7 October 2023
Upper Jump to Cathedral Butte Trailhead
(14 miles).

As you may already know about me, I really like thru-hiking because it means you don’t have to go back to the same place twice.

But I was so happy today to revisit everything and explore the corners we had left unexplored. It was easily my favorite day on a trip where every day has been wonderful.

We started this morning with what we thought would be a short trip up a use trail in the pocket above our campsite.

But soon we were drawn higher up onto the granite slabs leading to a saddle with a view of the next pocket north.

We soon hatched a plan to explore the next pocket and then drop into it until we reached the cliff ruins we found yesterday above our campsite.

We were quite surprised to find a small granary well off the beaten path.

The terrain became more complex. We frequently had to backtrack to find ways to continue into the pocket.

And, of course, there was yet another arch!

It took us three tries, but we finally found a ravine without a 50 foot drop on the way down to the wash at the bottom of the pocket. We followed it down and then stayed to the south of the wash to get back to camp.

Back at camp, we packed up and then dropped our things at “the pothole” so we could explore the pocket north of Four Faces. We found one small ruin, but otherwise the pocket was beautiful merely for it’s Nature-made features.

We returned to “The Pothole”, tanked up on water, and then headed south on the trail.

We could see some ruins on the walls in the pocket south of Four Faces, so we made our way cross country to go have a closer look.

After exploring that pocket we returned to trail. As we passed All American Man again, we discovered that we had walked right under a big ruin that we completely missed yesterday.

And then we neared some ruins that we saw on the way up that were way off trail. We decided to see if there was a way to cross Salt Creek so we could reach them.

It turned out to be easier than we expected, but still a bit of a slog with all the Russian Thistle and our constant attempts to avoid stepping on cryptogamic soil.

These ruins were really cool because they were so far off trail. There were no footprints anywhere, giving them an extremely isolated feel. It may have been months since anyone was last here.

But then they got even cooler, because a bigger and better preserved set lay just above in the pocket.

And the art was fantastic! It was hard to photograph because we could not climb up to them and the angle of the sun made for sharp contrasts between dark and light. But some of the photographs did come out.

These were by far my favorite ruins. We took a long lunch in the shade before bushwhacking back to trail.

When we got back to Kirk’s Cabin, ChiaGlyph wanted to try one more off-trail adventure to some ruins across Salt Creek that he saw through his binoculars the first day.

I originally thought I would join him, but I was tired so I decided to stay perched at the top of the walls of Salt Creek. He dove into the brush below.

It was a bit comical (for me anyway, since I was resting and watching!). I lost sight of him for the 20 minutes that it took him to cross to the other side. But I could kind of tell where he was by the shaking of the brush.

He called out to me to say something, so he could use echolocation to navigate. It was like a wacky game of “Marco, Polo!”

I told him he was 20% across. He said “no way!”

Way.

But eventually he did emerge on the other side.

And he took some fabulous photos of the ruins there.

He was a little faster on the way back across Salt Wash, and soon he emerged victorious.

We stopped briefly at the nearby water source to tank up, and then we were back on trail, racing the sun back to the trailhead.

We reached the National Park Boundary around 6pm.

From there it was a 1,000 foot climb.

But there was an IPA from Outer Range Brewing for both of us at the top!