Trip Report: Quick & Dirty
Here’s a couple snapshots of a little overnight diddy on the Dirty. A few weeks ago my buddy Jack and I headed out to Poison Springs to run the Dirty Devil. Our original plan was to park at Poison Springs, hike up to Happy Canyon, put in around there, and boat our way down to the muddy chutes. Mother nature, as always, had other plans though, and we after some killer 30+mph headwinds, we turned this little shin-dig into an overnight.
On Wednesday morning, Jack and I wrapped up some burritos to toss on the engine block and headed down Poison Springs Road in Jack’s 4Runner. Besides a fun little puddle, the road to Poison Springs wasn’t as bad as anticipated (our friends reported making it just fine in a RAV4). It took us a little less than 90 minutes to make it to the river. Also, we found a herd of cows that adopted a lost sheep?!
After a few minutes fussing with packs and our last poops, we headed up the ridge line and across to the old Poison Springs road. Jack and I discovered a different BLM road and small parking area at the top of the old road, so if you wanted to cut off hiking the ridge, you could park here. For the next 5-something miles we meandered across a well graded BLM road that is no longer in use from several major slides. We found the cairns marking the trail down to the river, and boogied our way down a steep, but easy to follow trail to the river.
Jack coming up over the ridge, Dirty Devil River is mid-right photo. Check out that Sockdolager Demo Pack!
Happy Canyon was incredible. We meandered for about 90 minutes, going a little more than a mile into the canyon, where we didn’t feel like wading across a deep puddle. I don’t think it’s even worth trying to describe the canyon, as many before me have done it better, so here’s some photos instead:
Day 2 started with high hopes of several more days on the river, but the head winds picked up pretty early in the day, and we had pretty much decided by around 12:00pm we were going to bail. Alas, the volatile nature of the desert!
