Well this really should fall under the training blog for White Sands, but it was such the adventure I thought it deserved it's own blog space. Renae and I had decided earlier in the week that on Sunday 11/16/08 we would head back out to Pollock Bench and hike either the entire bench loop or hike as far on Rattlesnake arches trail as we could. Well after we finished talking with Kristen and Clayton on Skype on Sunday (around 10am) we started getting ready to head out to hike. We reached the trailhead, had all our gear on, and was ready to hike by 1115. We had eaten a late breakfast so knew we would be ok for several hours before we needed to stop for lunch. Now the bench loop is approx 7 miles and Rattlesnake Arches is 7 miles one way. We headed out on the P1 trail as we have the last couple of times and when we reached the fork in the P1 trail 1.5 miles later we turned right to head to that section of Pollock Bench loop and Rattlesnake Arches. Another 1/4 mile began the decent into the vally. Part of the way down (will include pictures later) was a trail sign it "said" Rattlesnake Arches ----->
Pollock Bench ----->
but the P1 arrow below the sign indicated <------, so Renae and I of course went right.
"It started out a three hour tour....the weather started getting not rough, but darkness grew, if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the party would have been lost". I always thought that was a funny sitcom jingle until yesterday.
Renae posing in front of the cool rock formations.
What a gorgeous day...Renae and I stopped a few times after we down climbed to take pictures of the unique rock formations. Fairly soon we came to a rock ledge that we had to down climb. Now after the whole Castleton Tower hike with the dogs we knew this would be somewhat of an adventure and Zeus and Kyrie didn't let us down. Renae and I both climbed down to another ledge and thought the dogs might follow us because it was actually a pretty easy down climb, but no luck. So Renae climbed back up and put the short leashes on the dogs to try to drag them to see they just needed to jump like 2 feet down. Kyrie pulled out of her collar like 3 times. So Renae started to work with Zeus we finally got him close enough to me that I could pull him down and he made it down no problem after 20 min of trying to get the dogs down. Now back to Kyrie. Finally Renae with Kyrie scruff in hand brought her to the edge and I got her pulled down. I have a feeling this was quite traumatic to Kryie because she was breathing hard for the next 5 min.
The little arch cairn.
Well we made it down to a dry creek bed and began following the trail again. Soon we met up with two hikers that had passed us on the way up to the fork in the trail. They had come from the opposite direction. We stopped to talk a few minutes we told them that there was some rock scrambling ahead and they told us there was a couple of rock ledges to maneuver. KEY POINT-- the man also said that when they came down the trail it looked like there was another trail fork going down into a valley, but he didn't know where it went. We each went our own way and it was now 2:15pm so we decided to take a break and eat some lunch. We found some rocks to sit on and pulled out the ham, grapes and cheese. We were stopped for maybe 15-20 and then got started again.
By this point I think we were about 3 miles in on the trail. It wasn't long before we hit the rock ledge that the other hikers were talking about. Renae made it up with little problems then it was my turn to try to get the dogs up. After about 15 min of coaxing and Kryie letting out with these pitiful crys thinking we were going to leave her all dogs and humans were up the ledge. Now it was my turn for heavy breathing because I lifted two 60-70 lbs dogs up two or three feet so they could scramble up. It took me some time to recover but we continued on. At this point we began to wonder where we were because we had ceased seeing any trail signs for Pollock Bench. Shortly we came up on a trail sign for Rattlesnake Arches 3 miles. This meant we were 4 miles in and by 4 miles we should be up on the ridge heading back to the trail head, which we were not. We continued on another 1/4 mile then reassessed our situation. It was 3pm would be getting dark in two hours, we had no clue where the trail back to Pollock Bench was, we were tired.....so decided to turn around and head back the way we came in. (Note: we did not see the side trail in which the other hikers came in on as it was not posted, but figured it was around somewhere.) We set a goal to reach and get up the first rock ledge in an hour.
We began retracing our steps back made it to the rock ledge we had just come up and got the dogs down with less difficulty and saw a deer and two hikers that had also passed us coming down the very first decent. Within a short while we made it back to our first down scramble. I had to take a breather here because we had practically been running and by now my feet were screaming at me (wearing for second time new hiking shoes).
Me dragging butt up the rock ledge.
We managed to get the dogs up, Renae lifted them this time butt first, she said they don't fight back as much this way, hummm ok. So it was now around 4:15 and my stomach was also yelling at me so as soon as we made it up the rock ledge I had to poop, so as leave no trace as possible I did my business as quickly as I could. It was starting to get darker and we still had roughly another mile to go to get to the first decent. Renae and I started hiking again both of us trying to keep our minds off our aching bodies. Within about 20 min we could see the first decent and the cool rock formations that we initially took pictures of. It was now about 4:43 when we began making our way up the rocks to level ground. It took me 17 min to get to the top because my body was dragging. Finally to the top, yeah now just 2 miles back to the car.
The sun was down and the sky was changing colors when we made it to the trail fork, 1.5 miles to the car, with lots of down hill uneven ground to cover. Within another .5 miles a hiker couple and their dogs passed us, 1 more mile to the car. Ok back to the initial fence line to enter into Pollock Bench, almost pitch black, .5 miles to car. At this point I asked Renae to get my head lamp out, she put her sweatshirt back on and got her headlamp out. Complete silence the last .5 miles just trying to make it to car, pain, block it, you can do it. We then saw the car in the parking lot and the interior light was on which meant the back door didn't shut completely, meaning that for the last 6.5 hours the car light was on, please start. We made it to the car and I started it up......yeah. Renae watered and loaded the dogs while I painfully pulled off my hiking boots. Off to Grand Junction and Wendy's. Took meds when we got home and then collapsed for the night. Total stats for this little adventure: 8.25 miles hiked, moving time 4 hours 39 minutes, stopped time 1 hour 57 min (of course an hour of that was getting dogs up and down the rocks), total ascent 2153 feet. The complete and udder panic of being lost and having to spend the night in the Canyon: Priceless. This beats our longest hike to date of 7.3 miles in Kannah Creek and brings us that much closer of being able to hike 15 miles for the Bataan Death March in March.
