Down And Up Again: A Grand Canyon Holiday - Across I

We rise (mostly) with the lightening of the sky; there is little point in getting up before then as due to the changing season, the sunrise will not start until after 0600, there is no point in rising earlier, and inherent thoughtfulness for one’s neighbors prevent one from stirring for no reason.

The sunrise though, does not disappoint.

While we have the first cup of coffee (Via by Starbucks in the single serving; works remarkably well) we tear down our camp. It takes maybe ten minutes, but is quickly done – amazing how having little makes you quicker. After a round of breakfast sandwiches and topping off our water bottles, we continue down the Red Canyon.

We are in a wash now, which gently slopes downward, the steep inclines and narrow trails of the day before a recent memory. As we continue on, a sound begins to break out, followed by a sighting. The Hance Rapids of the Colorado River are before us.

The River is wide and green colored, flowing swiftly but not so cold as the snow-fed rivers of my youth. It contrasts brilliantly against the backdrop of the Canyon walls.

We see some kayakers that pull up ahead of us and pull off, then troop down to look at the Rapids. We have a short conversation with them. They are kind and polite, asking how long we have been down and where we are going. This sort of conversation becomes the norm for the few people we see on the entire trip – two yesterday, the kayakers plus six more today and two tomorrow: there is a sort of shared communion among those in the Canyon that is different than that of the outer world.

After watching the kayakers take a crack at the Rapids – one succeeds, one fails and is overturned – we begin our hike up the River, weaving along its banks until we begin to pull away on what is now The Escalante Trail. The River will be the center of our universe for the next two days as we weave back and forth to its banks, the Escalante Trail our guide.

As we pull away, we continue to move inland until we reach the Papago Slide: a 200 foot or so rock slide from the Canyon wall, in which we come up halfway. We are to go up the Slide – a collection of rocks, scree, and dirt – and then cross over to the other side, where we will crawl down the Papago Wall.

We have to go in two groups; I stay behind with the second group as it is the slower group and I have decided to bring up the rear. We wait patiently for the first group to climb up; when we get the signal, it is our turn.

There are two theories in going up the Slide: go close together (to minimize the gathered speed of falling items) or to go far apart (to allow the dodging of falling items). We elect for the former and begin the climb.

Among my many fears, I have two: heights and unstable surfaces. The Papago Slide offers both in spades. Fortunately, I am spared the horror of constantly looking down: my face is directly looking at the slide before me and the feet and hands of the climber before me. I am forcing myself to lean forward into the slide, trying to counterweight the backpack which I imagine to be much heavier than I think, ever sensitive to the potential of the surface below me shifting. Slowly, we crawl from rock to rock and move up the Slide – until 100 yards later and perhaps 10 minutes (it certainly seemed longer) we emerge on the top and slowly make our way across the wall to the Papago Wall.

The Papago Wall, by contrast, holds little fear at this point: with the careful placement of hands and feet, it is relatively easy to conquer. A challenge which in my mind would have insurmountable before is a moderately tame inconvenience.

We continue on a bit in the hike until we reach 75 Mile Canyon, so named as it is at the 75^th mile on the River.

The Canyon is a slot canyon, a narrow version of the water action that we see writ large before us overhead. In it, one can directly see the smaller application of the larger geologic forces around us.

We make our way back in it, slowly wending and winding our way up until we arrive at the end of the Canyon, where we have to go up and out. We work our way back along the top of the Canyon we just walked through – even with this, we are 30 or more feet above the floor.

After another gentle descent, we end at Escalante Beach.

Escalante Beach is not like other river beaches I can recall, small spits of rock or coarse sand: this is a white sandy beach with green water and waves rolling up to its shore, the equal of any good ocean beach I have seen. This will be our stop for the night.

After setting up their tents, some members of our party hop into the River for a swim or at least a rinse – although almost everyone immediately hops back out as well; the River is a bit cool. I have failed to bring shorts or a swim suit (but should do so next time); I content myself with dangling my feet in the River.

Dinner tonight is fajitas, which taste delicious – as does everything on this trip; hunger, as the Irish say, makes a fine sauce. We again go around in a circle to call out our wins and losses; almost everyone is excited that they conquered the Papago Slide. I am as well, although I start out by again mentioning the fact that I, once again, did not die.

Again tonight, we have a clear sky of bright stars, but it is combined with a river provides background noise not in the form of waves on the shore, as I am used to on the ocean, but rather a constant steady motion and roar in the background.

Rain, if you will, except on a grander scale.

Down And Up Again: A Grand Canyon Holiday - Down

 We depart the hotel at 0500 in two vehicles, a van with most of the party and a truck, which will be left near where we come out of the Canyon so we can easily get the vehicle. My brother-in-law and I take the truck, putting us with Storyteller.

I ask him how he got to doing this – I am always interested in people who seem to be living their dream. In his case, he grew up hiking and came to Flagstaff to hike and work. He started leading tours and worked as an electrician until he realized that if he wanted to just be a guide, now was the time. And so he went full time into guiding – this was his 25^th trip into the Canyon in 2021, and he had just come out of the Canyon the day before.

I admire people that have the courage to live their dreams.

As we drive the 90 minutes to the Grand Canyon, the darkness which hides the pine forests gives way to the darkness of the desert as we enter the Navajo Nation. We start gaining elevation as we go up, past the semi-permanent tourist booths, until we catch sight of the edge of the Canyon.

After entering the park – there is no-one else behind us – we stop at the Desert View Watchtower for a bathroom break and a quick breakfast. This will be the last bathroom we see for four days. We drive on to the trail head, passing two small herds of doe Elk and their half-grown offspring. I had no idea there were elk here.

The trail head for the New Hance Trail is not a remarkable thing, a pullout to the side of road with no sign. It is done, the Commissioner tells us, to essentially keep away the unprepared. They go to drop off the van and the truck off, leaving us to patiently wait in the cool morning air.

They return. We shoulder up our packs, grab our hiking poles, and head out, the world – and the InterWeb – dropping off behind us as soon as we leave the rim.

From the top of the trail, the Canyon stretches out before us, looking all the world like it does from any of the view points. The Commissioner starts down, and we follow.

I quickly learn that the New Hance is not really a trail, but a route – the difference being that trails are maintained, while routes are not. The path itself is literally about two of my feet wide. One rapidly learns to spending most of one’s time looking down at the path and the place one’s neighbor has just been. The pack is an unconscious weight on my back.

The down becomes steeper as we step along paths that two days previous I would have said were fit only for mountain goats. We are (I come to learn) traversing the side of the Canyon, slowly moving along a side of it. The walls are not steep, but looking to my left all one sees is down. I learn to lean towards the cliff to avoid overbalancing.

The world becomes a haze of walking looking down, stepping over and down. We stop to take water breaks and look around – Storyteller encourages us to do so from time to time, to remember why we are actually here. The Canyon continues to open up as we go down farther, the formation called Coronado rising to our right.

We stop for lunch, an affair of jerky, almonds, dried apricots, and string cheese. This is food I love anyway, so finding an excuse to eat it is delightful. We eat there, in the shadow of the Canyon, packs off and taking photos of the grandeur around us.

The rocks that were just bands at the top have begun to resolve themselves into layers: red, yellow, orange, green, pink, even purple. Coming from lands of deeper soils, I am hard pressed to think of a time I have seen rocks in such an array of color. Rocks are to the Grand Canyon what loam is to the Great Plains: Ever present, underlying everything.

After lunch, we start the Red Wall Descent, so named as we are descending through a red layer of rock. This is another time of high attention, careful step and pole placement, and looking twice as one steps. At some point I suspect all of us go down on our butts. It is steep, but eventually it bottoms us out into Red Rock Canyon.

By the time we reach near the base of the Canyon, shadows are beginning to draw out. We have had an accident: one of the hikers has fallen and although there are no broken bones, it has definitely slowed them down. We will camp here in the Red Rock Canyon and make the Colorado River tomorrow morning.

The Commissioner and Storyteller have a routine in place: Storyteller goes down to the seep at the base of the campsite – the first water we have seen outside of our own supplies today – and begins the process of filling the filter bags, hanging them, and then filtering the water into recycled Arizona Iced Tea jugs. This will become a staple of our time making camp or resting anywhere there is water available. The Commissioner pulls out his cooking gear – a Jet Boil, a coffee pot, a small gas burner with a frying pan and pot and wrap around aluminum circle to retain the heat – and begins preparing dinner. These will be our sole cooking gear this trip.

As they cook and prepare, we set up our campsites. The tent they have lent me is quite east to assemble and within 10 minutes I am assembled, pad down, and sleeping bag in place. The ability to drive stakes into the ground is non-extant as we are essentially on solid rock. After set up, we wander about a bit, looking at the red rock which gives this campsite is name.

My feet have developed to blisters, one on each heel. This is an odd place for them to develop. I wonder if it has to do with how I was placing my feet as I came downhill.

Dinner tonight is pasta with pesto and tomatoes. After dinner is served, we go around in a circle giving our “roses and thorns” – those things that we liked or went well, and those things that did not. For me, my number one rose is that I did not die. Everyone laughs when I say this.

I laugh too. A bit.

After dinner, we sit out and watch the stars a bit – stars that are so many as I have not seen in many years. We are exhausted as well and as there is no light except for headlamps, we are all in bed by 7 PM.

It is not a restful night. The wind howls through repeatedly, blowing my tent up and almost halfway over – were it not for my own weight, it would have gone farther. It takes out my brother-in-law’s tent, and I see his red headlamp trying to reassemble it. The wind does not go away but insists on remaining with us throughout the night. I am bowled over more than once.

But looking up, the stars are glorious.

Down And Up Again: A Grand Canyon Holiday - Prologue

 In July, my brother-in-law and were talking when out of the blue, he asked if I would consider going on a hike in the Grand Canyon.

I had not seen the Grand Canyon in almost 40 years, when - as a newly minted teenager - we made the Grand Trek that many families do, stopping by as part of the long trip to or from family in other places.  I am sure that somewhere buried in a photo processing envelope somewhere in the house, there are my attempts to record it from the parking lot.

But that was about all the thought I had given it.  It was far away, and there were plenty of other things to see.

The company my brother in law was considering going with was one he had used for a previous hike and vouched for.  An attraction was that they could provide the equipment one would need:  backpack, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tent. And, they would provide all food and cooking.  I just had to bring clothes and incidentals.

I had not really thought about hiking before in this light - and the Grand Canyon somehow sounded like a very long hike indeed:  4 days, 3 nights.

Somehow, I found myself saying "Yes".

Hiking sounds a lot like needing to train.  So I called my trainer, The Berserker, and told him what I was planning.

"Get a weight vest" he said.  I felt confident, as I had just purchased one.

"Use the Stairmaster at the training center" he said.  I again felt confident, as I had started doing that as well.

"I will put something extra in your program" he said.  That, I felt not so comfortable about.

I do not know that the "extra" ever occurred - perhaps his program was brutal enough already.  And so I Stairmastered and trained and walked with my weight vest, trying to average one or two miles a day with Poppy the Brave, undoubtedly looking like a potential threat to my neighbors striding around in what conceivably could appear as a bullet proof vest in low light.  

Perhaps surprisingly, no-one called the police.

Flagstaff airport - our departure point - is a small airport, perhaps the smallest one I have been to in my life.  The Waiting Area may be as big as my house; the luggage carousel is something from a 1950's airport - and, no paid parking at the airport.  But the ride sharing services are there and sure enough, my brother-in-law and I arrived - early - for the day.  It is hard, of course, when you are in town for a day preparing for something which is at the back of your mind and out of the main part of town.  We ate, watched a movie, pulled things out of our suitcases - he his backpack, I my stuff.  We waited.

Prior to the meet up with the group, the main guide came by our room with my backpack.  Nice fellow, younger than me ( more and more are, these days), we went through what I was proposing to bring.  I had overpacked (not surprisingly I suppose; I always do. My fear of being cold overrules everything) and 10 minutes had us down to a more "minimalistic" load.  I started packing as we waited to meet our team.

We met in the lobby of the hotel, that awkward sort of meeting that any group of strangers has prior to doing an activity that will effectively put them in close proximity for the next four days.  We were a mixed group: two older women in their sixties, hiking friends; a mother and her teenage son (he with a a broken wrist; they had decided on this trip during The Plague lockdown); a young woman in her late twenties who just liked the idea; a couple about my age on their first "empty nest" trip, our two guides (hereafter called by their trail names, The Coordinator and Storyteller), and my brother-in-law and I.  We had the basic introduction circle, followed by the plan of attack for the morning:  We would leave at 0500 and drive about 90 minutes to the trail head.

Dinner was in the hotel that night - a bit overpriced as it always is in such places, but the salad I had was good and the blueberry sour beer I had excellent and unexpected.  One last round of fiber before four days of who knew what kind of dietary experience.

If you were to ask me, that night, if I was concerned or scared, I would have told you no.  For better or worse, I had consciously not researched the trip.  I wanted to go into it with a clear mind and no preconceptions.

Other than it sounded like a lot of walking.

A Charmed Life

 Even though my time at The Ranch was brief this trip, I still saw a great deal of magic:

Not one but two coyotes marched passed:

I need to seal the back door off more: The little lizards were under the towel I put there to block the air, seeking warmth:

Not sure what this is:  A vole?  I have never seen one before.

The deer are becoming brazen:

These appear in Winter.  I have not idea what the are:  Frost bits?  Leaf Skeletons?  Magic?

When sharing all this with a friend, she commented "You lead a charmed life".

I really do.