Utah walkabout: Rattlers, lightning, blisters and bliss

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Just exactly where does a 49-day, 725-mile hike across southern Utah begin?

For greater Los Angeles resident Jamal Green, the adventure started nearly three decades ago at the Grand Canyon.

Green, then an ambitious 9-year-old from Missouri, got a chance to pick the family vacation.

"He told us he wanted to hike the Grand Canyon from the top of the South Rim to the North Rim and back out," said Green's father, Larry. "It was around 50 miles and about 22,000 vertical feet."

Larry and Mary Green, who live in Salt Lake City, didn't want to disappoint their only child, so they went along with the plan, not realizing they were setting a precedent their son would follow into his adult life.

On April 26, Green's parents delivered their son to the Nevada/Utah state line on State Highway 56. On June 16, Green, who had lost 38 pounds in the 49 days, walked to the "Welcome to Colorado" sign on State Highway 46 and back into his parents' arms.

"I was elated to have accomplished my goal. To tell the truth, I really only gave myself a 50/50 chance of making it as I thought there was just so much that could have gone awry during the trek," Green wrote on the daily blog he kept during the walkabout.

Along the way, Green wore out two pairs of hiking boots, nursed blisters and callouses, encountered flash floods, rattlesnakes, bison and lightning. He was thankful for cooler-than-normal weather during his trek, but still had a hard time finding water in the desert during his final days.

The worst incident was an encounter with a stick.

"I was making my way through some deep brush. I got snagged and just could not free myself," he said. "I turned my head and it gave and I took a big stick right to the eye. It knocked me down. I expected blood and gore."

Without a mirror, Green took a picture of his eye with a digital camera and studied the damage.

"There was no gore, but it was bloodshot and under duress," Green said during a recent phone interview. "It is still a little bothersome and I have a doctor appointment to see if there is any permanent damage."

Green averaged 15 miles a day with a couple of 22- and 20-milers thrown in on the journey that took him through the Pine Valley Mountains into Zion National Park, through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Capitol Reef National Park, the Henry Mountains, the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park and finally to the LaSal Mountains east of Moab.

While he covered the vast majority of the hike alone, Green was joined for short stretches by friends from California. Green knows his parents would rather he hiked with companions for safety's sake, but he explains that hiking by himself "makes me even more careful. I take more chances when I'm with other people because I know I have backup."

This wasn't Green's first long distance journey, but it was his longest. He has a project he calls Curb Pavement where he finds the longest unpaved sections of wildlands and hikes them. He had done major hikes in previous years of 283, 176 and 89 miles.

To make his parents -- who served as temporary guardians of his cats -- a little more comfortable, Green carried a satellite phone. The phone also allowed him to send e-mails with information for the blog and his GPS coordinates in case anything happened. Green used a GPS unit to find the nine food caches he stored for his journey. Not one of the caches was disturbed.

At the end of the Day 47 blog, Larry Green, who had been posting the e-mails sent by his son, took a moment to interject.

"Son, your Mother and I are wondering if you've ever thought about finding a new hobby such as macramé, stamp collecting, painting by numbers!!!"

Green expected the trek would take about 47 days and cover 600 miles. He was close on the days, but more than 100 miles short on the distance.

"The Utah landscape is incredible. It was amazing to see the Henry Mountains in one direction and then turn back and see Powell Point and realize that I could walk that distance," Green said. "I learned an appreciation that people can set out to do major tasks and slowly chip away at them and have this amazing accomplishment."

Returning to his desk job as a director of interactive features on DVDs and Blu-rays at 1K Studios in Burbank helped Green recover, but it also made him wonder about other possible adventures including a possible return to the Grand Canyon.

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