Hike Hard, lessons learned

I prefer to consider myself an Adventure Hiker. Maybe some of my adventures are nothing more than enjoying the scenery but often times it includes some sort of pucker factor. My hike yesterday with my training partner would describe that. We decided to pick up the 40lb rucks and hit the Coon Bluff Rec Area off the Salt River.

Issue #1:  on my last ruck I broke a buckle on my WarHammer pack. Nothing like a fifty cent side release buckle making a $250 pack unusable. As I didn't realize this until I was already a few minutes late leaving the house, I had to madly repack my GR1 with a bundle of 6 bricks, a recharged hydration reservoir and transfer some survival gear. Ruck in hand, off I went. 

We hit the ridge line and then followed an established trail. Then we lost the trail and decided to bushwhack to the river using a wash. The time of day required constant scanning for rattlers and luckily or by throwing a ton of rocks in front of us, we didn't see any. There was some made scrambling down canyon walls and we had to navigate around some standing water sumps along the wash. Man wish I had my gopro for that. 

Issue #2. Rucking in the desert in the summer is hot. Like 105* air temp. But get inside canyons that have soaked up solar heat all day and the ground and side wall temps easily hit 125+ degrees. We sweated our asses off. 

We finally got to the river but realized we had to cross a bamboo swamp to get to it. We decided to tack around it and through an old flood area of downed trees along a cliff face. We hit the river, realize there is no trail, enclosed by cliffs and have to wade up or down stream with our heavy rucks in fast moving water. Eventually we found an egress site, wrung out the socks but had to then climb back up to the ridge line to find a trail. Back to bush whacking. In the desert you don't really bushwhack, its more like avoid cactus. And this time I got nailed. Some teddy bear cholla grabbed my calf and went deep. 

Issue #3. Pulling out fine cactus needles really really hurts. I was able to get about a dozen of the surface barbs and the body off my calf. There remained another dozen of fine barbs still imbedded in my calf and I decided it best to find the trail before a final clean up. Twenty minutes later and each step not feeling great we created a hill and I went to work. What was cool was I had prepped for this for years but never had to do it to myself. I pulled out my Leatherman and used the pliers to pull the barbs from my calf. These were all about a 1/4 inch deep. There remained a few short barbs that I just couldn't clear so I ripped some duct tape off my flashlight, slapped it on, that freaking stung, and ripped it off like a mad waxer. Totally worked. 

(This is not me, nor was the piece I encountered this big. But the

 results were the same. I also wearing shorts. This stuff is no joke)

A bit more bushwhacking to the next ridge and we found the trail which overlooked the parking lot. SAVED. 

Issue #4. We both forgot to bring a celebratory beer for the event. So we drank our now warm water and planned to bring dry socks to all further events. 

Another success adventure. Step it up!