The third day was our longest hiking day.  Down the canyon, we reached the hard Chinle sandstone formation and had to navigate slanted, narrow stone benches. We came to the last reliable spring which was basically a steady drip.  We filled our containers with water which made our packs heavier. In the later afternoon, the canyon widened out significantly and we left the canyon bottom and followed a trail which climbed hundreds of feet above the creek.  For a small section, the trail traversed the steep side of a very soft formation with the trail narrowing down to the width of a boot. Finally, in the evening we climbed over a pass, and on the pass, the evening light was golden on the distant rock.s We came down to the low plain where the canyon was very wide.. Exhausted, we set up our camp by a large boulder and by the only scraggly cottonwood.