2022-07-31 — Provo Canyon

Spent my whole day up Provo Canyon today up Slide Canyon.

I removed the drain pipes from my old bathtub in the tunnel under the highway. Then I went up and found where the creek disappeared into the ground, and I extended the creek maybe 30 more feet. Unfortunately, I’d need to extend it several hundred yards, I think, to get it back to where it used to be. Must have shifted during one of the big avalanches, sending the water down into the ground instead of along its course down into the tunnel.

After realizing it was going to take more time that I wanted to give to it to get the creek all the way back down to my little shower and bathtub, I gave up and decided to hike up the canyon in a little bit, to the other little bathtub I built.

I was really dehydrated, so it was nice to get up to the water, fill my LifeStraw bottle, and get myself a good long drink.

I spent some time trying to deepen the bathtub, but I won’t have much success overall, unless I add a drain with a drain plug. Overtime, the silt builds up and turns the pool into a muddy silty bottom. With a drain plug, you can periodically pull the drain plug, and wash all the silt down stream, out of the bathtub. I didn’t add one of those, though.

I did, however, once again wear the skin off my fingertips. I did that with the first efforts to increase the distance of the creek, and then worse digging up the floor of the bathtub.

But my escapades didn’t stop there, I went up to my little waterfall that I love so much that comes down the side of slide Canyon on this giant washboard shaped rock wall. There I spent another several hours digging away at the mud and dirt and rock and whatnot that had compacted itself into the base of the waterfall.

After several hours, I successfully extended the waterfall several feet, clearing away the gunk back to bedrock and making the whole thing a bit taller and a bit longer.

I think it looks a little bit more like it did 12 years ago when I first hiked the canyon.

Anyway, not much to tell today. Just enjoyed the canyon and my little water spots. Somebody killed a rattlesnake right where the trail starts. I’m not surprised to see where it was killed: Right where the trail starts, there’s a really big boulder with a good sized little crevice underneath that is perfect for rattlesnakes. Not the best thing to have right at the base of a trail 🙃

I might fill that crevice in so as to reduce the danger of future rattlesnake encounters.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I bought my plane ticket and will be flying back to Arkansas on Tuesday.

Love and hugs.

Lift the World

~ stephen