Water Issues

In Bryce Canyon National Park a Ranger regularly checks on the water sources and when I picked up my backcountry permit I received an updated status on most of the streams and springs along my hike.

Blue Dot Means Water

My route through Grand Staircase Escalante wasn’t an established hiking trail, so I had to rely on my maps to find water. As I didn’t know how old the maps were, I couldn’t be sure about the accuracy. I filled up all my water bottles before leaving Bryce.

The Last Clear Water

There was no water at Lick Wash, nor at the Lefevre Cabin and I continued on to a place called Molly’s Nipple (no joke!) as there was supposed to be a seasonal lake with two springs.

Molly’s Nipple

Even though my map said the area was part of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, I found a fence with a closed  gate that said Private Property. There wasn’t really any other water source for many miles and my water wouldn’t last me through the following day. So I hopped the fence and approached the area that showed the water sources on my map. The lake turned out to be converted into permanent grazing land and the springs were now nasty looking cow ponds, surrounded by mud and cow pies. I approached the larger of the two ponds. A young horse was nearby and eyed me curiously. Some cows stared at me from a distance. I waded through the muck and cow pies to the waters edge. It was murky and had some bluish substance floating on its surface, together with plenty of dead insects. Then I heard a threatening sound and spun around. Mama Horse had arrived. I don’t know much about horses, but I could definitely tell this one was angry. I retreated under a thorny bush and waited for both horses to wander off. One cow came near and just kept staring at me, but it too wandered off as it started to get dark. 

Yuck

Less than a week ago I was enjoying amazing food and drinks in Las Vegas and now I was competing with an angry horse and a cow for some murky water! I went back to the pond, tried unsuccessfully to blow away the bluish substance and the dead bugs and filled my water bottle. I squeezed the liquid through my filter and repeated the process to get another liter.

I left the ranch the same way I came and set up camp nearby. Even after filtering the liquid retained a suspicious yellow-green color. What if this wasn’t a watering hole but the collective animal toilet? And the cow and the horse had tried to warn me? I sighed, poured the liquid in the pot, lit the stove and cooked dinner.

My main water source on the following day was an algae filled cattle trough, but given my recent experience I saw this as a vast improvement.

An Improvement 

One day later two climbers looked down on me curiously from a giant rock wall as I was poking around a bone dry sand dune where my map showed Pigeon Spring. I found neither water nor pigeons. Luckily there was ample water in a big puddle when I continued hiking up Buckskin Wash.

I wouldn’t order it in a bar, but… 

I was sinking almost to my ankles into sticky clay when I approached it, but that seemed a small price to pay.

The End Of Ultralight 

On my last day hiking Grand Staircase Escalante I was confronted with a completely different problem. I had camped on a hill near the puddle to have a safe water source, but it rained overnight upstream and when I woke up the gulch was a fast flowing stream of red sediment laden rain water. There was far too much sediment in there to filter and using this water would have required letting it settle for a day or so.

Great Water At The Wave

I had already filled my bottles the night before and carried enough water to get to the terminus of the Arizona Trail. This is a popular trail and there is up to date information on water sources as well as amazing trail angels that deposit water and little surprises for hikers along the way. My water troubles ended for good.

Thank You, Trail Angels!