As printed on the site
Water notes dated 2008
The updates page is headed as Ryan Choi's 2008 notes. Each block is tied to one of the fourteen sections, often with a mile mark and a page number, and the water lines are marked as such. Dates printed on the notes run from March-April 2008 through July 2008. One Willow Spring line is signed June 2008.
The homepage says the site is a place for the condition and rating of water sources. The condition report that is actually printed is this 2008 page. The updates page is the source. Nothing below refreshes it.
How the notes are built
A typical line gives a mile, sometimes a page number, then a route correction or a water sentence. The page numbers point at a book the notes do not name in the line itself. The links page lists The Hayduke Trail Guidebook among its information links. These notes do not assert that every page number is that book. They only say the updates page cites pages, and the links page names a guidebook.
The Abbey line at the top of the updates page reads: the idea of wilderness needs no defence, it only needs defenders. The spelling defence is the page's. Under it, the notes are practical and local: a footbridge, a dry spring, a scree slope, a stock tank.
The route page remains the course. Where Choi corrects a junction, the correction is his note, with his mile mark. It does not silently replace the route page's paragraph. A water mark on the page is a label on a 2008 line. It is not a promise that the seep is there now. The date stays on the line.
Springs he dated, section by section
On section 1, March-April 2008, he wrote that a new footbridge just upriver could replace a crossing on the Highway 191 bridge. Willow Spring had a good trickle. Courthouse Wash flowed to the Colorado except for a short dry stretch above the Arches bridge. Matrimony Spring and Kane Spring were good. On section 2, April 2008, the dripping spring was no longer piped and sat in a puddle. Lockhart had a faint trickle. Indian Creek was flowing.
On section 3, July 2008, South Spring was dry. Lower Fable Valley had no running water, with a small seep about half a mile up from where the pack trail hits the valley floor, and Fable Spring three miles up called reliable in that note. No water in the bottom of Young's Canyon. A flowing spring in the reeds before Dark Canyon was, in his words, the first water since Fable Valley. Dark Canyon itself had good water the whole way down. On section 4, April 2008, good water at a piped masonry spring, and a warning to veer left on the debris into Fiddler Cove because the scree near the pinnacles drops off.
On section 5 he reported good water in Crescent Creek, snowmelt in Sweetwater Creek that disappeared at a road, and a creek on Swap Mesa, plus a mudhole he called manky. Those are samples of how specific the page is, and how firmly it is stuck in 2008. The Arches-to-Hite note and the Henry Mountains note point back here rather than repeat every line.
The line that says do not drink
On section 13, at his mile 77.1, the June 2008 note says Willow Spring is more than unreliable. It says the spring is marked and designated as highly alkali and radioactive, and it says do not drink. That sentence is left intact. It is not expanded into a medical claim, and it is not retired by silence. It is also not offered as a test performed for this page.
The same section's other water lines talk about potholes, Tapeats Canyon, and Kanab Creek. They are easy to blur into the Willow Spring sentence. They should not be. The do-not-drink line is about Willow Spring. The route page's section 13 paragraph, from Swamp Point to Hack Canyon, does not mention that spring at all. A reader who only has the route page will not see the warning. A reader of the updates page will.
Section 14's July 2008 note is a different kind of caution. Fat Man's Misery is called very loose and unstable. Stock tanks on the way to Yellowstone Spring may hold muddy water. The note asks that the rancher's water system there be respected, and it describes tunnels and a pump in the hillside. That is a 2008 description of someone else's water, not permission to use it.
What the page is not
It is not a thru-hike from this year. The journals listed at the bottom of the updates page run from Brian Frankle in 2005 through Carrot Quinn and Kate Hoch in 2016, with Erin Saver, Katherine Cook, Brian and Martina, Lisa Curry and James Fackler, Nicolas Barth, Richard Larson, Brian Tanzman, Pace, Aria Zoner, Ryan Choi, and Justin Lichter and Shawn Forrey among the names. The links page's journal list overlaps that one and is not identical. It includes Fireweed and Trekker Bob in 2015, and Spiderwoman in 2014, and it does not repeat every 2016 name. Both lists are rolls of other people's trips. Neither list is a condition report.
The homepage's promise of a resupply strategy is not fulfilled by these water lines. Resupply towns are not printed on the updates page. The homepage note says that plainly: the strategy is named, not spelled out as a town list in these pages. Writing to the printed address does not change a June 2008 spring.
Mile marks in the notes do not always match a clean reading of the route page's section mileage, because the notes are comments on a guidebook's pages. Using a note's mile 29 as if it were mile 29 of a fresh odometer, without the book the note cites, is exactly the mistake the route page's insufficiency sentence is about.
Where to go next on this site
For the course, use the route page, or the mileage list that copies its fourteen figures and no others. For the parks in order, use the six-parks note. For the pictures the site already captioned, use the gallery: send new ones, if that is the aim, to info@hayduketrail.org with a name and a caption, which is the gallery's own request. The dates on the springs stay 2008 until another page, dated in its own words, says otherwise.
For maps, the maps page's overview links do not open, because the drawing files are not being served. The links page names the guidebook, the Skurka bundle, Li Branfors' maps and tracks, and Buck 30's 2013 data. Those titles are the page's recommendation, not files hosted here.
Joe Mitchell remains the contact the homepage and the links page name, creator and co-founder, at the same address. Writing to that address does not update a 2008 spring. The notes stay 2008 until a later page, dated in its own words, says otherwise. This one does not.
Questions
Whose notes are on the updates page?
Ryan Choi's, from 2008. The page title says so. Individual lines are signed March-April, April, June, or July 2008. They are not a current water report.
Which spring does the page say not to drink?
Willow Spring, on the section 13 note, June 2008. The sentence says the spring is marked as highly alkali and radioactive. Other springs in that note are described separately and are not that warning.
Do the trail journals update the water?
No. The updates page and the links page list journals by hiker and year, from 2005 into 2016. The list is a list of trips. It does not replace the dated spring lines.