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...