North Bass Trail

Headed out to Swamp Point yet again.. this time to do the North Bass Trail. Happened upon three days off with Jesse for the first time since June so we ditched our Wave permit and decided to go backpacking.

Lots of creek walking and boulder-hopping so the hike took much longer than expected to get down. We had just gotten to the Tonto by noon when it was getting pretty hot.
Luckily the clouds rolled in and we had some nice cloud cover for the last stretch of descent through the Tapeats Sandstone down to the creek.

First view of Shimumo creek.. glorious! You can hear it pretty clearly from up there and all you want to do is run down to it and get wet.
Ended up lounging by the creek for a while.. napping, snacking and cooling off. Not much else to do in the middle of the day down at the bottom.


Our campsite on right. Set up camp and our little tarp/tent just before the rain rolled in. It stopped long enough for us to venture out, make dinner and watch the bats, birds, and dragonflies feast on all the mosquitos (really cool)... But then the storm continued most of the night.

Ronnie Dean... The rattlesnake that hung out at the edge of our camp for most of the night and morning. Named him after Ron from GCA and the story he told about a young woman naming her newborn child after him when he "helped deliver it"... An extreme exaggeration he told some fellow deputies after they gave him crap for delivering a baby hahaha.

Headed down to the river and ran into some fish biologists on a Humpback Chub trip. They told us to go down to the river and eat some trout... so we did. Stopped to check out Bass's camp for a moment as well.



View from a little terrace we had to climb up to before we descended to the river.

Made it to the NPS camp to find none other than our river ranger friend manning the place (lounging in the shade reading a book). So we chilled on the beach, ate trout, chatted... and then he lead us downstream back to Shinumo Creek where we jumped off a little pouroff into a pool. FUN! Although the climb back up was a bit ridiculous so we only did it once.

Got poured on on the way back which was refreshing... and made for a beautiful double rainbow upon our return to camp.




Next day made breakfast and headed back up via White Creek. More creek walking and boulder hopping. Twas a bit tough and time consuming.









Made it to the slotty canyon part and out just as it started raining.. Perfect timing!









Huge boulder at the top of the canyon... just another reminder of how scary flash floods are! That thing was about the size of a smart car haha.
Slowly but surely continued the hike out. Got clouded out and rained on which was perfect! Made for a much cooler, more comfortable hike... And listening to Thunder booming and echoing throughout the canyon is amazing.


Finally made it up to Swamp point around 6pm. It was cold up here! But beautiful. Turned out to be a pretty perfect hike.. good weather, smoked trout, cool rocks and scenery... can't beat it.

Cape Royal Sunrise

Had my friends up to the North Rim last weekend... they left Monday morning around 5am... and Jess and I figured since we probably wouldn't be awake that early for a while, we would take advantage and head out to Cape Royal for our first Cape Royal sunrise.

Picture on Left is our little stretch of Colorado River from Cape Royal. I have a sneaky feeling that most people don't even see it when they go there (on account of all the people that ask me where it is when I'm roving at the point).



Wotan's trone in the early dawn light. The sunrise was beautiful but I must say the coolest thing I saw was a Perigrine Falcon going after a bat in the air right above me and then briefly landing on the railing about 8 feet in front of me. So brief that I didn't even have time to think about grabbing my camera. Was still in shock a few seconds after he flew away.




Freya castle and I believe Apollo and Venus temples in the distance. Forgot who's responsible for the Germanic/Norse names but I believe Freya was the goddess who transported souls that died in Wotan's service to the Walhalla (Norse heaven). Some mythology for you.
You can sort of make out Jesse standing at a little overhang taking pictures on the left.

Got out to Jesse's overhang too. View of Wotan's throne and Vishnu temple from there. Quite lovely.

Powell Plateau

Apologies for the delay... haven't been taking too many pictures and thus not having anything terribly exciting to display on here. Going to backtrack a bit. The weekend before last, I only had one day off... So Jesse and I headed to Swamp point after I was done work. A huge thunderstorm was raging just as we were leaving and we stopped in the meadows to watch the lightning... Made it out near the point and slept in the truck while the storm was raging around us. Intense!

A stormy night made for a beautiful morning out on the point.
Our plan was to hike up to Powell Plateau and Dutton Point. All the points on the plateau are named after the early geologists and surveyers of the Grand Canyon area. Dutton is a lot of people's favorite. He's responsible for all the Eastern names and some of the most beautiful scientific writing to describe the Geology of the Southwest.



Stopped to admire all the fossils (on right). Huge slabs (called fossil hashes) covered in crinoids, sponges, bryozoans, corals... So cool!


Also stopped to check out "Teddy's Cabin".. named because Teddy Roosevelt slept in that area when he went mountain lion hunting on the Powell Plateau but the cabin wasn't built until a few years later. Still a neat spot though. Apparently it has been a refuge for tired hikers for a very long time (There was a log in there that we browsed through and added to).

Came across lots of ruins and pottery shards. Picture on right is a nice big corrugated piece. There were tons of them! Lots of Lithics too. Supposedly there are metates (rock slabs for corn grinding) as well but we didn't come across any in our 7 mile stretch.



Stopped and had a snack on this huge ponderosa pine tree- Jesse for scale. Possibly the largest ponderosa I've seen here.




The trail ended but the beefalo have done an excellent job of creating their own trails so we didn't have much touble going the extra un-trailed stretch to Dutton Point.
It was beautiful! Big stretch of river, huge open canyon... lovely view.



Coming back up from the saddle at 2pm in direct sunlight was pretty tough... and hot! The only time I can think of when I actually asked Jesse to spit water in my face. Nice day though.