10 things that hiking Buckskin Gulch after a flash flood taught me about Life
We just got back from a trip down Buckskin Gulch in southern Utah. Buckskin Gulch is the longest and deepest slot canyon in the world. It’s one of the premier destinations in the world for slot canyoneering. Usually the Buckskin is totally dry and it’s a simple downhill hike down the canyon to the Paria River.
But we went four days after a huge rainstorm that completely flooded the canyon. This turned our simple two-day hike into an epic adventure slogging through mud, wading through cesspools of standing water up to our neck, sinking in quicksand, rappelling down boulders, and generally destroying our bodies.
A good adventure trip should be like a microcosm of life. This is exactly what this trip was.We walked into the desert as men and walked out as prophets. I need to write down the life lessons of Buckskin Gulch before I forget them — thus this post. My first ever Medium post. Here’s what I learned…
#1
Protect your feet.
Kevin bought some fancy water shoes for our canyoneering trip. You think they’re the right tool, but they’re not. (1) They don’t have a hard enough sole to walk on rocks and (2) you’ll cut your foot open with your own hiking pole in a cesspool and have bubonic plague swimming into your open wound for two days. There were literally dead mice and bats in some of these cesspools. Not places you want bathe an open wound. Don’t believe what that REI salesperson says — just wear your hiking boots. They will get sopping wet — and you’ll likely have to throw them away afterwards — but they’ll protect your feet. And in the end, all you have on a hiking trip, and in life, are your own two feet. Protect them.
#2
Prepare for the worst case scenario.
Just in case, we put all of our gear in Ziploc bags and wrapped our tent and sleeping bag in garbage bags. Doing this at the trailhead in the 100 degree Utah heat with the scorching sun overhead seemed overkill at the time. But when we were wading through water up to our neck — we were so happy we came prepared. It allowed us to sleep in a dry bed, have dry clothes, and have a functioning camera to document our trip.
We also carried eight liters of water on our backs for the trip — it was annoyingly heavy — but guess what? We drank every drop a few miles before reaching our car. The only thing we skimped on was food — thinking we’d be out by Saturday morning. For this mistake, we had to go without meals on Saturday and subsist on caffeine-infused Jelly Beans until we got back to the car. Not fun. We won’t fuck that up again. From now on:
“I come prepared” — K’naan
#3
Bring some cigarettes.
In addition to being prepared for the worst case, you need some vice on a hiking trip (and in life). Cause when you’ve (a) sunk into quicksand to your waist or (b) nearly broken your ankle by slipping down a boulder or (c) had to swim across a bacteria infested cesspool full of bat shit — you don’t want to eat a fucking Clif Bar. You want a drag of that Marlboro.
#4
Trust nobody. Especially experts.
You can listen to them, but verify independently. And take into account that they have a skewed view of the world. The experts told us it was only 14 miles to the Confluence where we could camp and it “would’t be that bad”. Fuck them. We checked the topo after it took us well over a day to get there. It’s actually 17.9 miles to the Confluence. And you only go 1 mile/hour when you have to slop through mud and water every step of the way. Fuck them and their optimistic reckoning. Slight caveat — in their defense — I stopped every 30 seconds to take a picture or a video. That likely slowed us down as well.
#5
Information is King.
More than anything else in this world, you need information. We had a hard time making decisions on the Buckskin because we had no idea how far we’d gone down the canyon. We weren’t lost — you can’t get lost in a slot canyon — but we just didn’t know how far we were from anything. My GPS didn’t work in the narrow canyon and the topo map was useless because all we could see were canyon walls. Also because of the mud and water we had no idea how fast we were walking. This rendered it impossible to answer basic survival questions — How far to the Confluence? Should we camp here or go on in the darkness? Are we ever going to get out of this canyon or have we been transported to a parallel universe? Next time we’re bringing a pedometer…or, Kevin’s case, an Apple Watch.
#6
Sometimes you have to jump in.
…into a cesspool of stagnant water filled with E. coli and bat shit while wearing only your underwear. As long as you swear a lot and smoke a cigarette afterwards — you’ll be ok. But seriously, doing something that seems really hard often times isn’t. You may not have all the information you need, but you need to take the jump to move forward. Especially if it’s the only way out of a slot canyon.
#7
Constant vigilance.
Like life, hiking the Buckskin requires constant vigilance. Don’t get me wrong, you can enjoy yourself — and we definitely did — but if you get comfortable that’s exactly when the canyon will fuck you.
Case in point, we got the Confluence and were super happy to have finally reached this mythical place. To commemorate the occasion, I tried to take a picture of Kevin by stepping onto what seemed to be a solid river bank. I promptly sank up to my nuts in quicksand and got completely stuck. Kevin had to save me by pulling me out.
In a similar situation, at mile 23 the canyon finally widened out and the mud dried up. We were ecstatic —taking big steps and making some rapid progress. Five minutes later, I almost stepped onto a rattlesnake. I only avoided a venomous bite by hearing him rattling at me. After that I just went back to walking in the mud — at least that was a danger I understood. Lesson learned. Don’t get comfortable.
#8
There is only the present.
If you try to think too far ahead in the Buckskin — about where you’ll camp or what you’ll do when you get out — that’s exactly when you lose your footing and eat shit. Literally, because the canyon floor is covered in diarrhea-like mud. The Buckskin forces you to focus on the present — which is all there really is. Fortunately, the present is beautiful — especially inside the longest slot canyon in the world.
#9
We are strong. Especially with our friends beside us.
When you have to wade through neck deep water teeming with bacteria in the pitch darkness with only a meager headlamp to light the way — you realize that you’re pretty strong. Compared to that, most other situations in life are pretty damn easy. We are strong.
In addition, it’s way easier to be strong when we have our friends with us. You can talk to them in the pitch darkness. You can swear with them. You can smoke cigarettes with them. And they can take your picture to document how crazy you were together.
Friends are also particularly useful if you’re prone to putting yourself in life threatening situations. Kevin saved me from disaster twice on this trip. The first time he pulled me up when I was slipping down a 30 foot boulder. That saved me from a broken ankle. Second time he pulled my ass out when I was sinking into quicksand. We are strong. Especially with good friends to bail us out.
#10
Look up from the mud.
Sometimes you have to look up and get your head out of the mud. Because you’ll see unimaginable beauty all around you. It’s up to you to choose what you want to focus on. The mud or the beauty. We forget this living Life day to day. But this lesson was never so clear as in the Buckskin.
