Once we reached the Esplanade, the hiking became much easier.  All we had to do was contour around all the side drainages until we got to south arm of Scotty's Hollow.   After about an hour of hiking on the Esplanade, I started getting pains in my mid back -- not in the center, but closer to my kidneys.  The farther I hiked, the more painful it got.  The only thing that seemed to make it feel better was double over.  I would stop every hundred yards or so and then bend over to get some relief.  By the time we were approaching the south arm of Scotty's, the pain was becoming debilitating.  The pain was now both in my back and gut.

We stopped at a flat slickrock area and decided to stop there and look for water.  I waited while Ben hiked down a side drainage.  He soon returned with the news that there was a small pothole with maybe only 2 or 3 gallons of water.  But that would do, so we decided to stay put and set up camp.  We could see down into the main south arm of Scotty's but didn't see any water.

We didn't need the pothole water until dinner.  It was a pretty gross pothole, very shallow with lots of organic material.  We strained out all the large pieces, then disinfected it.  I filtered a quart for drinking and discovered that it tasted awful -- very bitter.  We wondered whether this taste could come from arsenic (later learned that arsenic is basically tasteless).  It was so bitter than it pretty much ruined our freeze-dried dinners. 

If I was laying down or sitting, my back pain almost disappeared.  So I was able to sleep pretty well.

As usual, I listened to an audio book for a while after going to bed.  I continued to listen to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari.