The sky is clear, the winds light. The crickets and canyon wrens are all singing. A hummingbird keeps visiting these beautiful red flowers by us, and the moon should be full tonight. Ah, the good life.
- Mike Coronella's journal, May 10, Day 52Joe "Mitch" Mitchell and Mike Coronella had a dream: a backpacking adventure unlike any other. They wanted to chart and negotiate a canyon-, plateau- and mountain-country hike across southern Utah that would link the state's five national parks - and cover a good deal of spectacular terrain in between.
Unlike 99 percent of all other big dreamers, give or take a few, they made sure theirs came true.
Over a period of 94 days, between March 20 and June 21 - "the first day of spring to the summer solstice," as Coronella put it - the two men trekked, by their count, 515 miles from Arches National Park through Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon to Zion National Park. They were abetted by Glenn Purpura, Coronella's roommate, who delivered supplies at designated drop points.
"He was the gravy train," Mitchell said.
In winterlike blizzards, bright spring sun and just about every other weather concoction imaginable, they hiked, waded, scrambled and skied. They came across cliffside settlements of the ancient Anasazi and forgotten camps of old-time cowboys, the latter littered with horseshoes, cans and whiskey bottles. Sometimes they would see no one else for days on end; occasionally they'd run into people out for a weekend in the more accessible canyons of the Colorado Plateau.
In a black 9 1/4-by-6 1/4-inch sketchbook, Mitchell, 28, a Heber City resident and jewelry maker, created color and pencil drawings along the way, depicting expansive landscapes and receding bluffs, desert flowers and wildlife, ancient pictographs and details of broken Anasazi pottery. He also made brief notes in a day log of the trip. Meanwhile, in a series of blue spiral notebooks, Coronella, 34, a Salt Lake photography instructor who captured hundreds of images during the trek, kept a daily journal.
Coupled with their memories, they may have enough documentation for a book, or the beginnings of new careers as professional outdoor artists, writers or guides. They certainly have colorful stories to tell on sofas and around campfires for years to come.
For instance, said Mitchell, there's the unmapped arch they came across in the Butler Wash area on April 7.
"It looks like it may be our discovery," Coronella said. "We want to call it `Seldom Seen Arch' " - a sly reference to Seldom Seen Smith, a character in Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang," as well as to the span's apparent obscurity.
In the same region, approaching Beef Basin near the Abajo Mountains, they followed what they supposed a faint game trail. But, Coronella noted in his journal, it turned out to be "a predator trail. More specifically cougar."
They saw tracks, big and little; bones and evidence that a cougar had just dragged its meal to a more private spot. "We had interrupted them while they were eating dinner," Coronella said.
"As far as we could tell, they had a pretty good stronghold there," said Mitchell.
"And a pretty good menu, too," his partner added.
Then there was the weather.
"We didn't know how long the trip would take, what kinds of barriers we'd run into," Coronella said. So they built into their schedule plenty of time. That's why it took three months - though the trek could have been a month shorter. ("There was no hurry," Coronella said - and much to see.) And since they would be crossing a great deal of desert, the availability of water was also a factor, one that made spring the best season to make the attempt.
As everyone in Utah recalls, this was a wet and changeable spring. Coronella and Mitchell experienced that changeability firsthand. Some days it rained and rained; on others it snowed.
"It was a crazy spring," Mitchell said.
When the two hiked through some high country, "it snowed 23 days in a row, late March into early April," Coronella said.
"We were prepared," Mitchell added.
"We had the kind of gear you need for any kind of weather - but we didn't expect it to snow so consistently," said Coronella.
One night was particularly memorable. They were hiking along the Dark Canyon plateau; the wind was howling, and both men were cold and tired.
"We came around a bend and saw some Anasazi sites," said Coronella. Someone, probably cowboys decades ago, had also built a shelter there, putting in cots and windows. They decided to spend a night under the rock.
On Easter morning they awoke to falling snow.
They lay in relative luxury upon the old cots in their sleeping bags, "watching the snow, eating our breakfast," Mitchell said.
In the year of planning before setting out, the two hikers had broken their trek down into a dozen sections of five to 12 days; most were nine. At the end of each section they would meet up with Purpura, their supply man, who was equipped with a well-marked "Utah Atlas & Gazetteer" upon which was taped a compass.
Every rendezvous went off without a hitch.
"It was amazing," Mitchell said.
"He found his way, we found our way," said Coronella.
"He'd bring down a barbecue every time and a cooler full of beer to keep us going, and fresh fruit and vegetables," Mitchell said. They loaded up on prepared packages of food, stuffed into old pickle containers, washed clothes and took an outdoor shower if possible in extra water Purpura brought along - and sometimes briefly enjoyed the company of other friends.
At one such encounter, on U-95 south of Hanksville, they also picked up skis (for Coronella) and a snowboard (for Mitchell).
Instead of avoiding the Henry Mountains, they were aiming for white-capped Mount Ellen for, as Coronella phrased it, "a chance to do some downhill action." They spent three nights there - "the only time we spent three nights in one place.
"We skied it for a couple of days, and it was great," he said. One in particular Coronella remembers as the highlight of the trip.
"I woke up early in the morning to the most colorful morning I'd ever seen," the sun rising to spectacular effect over the LaSal Mountains, now far to the east. "And then while I was watching the sunrise, there's a bison hanging out by me, and that's cool. Then we went out and I skied a couple of runs, and that's cool. On our way we saw a bobcat. . . . Then I was just hanging out, writing in the journal and writing a few letters - and then we saw this killer sunset."
Coronella and Mitchell witnessed southern Utah in ways few people get to these days.
They verified for themselves the beauty of the Needles, the Cockscomb, the Pink Cliffs, Dark Canyon and Coyote Gulch. They crossed torturous talus slopes in tight spots like the canyons of the Dirty Devil and the Escalante, fighting tooth and nail through the scrub sometimes, keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes, scorpions and quicksand. They crossed broad and sometimes battered landscapes in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; dealt with a lingering abdominal bug of some sort in the Kodachrome Basin and Bryce - yet made it all the way from Arches to Zion.
Over the course of 94 days, the hikers say, they touched pavement only two or three times; at one point they went beneath a modern roadway simply to avoid it.
They've mapped a course that, with some adjustments, they think would make a workable if epic trail for others to follow through Utah from national park to national park to national park, linking dozens of drainages and plateaus through country they would like to both promote and protect.
They would like to call it the George Washington Hayduke Trail - again after an anarchic backcountry character in "The Monkey Wrench Gang." "But we wonder about the rights to that," Coronella said.
And perhaps, if they can pull savings, sponsorship and schedules together, they'll head back and add another leg to the trip - Round 2 - possibly another 500 miles, another three months.
Maybe, they say, "the Hayduke" could be a loop.
For more information about Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella, their backgrounds and their goals, check out their "Wild Utah" Website at (www.whatshere.com).