in the dark when I was familiar with it. My headlamp is a lot better for finding my footing than for finding my route.

Okay back to today’s events. I was just starting to think that I needed to start looking for my route up a hill when I spotted my little cairn. Did I mention that the spot didn’t look like a good exit? If I hadn’t seen the cairn I would have gone back and investigated a place that looked like an easier climb although I didn’t know how much brush I would have had to wade through to get back to the rough path.

To make a long story a little less long (I surely cannot call it “short” at this point), the hike back to my car sure felt a whole lot easier both physically as well as not seeming to be that rough a route.

I’ve been spotting the search and rescue team training in various places pretty much all this week. Today they were in one of the tunnel galleries.

I considered descending to Pine Creek from the second switchback and finding a route upstream. I figured that I probably had plenty of time, but I decided to take it easy and just go on the short hike to the waterfall from the lowest switchback. It was nice to be near a creek with running water. Other than Keyhole Canyon the other day all of the drainages have been dry. The Virgin River excepted of course. Well I shouldn’t say dry. I’ve had to bypass pools, but the creeks haven’t been flowing. That’s a good thing since I wouldn’t have been able to make those hikes when the creeks were running since I was hiking in the middle of the watercourses.

So what exactly have I reached? I’ve hiked the majority of the routes I had planned with one glaring exception. Tomorrow may bring rain. I’ll see how it looks. I may go to that section of Pine Creek I mentioned earlier. I don’t have many good options left considering the conditions. The cottonwoods aren’t showing good color this year. Most haven’t turned and many have dropped their leaves. What I would really like is for tomorrow to bring a gully washer. I was hoping for that to happen some time during this trip, but it appears that tomorrow’s possible rainfall won’t fit the bill.

I expect that I’ll probably be mostly taking it easy tomorrow. Unfortunately, as I mentioned the easy stuff in the canyon won’t be overly appealing in the absence of good color. I don’t expect it to look a whole lot different from what I’ve already seen. Everyone should have my problems, right?