Big Spring Trailhead is the first place you’ll follow a maintained national park trail. This is the Overlook Trail, which cuts in and out of steep-sided canyons among many mushroom-capped rock towers. Soon it enters the oddly parallel, narrow valleys that streak this region called The Grabens. Leaving the park trail, the route links a few of these valleys via bouldery passes in between and dry washes within. It follows Butler Wash into a more open valley of clustered stone towers and rolling sage meadows.

This leads gradually up in elevation and into a canyon twisting through prehistoric hills. Follow a branch higher until it comes to a head in the sandy cliffs of a high ridgeline. Some slickrock and gully scrambling may be required to exit and get over the ridge. On the other side lies Beef Basin, a broad park dotted with juniper and rimmed by still-higher sandstone cliffs, with the Abajo Mountains closer than ever on the horizon. Going cross-country and along a few dirt roads leads to a traverse along the cliffs of Gypsum Canyon, then to the sage and sand-covered floor of Fable Valley. Unless there’s been recent snow, water is usually hard to come by in this high country except in the form of cattle tanks.

If you’ve found route-finding to be difficult so far, you are in for a real challenge in Youngs Canyon. It has many small drops to scramble down, and a few big dryfalls that require lengthy workarounds. The good news is that water is usually plentiful in pools, or even flowing, within this deep canyon. A small waterfall marks the confluence of Youngs with the even deeper Dark Canyon, which almost always has flowing water.

Continue down Dark, with considerably easier route-finding, to the Sundance Trail which takes grueling switchbacks to the rim. From there, one brief in-and-out scramble through a slickrock-rimmed canyon leads to dirt roads that continue the rest of the way to Hite. Hite Outpost is a possible resupply point with a convenience store, campground, and lodging, reached by a short detour just before crossing the Colorado River. This section ends with the spectacularly tall highway bridge over the river.

Sources: http://www.hayduketrail.org/TheRoute.html http://www.hayduketrail.org/Updates.html http://www.acrossutah.com/wordpress/youngs-canyon/ http://www.acrossutah.com/wordpress/dark-canyon/ https://caltopo.com/m/5J0S