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.