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.