Snow Snow

Winter wonderland up here. Snowed this weekend but made for some very sunny, pretty days yesterday and today. Strolled around on rove time today to catch some of the magic.


Snowy sledding adventures may have caused me to break my finger.... hopefully just a sprain but seriously hindering my typing abilities.

Some flora I'm not quite sure of the name of...







The gnarly juniper tree i talk about on my nature walk... What do we get from juniper berries folks?
Gin?
Thats Right... Gin! :)




Roaring springs canyon... a beautiful day and prepping for more snow tomorrow! Should be leaving the Grand Canyon on Sunday but winter weather may force us out sooner... we shall see!

Hidden canyon

Another slow, boring day at the visitor center. Taking a break from Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut is a weirdo, I love it).
Zion on Saturday night. Managed to squeeze three of us in the back of the truck at the hippie campground... good for warmth since it was pretty frigid that night.
Hiked into Hidden Canyon on Sunday. Really cool. Started off with a warmup along the Virgin river. It's still fall in Zion... was quite beautiful.



The "trail" for hidden canyon ends after a mile and a half right near the entrance, but we continued upward for a few hours. Got to a "delightful little arch" (as described in the Zion Canyoneering book.) Jess climbed to the top and rappelled down, so we all took turns doing so. Somewhat blurry picture of Jesse and Suz setting up the rope on right.






Saw two condors just before returning to the mouth of the canyon. They weren't too close but it was still awesome to see them flying... Following each other around and flying in tandem. Very cool.

Goofing off at the end of our hike. Ruining pictures never gets old for me and Suzie.

Snow on the North Rim!

Its Snowing! It snowed the night before last and was just lovely. Only about 2 inches but a lot of it stuck around. Something quite majestic about the canyon rim dusted with pretty white snow.





A Snowy Bright Angel Point Trail yesterday morning. Went out there for a rove and ran into a few more people then I would have expected.










Grand Canyon Lodge. I wouldn't mind a few more inches next time. I like when you can't see ground :)

Went down to Coconino overlook with Suzie after my last VC shift. Funny seeing snow on the North Kaibab trail. And its been nice not associating the canyon with heat and sweat these past couple weeks. An interesting change.

Soap Creek

Back to work. Cold and cloudy up here on the plateau. 50% chance of "frozen mix" tonight... whatever that is. Wouldn't mind waking up to some snow tomorrow though.

Did some biking this weekend with Suzie... Went out to Tiyo point for lunch and headed back. Should probably try to do some more biking.. I was wiped when we got back. No pictures though... too lazy to bring my camera.




Yesterday, made our way off the plateau and down to marble canyon. Went for a hike in Soap Creek, one of the drainages that runs down to the river. Picture on right of one of the boulder-y areas we had to climb around. Quite a bit of scrambling and climbing and even a couple rope descents but a pretty neat traverse.


Only about four miles one way but took us about 3 and a half hours to get down to the river. Had some lunch at Soap Creek rapid (5-6 rating) and headed back up.



A bit of water here and there and lots of mud... Got in a mud fight on the way down to the river. Were pretty messy by the time we made it down there... as you can see from the picture of me and suzie on the left.

Got even muddier when we decided to strip down and jump in a mud pit on the way back up (picture on right). Managed to squeegee off some of the mud and get our clothes back on for the hike out. Pretty messy... needless to say we did get quite a few looks and stares when we stopped at Jacob Lake for dinner.

Happy international anti-whaling day!

No more internet and officially moved out of our little cabin and into a house... Lots of room but not as cozy. Suz and Max are sitll here but Max will be leaving tomorrow I believe.

Never gave an account of Snake Gulch, the hike we did two weeks ago. Tons of petroglyphs and pictographs. Really cool... And they kept getting cooler as we went along. Some were almost 50 ft high on the cliff.

On right... Rooster man! I believe the bird head symbol either represents an eagle or a katchina... either way that was the only one that looked like that and I thought it was neat.




Jesse commented that these guys looked like they were carrying purses or something... upon further research we realized they might actually be heads....










This one is harder to see but you can kind of make out what looks like blood streaming out of the "heads". A rockart book said these are symbols of head hunters... Didn't know the basketweavers were keen on hunting people... interesting.

This past weekend we took Suzie and Max into the canyon. Me suz and max at the trailhead on left. Jesse was still working so we headed down without him.

Explored the cave in the Redwall which was cool... couldn't help thinking of The Descent and the roof caving in on me. A bit scary.

Stayed over night at Roaring Springs bunkhouse and continued down the North Kaibab trail to Ribbon Falls in the morning.

Made it to Upper Ribbon falls (picture on right) just a mile or so past the turnoff for Ribbon. Theres also an Upper Upper Ribbon falls but its pretty far up the canyon... maybe another time.

Climbed around and had a snack.. then headed back down to Ribbon Falls.

View from where we had lunch... right behind the falls. A bit noisy but quite nice.

Back to Roaring springs for dinner and then Jess and I hiked out around 4:30 am on Monday... had to get back to work.... these two day weekends are rough.

Winding down

So the shoulder season has begun. Meaning.... everyone is gone... we're not doing programs anymore and our work schedule mostly consists of us roving around and working in the visitor center. The last week of programs was fun. Spent my last day out at the Walhalla and hiked Cape Final instead of giving a program. Been wanting to do that all season and thought the time had come (considering it was pretty much my last chance to do it on work time)


Cape final pictures above and left.

I had kind of forgotten how spectacular that view is. Probably one of my favorites up here.

Had to book it back to dodge the storm that was rolling in. Got sprinkled on a bit.






Been rather wintery on the NRim... Rainy, cold, foggy... Many disgruntled visitors that traveled so and so many miles to the Grand Canyon and now can't even see it.



Did manage to get out to Point Imperial on rove time before the fog settled in Thursday morning.. there were still clouds doing some pretty cool stuff in the canyon (picture on right)

If only they had the patience to stick it out a little longer to see clouds in the Canyon...

The crappy weather has foiled our plans somewhat as well. A tree was down on the swamp point road so that if we were to go do the North Bass trail (which we were consiering) we would have to walk six extra miles just to get to the trailhead). So instead we might go into the forest and tackle snake gulch tomorrow..

Back to Zion

Storming on the North Rim! Nice cold autumn rains here in Arizona, and in the area this whole weekend. So much that we had a power outtage at the lodge last night.. and still no power at the moment as far as I know... couldn't even do my evening program without electricity so roamed around the lodge in the dark and chatted with some mildly disgruntled visitors. Was actually kind of fun.



Headed to Zion for the weekend. Managed to score a permit for the subway for Sunday... so did the Emerald Pool loop to kill time on Saturday. Poured on us on the way back.



Started hiking at left fork Sunday Morning. First part of the hike is a really steep downhill climb to the creek which you hike along for about a mile or two before you start seeing the neat subway-ish erosional features. Picture on left is the start of the subway and where we posted up for some lunch. Quite nice.




Theres a waterfall a little further up but you had to go for a little swim to see it so we passed... it was cold in there! Plus we entered the boring way. Hoping to get the right gear and come back to do it from the top down with some rapelling and canyoneering (and probably wetsuits)

The standard subway shot on left. Beautiful but almost a bit anticlimactic after hiking the narrows... still cool though!

Went to a BANFF showing of "Radical Reels" on Saturday night where they show some of the extreme sport videos submitted to the film festival. They did a raffle thing half way through and I won a tshirt and waterbottle from Zion Adventure Company! Exciting since I never win anything. The movies were pretty gnarly as well.

Sunday morning hiked up to Observation Point which I must say was a bit brutal. About 3.5 miles uphill to the top of one of the sandstone cliffs wehre you get a pretty nice view of almost the entire park. Started raining on the way up and then rained the whole way back down. Got some nice rainbow action up at the top though (right)

View of Zion from Observation Point. Rainstorms quickly approaching in the distance and the thunder was incredible. Each one went on for about 15 seconds with all the echos off the cliffs. Very impressive but a bit scary as well.

A very condor weekend

The weekends over.. Just got back from a short trip to page to buy some groceries and get refunded for the alternator jess bought on saturday. Condor-heavy weekend this one.

Headed out to the forest on Friday night to have a monster bonfire and pass out early like an old lady cause I got up around 5 for work. What happened to those days when I could function on 2 or 3 hours of sleep with heavy alcohol drinking in between? *sigh

Saturday morning we went out the Vermillion cliffs viewing area to see four new condors get released into the Arizona-Utah area! Very exciting. The viewing area was quite far away from the release site so generally you had to look through intense scopes and binoculars to see anything but it was still really cool.

Condors are the largest soaring land bird in north America and were and still are severely endangered (got down to 9 condors in the wild in teh 80s) picture on right for scale.

There were a bunch of ravens flying around the bait (they tried to lure in some wild condors to set good examples for the ones being released-one that had been relased before and 3 newbies) and once they released them you would see these enormous black figures among the ravens (picture on left- hard to see sorry)... Condors are huge!

Through the scopes you could see them hanging around the pen eating and some of the scopes were even pointed at the nest site... neat.

After we had our fill of viewing condors through telescopes, me Jess and Jake headed to Page for some groceries and an alternator for Jesse's truck (which was still stranded in the forest about an hour or so drive from any major road).

On our way back we tried to hike down badger creek a bit (one of the drainages that feeds into the Colorado river in Marble Canyon .. on right) but were soon thwarted by a pretty impassible drainage cliff that had some rappel anchors next to it. We'll just have to return with the proper equipment and try again :)

Stopped at Navajo bridge today and finally saw some condors there! Lots of 73, 70, F3 and another one whose tag I didn't see.

Number 73 taking flight on left! So cool to see him close up. He was just chilling right underneath us on the bridge for a good 15 minutes or so.

First time I saw condors so up close so it was pretty exicting :). Very funny birds those guys... especially 73 traipsing around underneath the bridge.

Parentals on the North Rim

So the P rents came to Grand Canyon…mostly did the tourist thing all weekend. They rolled in last Friday afternoon right around when I was finishing work. Once again, nice to have people from home out here. We headed out to Bright Angel Point with Jessman who was still on the clock.

Mom and Dad with Canyon in the background on right. Can see a bit of smoke from the prescribed burns they were doing on the South Rim

Satuday morning woke up early for a sunrise out at point imperial. Took a stroll on the Ken Patrick Trail for a few minutes. Smoke/mist had settled in the canyon and it was quite pretty. Headed for breakfast at the lodge (first time all season) and then did some hiking on the Widforss trail.

Finally Made it out to Cape Royal for sunset. Saw an Osprey at Roosevelt point! It was huge! Didn't get a picture though.... a little too far away.

Dragged glady to Angel's window with me. Very proud of her for making it since sits not the easist trip for someone that is morbidly afraid of heights (Picture on Right)

Took the rents out to Point sublime on Sunday…. Aandd the truck died.. about 2 miles past the intersection to point sublime or fire point (which was where we were headed). Luckily we passed some fee guys that were going as we were leaving so Jess and I booked it to the intersection to intersept them… they showed up abuot 2 minutes after we got there and gave the four of us a ride back..lucky. Although snowflake is still sitting dead in the forest.

North Kaibab trail on Monday… Made it down to Supai tunnel and back without any problems.. proud of the old farts for getting down there haha…many people can’t do that. Dinner and bye bye trail boys L The North Rim will be much quiter without those volleyball/bonfire gatherings every 2 weeks and all that jazz.

Gearing up for a campfire in the woods and a condor release tomorrow morning. Should be a gas!

Toroweap

So Toroweap just might be my new favorite place at Grand Canyon. One of the only places (maybe the only one) where you can look down a sheer 3000ft drop to the river. Going to try to keep this one a secret though... I try to make it clear that people's tires won't survive but we learned that about 20,000 people make it out there every year. Kind of a bummer. Thousands of people every year could ruin this place. Sorry but its true.

Went out with Adriana who was on her way to California to work. Picture on right is Vulcan's throne, the volcano at Toroweap that was responsible for creating lava dams in the canyon when it erupted 13 times and helped erode and widen the canyon. Arrived just in time for some great lighting and a breathtaking sunset.

Jesse and Adriana on the Edge... Jesse undoubtedly interpreting some geology for Adriana :)

Sunset looking down river (bottom). Clouds and lighting and everything was beautiful! Very impressive. However, I will continue to tell people that Toroweap is impossible to get to (it is pretty much impossible if you don't have good tires and high clearance) but the experience would be much depleted with lots of people out at the point.

Adriana spotted a tarantula, the first one I've seen here. Cool

Got to the campground and started talking with Charlie, the volunteer out at Toroweap. Funny guy. Has the cutest little cocker spaniel named J Lo... (She has a big ass haha). Campground was pretty cool although I don't think any of us slept that well for some reason. May have been the mysterious mosquitos.

Caught sunrise the next morning (right) with some coffee and breakfast out at the point.

Ran into Todd, the Toroweap Ranger who patrols that half of the canyon on the North Rim. He showed us some places to go to and fed us some watermelon at the Ranger Station.

"Greater Tuweep metropolitan area" on left (thats what the sign says when you drive through it). Consists of the Ranger residence/station, a bunkhouse, bathroom and tool shed. :)

After our watermelon feast we headed out to Kanab Point... 2 hours on some sketchy dirt roads but an interesting view point. Most prominent feature is the esplanade sandstone plateauing out all over the place but you can see a stretch of the river unlike the viewpoints in the forest. Had some lunch and then headed out. Was a bit hot out there and getting late.

Jesse at Kanab point...

Caution: Geologist at work. Complete with topo maps and a gin and tonic. Essential materials in the field.

More truck trouble on the way back. Busted a break line right before Fredonia (lucky that it wasn't earlier I suppose). We parted ways with Adriana, talked some truck business and found a place to post up for the night.

Breakline pieces weren't abailable in Kanab... Had to wait for a piece from Denver. Alan and Judy, two peeps that work up here were also getting their vehicle worked on and offered to give us a ride back up to the rim... Paid our dues by helping them out on their property right near Zion which is going to be a banging spot once they get everything they want done.

Now the parents are here. Doing the tourist thing to give them the North Rim experience.

On the Res

Once again...slacking with this thing. my bad. Picture of me on the right at Crazy Jug Point, in the forest. We went there last weekend after taking the forest road back from Fredonia. Cool drive and a really nice view point. Attempted to climb down to the peninsula outcrop but I chickened out. steep scrambling, wearing chacos, about to get dark... I was cool getting half way and watching Jesse and Jake do it.

Anyway...halfway through the week on the North Rim. I may have met George Hayduke the other night (at least the guy that Edward Abbey based George Hayduke off of) which excites me very much.

This past weekend we went down to Marble Canyon to meet Addy, then made our way down to the Hopi Reservation. Addy was going to run in the 37th annual Louis Tewanima race. Louis Tewanima was a Hopi Indian who got shipped off to the Carlisle Indian School in PA and started running track there. He competed in the 1908, 1912, and 1916 olympics... won the silver in 1912 and actually set an American record that wasn't broken until about 60 years later by another Native American, Billy Mills broke it. So every year on the Hopi Res they have a series of runs to commemorate him. Pretty cool. Louis Tewanima didn't understand competitive running so his coach would basically point out the guy in first and Louis would run and beat him

"Me run fast good, all Hopi run fast good" -Tewanima.... All Hopi run fast good because it was a tradition that they would wake up every morning and run toward the sunrise to pray. And damn those Hopi are fast.

Anyway, somehow Jesse thought it would be a good idea for us to run too... a 10k. We were both rather ill-prepared for it to say the least. I ran in my hiking boots and Jess ran in his Chacos... but we finished. Jess might have been able to win a medal if he didn't wait for me at the top of the gnarly last hill (running uphill in sand, and then basically running up these 2ft stone steps...killer). But we finished! Addy came in second in our age group which was pretty awesome... I think 4th or 5th overall for the women.

Checked out some Hopi Butterfly dances afterward. Beautiful...

Headed into Flag and hung out on Sunday. Got lunch and wandered about with Addy and her Dad. Jess and I went up to Snowbowl and camped for the night... Then climbed Humphrey's peak in the morning. Hymphreys is the tallest peak in Arizona, about 12633 ft to be exact. Picture on the left is the trail signs for humphreys. It was about 4.8 miles to the very top. Super windy at the saddle where that photo was taken. Miraculously it didn't hold up at the very top.. although they did have these little structures built as shelters against the wind.

I was feeling it at the top. Both the climb and the altitude. But we got there.... and I took a nap at the top haha. We also whipped out oysters, cheese and crackers for a little feast. Its nice to be done with crappy hiking food and now we can feast.

Picture of me on the right at the very top. Cool Climb but definitely a challenge... and probably not the best idea after running a 10k hopi trail race...

Rim Job

Kaibab mating season wouldn't be at the end of the summer would it? They've been out and about quite a bit this past week... Anyway had my first couple days in full-on ranger uniform and flat hat. Look goofy...but have been told I just might be the cutest ranger some people have ever seen...and have gotten my picture taken much more than usual. haha

Soo...Hiked across the canyon this weekend...twice. Started out late Friday night around 8:30 and hiked down the North Kaibab trail with Addy and Jess.

Picture of the three of us at the trailhead.

Made it down to Phantom Ranch (14 miles) by around 3:30 am. Stayed at the Phantom Ranch Trail crew bunkhouse.. which I must say is quite nice. Air ocnditioning and a full kitchen, showers and flushing toilets. Kind of cheating for a backpacking trip but I think its ok if you're going to be hiking almost 50 miles in 3 days... Full on Rim Job.

Hung out most of the day in the ac (was over 100 degrees at the bottom... too hot to be outside, hiking, or doing anything really). Ate some of the good food we brought down, read, napped, chilled... Then set out around 4:30 pm. Just a few minutes into it we came across a little kid by himself on the trail. We started talking to him (which was difficult cause he was so out of it) and realized that he had come down the Bright Angel trail with a group of people, and he had gone ahead of them. This kid was probably about 8... was carrying no water and was completely dry. This is one thing that always amazes me when people come here. How they just don't get it. The Bright Angel Trail is more than 9 miles down and the farther you go, the hotter it gets. We found this kid around 4:30 which means his group probably started walking in the late morning and maybe even as late as noon. Stupid. Addy and I walked him tabk to the canteen to get him some food and water. I tried to tell him to get into the creek to cool off and he told me that the adults he was with told him not to go in the water....ok.... maybe its alright to tell young children to not go swimming in the creeks... but if you're going to be hiking in the canyon during the day during the hot months you need to stay wet. Jesus. Anyway we stayed with him giving him our water and gatorade, an dhis group that Jesse had gone ahead to find came around 15 minutes later. About 6 or 7 other YOUNG kids and a few adults... all really out of it an dobviously really dehydrated. Stupid.

Anyway, picture of Silver Bridge on Bright Angel Trail on Left.

Made it up to Indian Garden in a couple hours, anice little oasis halfway down the canyon. Made dinner at the bunkhouse and hten did the last 4.5 miles up. Brutal. But hiking in the moonlight was delightful. Jake, NPS river crew guy, met us at the trailhead and had been shining his crazy powerful spotlight on us for the last mile or so of the hike. Jesse mentioned that he felt like frodo with that light searching for us and I had to agree. Haha

Spent the night and day up on the grim rim as Jessica calls it... stayed inside recuperating. Sunday Evening me and Jesse headed down the South Kaibab trail around 6PM. Addy stayed to chill and take the shuttle back.

South Kaibab is an AWESOME trail. A bit of a trade off because there isn't any water on it... but seven miles down to Phantom and no mules! (except the very last stretch).. Which makes a huge difference. Hiking and not having to worry about dodging mule doody is very nice.

We were able to catch a spectacular sunset and stop for a beer with two guys a little ways down. Relatively uneventufl except the beautiful sunset and then four Russian dudes we ran into more than half way down that were coming up form the river and carrying nothing ubt cameras (Not even a water bottle). People are crazy.

Two South Kaibab sunset pictures below

Woke up late the next morning (set the alarm for pm not am) and headed out around 8. Kind of late but the box wasn't too hot and we made it to Ribbon Falls just as it was starting to heat up real nice. Stayed there for a few hours, basking, eating and talking to people.




Picture of me in front of the falls just before we left. Lovely little stop in the middle of the hostile, unforgiving canyon.

Made our way to Cottonwood Campground in the afternoon and finally saw a Grand Canyon Pink Rattlesnake! (On right) Silius said it was probably Gary, the super chill pinky that hangs out around cottonwood and never rattles or bothers anyone. Typical pinky behavior.



Continued on and checked out the gauntlet... natural waterslides in the tapeats sandstone near roaring psrings. Was a bit too cold to go for a it but definitely want to get down there again soon. The first waterslide looked pretty gnarly but fun.

Headed up. Got dark and hiked in the moonlight around supai tunnel (two miles down). By far the worst part of the trip. Difficult, sandy, steep and mule poopy. Its trails like that that make me wish they would just phase the mules out. or make mule-only trails.

Picture of me at the North Kaibab Trailhead just to give you an idea of how tough those last few miles were...and how sweaty I got.

Great weekend. Challenging, but we were definitely proud of ourselves for completing the full on Rim-to-rim-to-rim (Rim Job) of Grand Canyon :)