Devil's Garden (Moab, day 2)

Wow, talk about a crazy adventure! On Friday, we started hiking at 9am. Five hours later, we were dirty, exhausted, sunburned, and so proud of ourselves for experiencing the most intense hike I've ever been on - including a couple hours of being lost! But it was so much fun!
We entered "Devil's Garden", anticipating the 7 mile round-trip hike would be pushing it with our time-frame, but we were sure we could do it (or at least Renaud was!)

The loop we wanted to hike was called "Primitive Trail". I didn't think much about the name of it - or of the fact that a sign warned "Difficult". How hard could it be? We assumed it said "difficult" because of the thick desert-like sand that made it more tiring to tread through. "Oh, how they've under-estimated us!" I remember thinking. Silly me...

The first mile and a half wasn't a problem. But then we came across what I like to refer to as the "Lake of Death". Our path was cut off by a small pond of water gathered between two sheets of rock. Sure, we could have waded through the murkiness, but who wants to do that at the beginning of a hike? So we decided to climb on the rock above it. Ok, so the pictures don't really do it justice, but it was scary! It wasn't so much high, but it was really slanted and the rock was so smooth that there were very little grooves to dig into for support.

Making it half-way through wasn't too bad..

We almost lost Milan at one point, who started to slide down the rock. Fortunately, Nicole grabbed her with her cat-like reflexes and saved her (Poor Milan's tummy was scratched and she was sad for a time, but she eventually toughened right back up).

Some of us didn't fair as well. Here's the part that makes all of us bust out laughing in memory: So there I was, 3/4 of the way across the rock when I suddenly realized I was going to fall. My cheap running shoes had very little tread, and I'd lost hold of any grooves in the rock, not to mention my pack wasn't helping with gravity on it's side! I started to panic and out of instinct, threw my body flat against the rock so that I was completely sprawled against it, desperately pushing all my weight into it to keep from slipping. My mom had a pretty steady stance where she was at and immediately grabbed my legs to support me (As you can see, Renaud was real concerned as he snapped pictures of the whole thing!)

I was too afraid to stand up. So, still pressed against the rock I inched myself side-ways, laughing hysterically in my panicked-state, until I reached safety! Oh, it was a comical scene I will never forget! Really, if I had looked over my LEFT shoulder, I might have realized that firm ground was within reaching distance sooner than I felt!

Anyway, everyone else made it across with no further incidents or even a hint of difficulty. Great. What a wimp I felt like!

That was only the beginning. From there, the path disappeared and we were left to wonder which way to the unmarked trail. Sure, there were some trail-head markers made out of a pile of rocks here and there...but they continued to become more and more sparse and difficult to find.

This wall was a little scary, too, because it was a big drop-off into rocks if we fell. And keeping my track-record in mind, I was a little nervous!

Whew! We did it!

The view was amazing all the way through. But I think it was around this point that we lost track of the trail. Because we started doing a lot of this:

We had to climb up and under rocks and trees and didn't see any signs that we were on the right path. But for some reason, we kept going because the sign did say "difficult". Maybe that included very few trail markers... It felt so great to support and help one another though.

Empty river-bed.

At this point, we had to step down into that narrow crack onto an old tree branch to hop down there.

Milan's face says it all. This is about the point we became lost the FIRST time. We were facing a wall of ginormous rock and we could see some people at the very top where it plateaued. But we had no idea how to get up there! Actually... I take that back. We had lots of ideas and attempts at climbing the steep dirt and rocks, but to no avail! We kept following "footprints" and thinking that if so many others had walked that path, it must be correct. Nope. Just lots of people leading us astray! (I couldn't help but make lots of analogies to life during this hike. As a recreation therapist, it's what I do!) So then I thought maybe Robert Frost was right: "...I took the road less traveled by, and that made all the difference."

That tower of rocks is how high we were trying to climb to get to the top. We'd come so far that this HAD to be the way! How could we have come so far in the wrong direction? Fortunately, we ran into a female hiker who seemed experienced with her apparel and gadgets she carried. She showed us another path she had found. It was steep and strenuous as we dug our heels into loose dirt and pulled on tree branches to help us up, trying to ignore the burning pain in our muscles...

We had to take a couple breathers. I was so proud of my mom! 54 and young, that's for sure! She was such a trooper! Amazing woman...

And these kids absolutely blew me away! They complained very little and worked just as hard or harder than all the adults. This view from the top shows how high we had climbed. And we were almost there! Until we weren't. We could see a gap between the rocks and if we could just get over to them, we were sure we could haul ourselves up and join the other hikers we had seen up there. But the path turned out to be impossible. We couldn't jump across the dangerous opening, and even if we could, a hiker above us informed us we would definitely need a rope to get up the rock. We were all exhausted and somewhat devastated. How much more satisfying our work would have been if we could have reached the top right then! So the woman we had run into that we were sure couldn't have been "just by chance", was in fact, just as lost as we were and by no means the guardian angel we all secretly assumed her to be!

Still, Renaud found this cool mini-cave near the top.

So, we made our descent. As we headed back in the original destination we had come from, we suddenly discovered why it was called, "Devil's Garden" - because we were stuck in a twilight zone in hell and couldn't get out!! Somehow, in a way we could not fully comprehend, we ended up back at a spot we had been to hours before (about 14 pictures back!). For the length we had traveled, we were utterly baffled how we made it to this spot in the short amount of time. But it ended up being helpful (perhaps a blessing in disguise) because we were tired of being lost, and decided it was best we just back-track the way we had come - which sent tremors of trepidation up my spine at the thought of crossing back over the "Lake of Death"! Fortunately, I made it over with much more finesse.

As we passed other hikers, we couldn't help say to ourselves, "They have NO idea what we've just done!... and NO idea what they're in for!" I suppose we could have warned them.. but we were too tired to strike up that conversation.

So, around 2pm and five hours later, we made it out safely. By the time we made it back to the cars, we estimated we'd covered 6 miles. The sign we're pointing at says, "Primitive Trail. Difficult Hike." How I'd like to add the word "extremely" to that sign!