Hiking The Keet Seel Trail - Pt 1

Posted At : September 9, 2009 7:43 PM | Posted By : Adam Benson
Related Categories: Vacation and Travel

By Adam Benson

The Way it Started

Wednesday morning started with a hectic bunch of phone calls that began pouring in about an hour before I got up. I already had a pretty full plate for the rest of the week, but now I was suddenly being asked to bid on a job that required me to up and drop everything for a six and a half hour drive to Gallup, New Mexico. I had a couple of bombs to defuse. My girlfriend Michelle was in Sacramento and needed to get picked up from the airport the next day. We have a cat that needs daily doses of medicine; I'd have to find someone to administer the cat-juice. I had two jobs that needed to be finished by Friday. I had a teaching gig that I had just accepted that I'd have to re-schedule the orientation for. And the trash needed to be taken out. I spent all morning making all the pieces fall in place only to lose the bid to a kid willing to work for almost nothing.

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Hiking The Keet Seel Trail - Pt 2

Posted At : September 9, 2009 7:36 PM | Posted By : Adam Benson
Related Categories: Vacation and Travel

The Waterfall - Continued

Even though we were nearly out of water, sunburned and in pain we didn't complain. We had a goal, and we were determined to make it. We knew we were close, but that doesn't mean that our spirits weren't getting down. Every time we got closer it felt like we hadn't made any progress at all. By now, Michelle had developed a healthy limp and I was beginning to walk like John Wayne. We finally came to another waterfall. It wasn't listed in the orientation and it also marked a fork in the canyon. We dropped our packs and got out the map. The map showed a tiny waterfall legend very near to our destination, but the scale was misleading. We scouted around a bit trying to figure out which one of the two arms of the canyon we were supposed to follow. In this regard the map was a bit confusing. It showed the ruins residing in a small arm off to the west, with a main arm continuing north, and just such a situation existed where we were currently scouting, but there were no ruins in the small arm to our west, no ranger station, and no campgrounds. This could not have been it after all. Another disappointment, but now which way were we supposed to go? Just as we were about to break down and scream we noticed footprints in the mud heading north. That was our path. It must be close!