Harvey Butchart’s Hiking Log, Volume 4
October 5, 1974 - Summer 1987
Table of contents | Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 | Index
To conduct a full-text search of this volume, use the Find in Page Command (Control-F or under "Edit" in your browser's menu). For a complete chronological listing of trails and locations, please see Table of contents. For alphabetical listing of trails and locations, please see Index.
Butchart annotated a series of hiking maps, including western and eastern half of the Grand Canyon and others from throughout the Grand Canyon region that are also available.
Wayne Tomasi, a Grand Canyon hiking enthusiast, prepared the following version of Dr. Harvey Butchart's hiking log. Wayne spent hundreds of hours reading, typing, and editing the hiking logs housed at the Northern Arizona University Cline Library. This edited version of the Butchart hiking logs includes only hikes in the area that Harvey and Wayne mutually agreed to call Grand Canyon Country. This Country includes the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, the Little Colorado River Gorge, the Pria River Gorge and Plateau, Lake Powell, and Lake Mead. Wayne notes that his transcription of Butchart’s logs begins with Harvey’s brief introduction of backpacking. Harvey's description of Little Colorado River exploration has been moved to the beginning. Finally, a section of Butchart’s earliest logs, written by Harvey from memory, are segregated under a heading of 'Protologs.'
Use of the Butchart logs is restricted to non-commercial use only. Any reproduction and/or distribution of the logs (either the original Butchart logs or Wayne Tomasi's edited version) requires permission of the NAU Cline Library.
Copyright Arizona Board of Regents. All rights reserved.
Inscription overhang Grapevine Canyon
[October 5, 1974]
Bob Dye and a correspondent had told me of an interesting overhang with names inscribed just west of the Tonto Trail where it crosses the Grapevine tributary south of Lyell Butte. Three weeks ago I had gone down there and had looked for it in the Tapeats gorge east of the Tonto Trail. I had forgotten that Bob had said it was west of the trail, and I assumed that a good overhang would be found downstream in the Tapeats cliff. The log for 9/21/74 tells of my effort then.
Now, armed with a map marked by Dye, and answers to questions about location, I felt sure that I could go right to the place. Two NAU students, Dave Grede and Phil Strawther, gladly accepted my invitation to go along. Tom Wahlquist was interested, but he preferred going with Bill Reitveld on an overnight backpack. We got off early on Saturday and were at the permit desk a bit after 8:00 a.m. It was 8:45 when we started down the Grandview Trail. The weather was fine and we soon were leaving the trail along the ridge to the north in the Coconino. Just before we left the trail, we exchanged greetings with a young military airman, Jerry Jury, who was on a solo overnight trip to Horseshoe Mesa.
I led Phil and Dave down the talus to where the bed of Grapevine cuts through the top Supai cliff. Mostly we stayed in the bed, but now and then we would get a bit to the east. At the place where huge Supai blocks form a big drop in the bed, we detoured to the west. I believe this is better than the detour we had used before to the east.
I was 20 feet away from the others at the top of the Redwall when I came on a rattlesnake. It hadn't rattled and it hid its head in a crevice without trying to get away or showing any tendency to fight. It would have been easy to kill this rattler, but my attitude toward them has changed over the years. We just looked at it with interest.
I remembered all the moves in the climb down the Redwall at the big drop, but it still seemed rather hairy. Phil had never done anything like this, and he was glad to have me go first and show him the moves. He and Dave did it all right, although I think they needed more courage to do it than I. On the way back, I built some small cairns to indicate the route. There were burro droppings at the very base of this Redwall descent, but I don't think they can come up the cliff by this route. I feel sure that bighorn sheep could get down here but possibly they couldn't get up.
On the way down the wash we saw one burro and on the way back we came on a group of five. We were able to follow their trail down the canyon most of the time, but to avoid the mass of grapevines we had to be content with a meager trace of a trail on the slide rock for part of the way. When we came to the very narrow part of the bed in the Tapeats where water was flowing and the bottom was choked with willows, we tried to follow the burro trail on the slope above the bed. When the trail went back into the narrows we went down too. The boys were very much impressed with the narrow and deep Tapeats gorge that broadens out where the Tonto Trail crosses. The Maxon geologic map shows the fault that explains 200 feet of Tapeats above the Bright Angel Shale where the Tonto Trail crosses.
We left the bed of Grapevine and followed the trail to where it crosses the tributary south of Lyell Butte. The overhang was apparent from some distance and we went right to it. The sand surface under the projection is only about four feet above the streambed and it wouldn't be a safe place during a flood. Red clay has formed a coating over the sandstone on the ceiling and the upper part of the wall. Perhaps this was where spray from a flood dried as it hit, and the lower part of the wall had the deposit washed away. The main inscriptions were the names, P.D. Berry, R.H. Cameron, April 20, 1890, and Hotel de Willow Creek.
It took us three hours and 10 minutes to get there from the car and over five hours to climb out. Phil had knee cramps.
Redwall at Mile 50 and lower Saddle Canyon
[November 9, 1974 to November 11, 1974]
Summer before last I had walked up the river from Nankoweap and had climbed nearly through the difficult part of the Redwall at Mile 50. I must have had an off day because I gave up the attempt at a place that should not have stopped me. I wanted another chance at this reputed Redwall route, and I also wanted to see the Redwall gorge in lower Saddle Canyon. Billingsley had told me that this was really a beauty spot.
Since we had a three day weekend, I figured that I could do these things from the approach via the Eminence Break Route. I could also have approached these projects from the end of the road in Houserock Valley on the west side of the river. There had been snow and wet weather recently, and I preferred the greater ease of driving out to the Eminence Break Route. Dave Grede asked if he could go along. When I explained that I would be away from him for at least a full day, he asked whether he could bring his roommate, Ed Bryles, so that they could have each other's company while I was gone. I readily agreed, although I probably should have made a bit more sure that Ed would be able to take this rather rough going.
We got started promptly at 6:30 a.m. and were ready to turn off the highway at Cedar Ridge in two hours. I still haven't learned the road to Tatahatso Point for sure, and this time I took a turn that got me too far north. Well before I got to the base of Shinumo Altar, I turned south and came to a three dwelling spread, an old style hogan, a rectangular frame shack, and a modern board built hogan of eight sides painted a classy blue. Here I swung to the west and was soon on the right road to Black Spot Reservoir and Tatahatso Point. The recent precipitation had muddled the bed of the stock tank, but it hadn't flooded the road. We made it across without using four wheel drive. This time I parked the vehicle above the steep rocky grade down to the head of the trail under Fallen Tower Bridge. It is less than 100 yards of extra walking, and I considered this worth the need to use four wheel drive to get up the bad and steep road.
After all the times I have used this route, I headed down the two wrong breaks from the rim. The right one is the break in the rim farthest east of the three, and it is marked by a rather inconspicuous cairn. Grede and I soon found that Ed was making hard work of the descent. He and Dave both started more loose rocks rolling than I did, and Ed didn't seem to be in very strong hiking condition. We had to wait for him rather frequently. I nearly missed the fossil footprints and had to come back up a few yards to show them to the boys. We took the turn out of the streambed below a couple of the top cliffs of Supai Sandstone on the left. This turn over on the ledge is well marked by a couple of cairns. I believe I built the first one here, but others going down this way have vastly improved my markings. We passed the mushroom rock on its pedestal of clay and rubble and went down the ridge for a short way and then contoured to the south to descend the talus through the Supai. We kept out of the streambed until we were down below some of the Redwall. Cairns now point one out of the bed up the little ravine to the south. Dave found a good rain pool in the bed nearby. We went on south and descended to the river on the old deer trail that had a few cairns before I found this route in 1963.
Ed was too tired to think about going any farther than a campsite at the river, and I said goodbye to both of the boys when the final stretch to the river was obvious. We had eaten an early lunch near the top of the Redwall, and it was 1:15 p.m. when I reached the river. I went downstream along the bank but soon found the way blocked by water up to a minor cliff. However, I found a deer trail going up around these places. For almost an hour and a half I was up on the deer trail away from the river. I was beginning to worry about whether I would be able to get down to water for camping. Finally, I came to a spur trail that seemed to lead down. I could even see a ring of rocks that might have been a human shelter at one time, but the way was so steep and precarious that I decided to look farther for a better way down.
About 15 minutes later I came to a better way, but even so it requires care. While I was following the deer trail on the side hill slope above the bare shale cliff, I was thrilled to see a big doe. It would bound away and then wait and then bound away again. There were a good many fresh deer tracks and droppings. After I got down to the beach I was able to make quite good progress behind the tamarisk thickets for about a half hour until I was opposite Triple Alcoves. Here the cliff ran down into the water again, and a very vague deer trail went up very high. I could see that the slope that would support a trail was getting narrower, and I was more and more sure that the best walking was on the other side of the river. Although it was only 3:15, I decided to make camp and cross the river in the morning. I had a good campsite on dry sand at the base of the cliff and no mice bothering my food. In the night I heard a faint scraping sound. Both on my side of the river and on the right bank there were fresh beaver cuttings, so perhaps this sound was a beaver at work.
By 6:45 a.m. on Sunday I was through my breakfast and blowing up the new little boat. I carried my shoes and canteen and lunch in a day pack as I lay prone on the boat. My bare feet stuck out at the stern from the knees down, but they didn't get wet except while I was launching and landing. I can't propel it as fast as I can an air mattress, but at least I stayed dry and warm. The deer trail on the right side of the river was if anything better established than the one on the left. It had taken two hours to walk the left bank from Mile 43.9 to Mile 46.5 and now it took another two hours to walk from there to Mile 49.9. I noticed a few places where surveyors have painted rocks with yellow markings denoting the elevation or pointing to a bench mark. I had crossed the river by 7:00 a.m. and by 7:15 a.m. I was on my way south. By 9:15 I was down to the familiar canyon that leads up through the Redwall. I found everything as described in my log for 5/29/73. The night before I came on this trip, I had looked at my pictures of the two places that had made me turn back.
Since the day was cool and it was only 9:15 when I started up, I had left my day pack with the lunch at the bottom. This time I tried climbing alongside the chockstone that had baffled me almost a year and a half ago. I found that there were enough good holds and I went up successfully. After a short easy scramble I came to a place where I had to get into another narrow crack. Getting into it from one side was harder than what I had done at the chock, but the crack itself was safe and easy. After a few yards of upgrade walking at the top of the crack, I could turn to the east and climb rather easily through some ledges. I feel that I could have gone on to the top of the Redwall in this direction, but instead I walked a side hill slope to the right and came to where I could get down easily into the main drainage above the big drop. From here there are all sorts of ways to go to the top of the Redwall and I chose to go west and come out where I knew I had passed in the night of 12/20/69. When I was ready for the return to the river, I resolved to see what the other place was like, the route at the end of the ledge where I had stopped last year. It was easy to find the route, especially since I had seen it from above as I was going up this time. You leave the bed and scramble up to the east just before the big drop. I found myself going too high but I could look back and see the place where it is possible to get to a narrow slope going over to the ravine opposite where I had quit last year. When I got to this place, I could see a perfectly safe way down to the bed of the ravine and then an even easier way presented itself to climb up to where I stood in 1973. I had already done worse things to get here. This is by quite a margin the better way through the Redwall in this side canyon.
On the way back upriver, I took 35 minutes to look into the canyon at Mile 49.3. I had to get up through a couple of chutes in the shale and I didn't go as far as I could have gone with more time. However, I am sure that one cannot get up through the Redwall here. Huge rocks and slide material have fallen from the rim.
A mile or so downriver from Saddle Canyon, I noted a running stream that makes a small volume fall of 40 feet or so. A little stream stayed above ground down to the river. At another place I noticed a wet streak on the rock with some drippings from the wall.
I hadn't allowed a great deal of time to see lower Saddle Canyon and still get back across the river to my pack, but I started up with the resolution to turn back in 30 minutes. After a short walk up the bed, I came to the place where huge rocks from a landslide have made the bed no good for travel. I bypassed this by going up the slide on the north side. There are no difficulties but walking is slow over such rough material. When I got near the top I could look across to the south side and see a well defined deer trail. This upper valley rivals Elves Chasm for beauty and vegetation. There is a running stream lined with monkey flowers, and some of these scarlet blossoms were blooming on November 10. The trail weaves back and forth across the little stream, and it amazes me that it is so well defined. I saw some human footprints along here and going back down the trail to the river, no doubt still showing from one of the last boat parties. I got to the end of the trail, to where the bed becomes bare rock forming a mere notch entirely filled by the stream. If I had had the time to take off my shoes and wade, I could have gone farther. It was easy to come down the deer trail, now marked by a few cairns.
While I was following the deer trail through the thickets near the river, I saw a fine mule deer stag bounding ahead of me. It had a magnificent rack of antlers. This must be a favorite wintering ground for a number of deer from the plateau. I am sure they would have no trouble doing the route through the canyon at Mile 50, or they could come up here from Nankoweap. I suppose they can still swim the river even though it must be harder with the water so much colder than before the dam in Glen Canyon.
Euler told me about a route through the higher cliffs somewhere south of Saddle Canyon and Mitchell and Graham also pinpointed it for me on a map. It isn't far from the Redwall route at Mile 50, so it would likely be a more convenient route for the prehistoric Indians to cross the river than the Nankoweap Eminence Break Route.
After another good night opposite Triple Alcoves, I walked back to the way out in two hours and then took far longer than my former time to get from the river to the rim. This time I used four and a half hours. The college boys had spent the first night in the Redwall gulch where Grede had seen the water. They got up to the car about 10:30 a.m. and were cheering me on when I arrived about 1:40 p.m.
The weather bureau had predicted showers and snow for the entire three days, so we were particularly pleased when the sky turned as clear as a bell and stayed that way with no wind at all. It was a most satisfactory trip with my two main projects accomplished. In addition I had gone a short distance up another canyon at Mile 49.3, and when I was nearing the base of the trail out, I happened to go down toward the river off the main deer trail and chanced on the grave of Willie Taylor. What a grand place to be buried! I took a close up shot of the bronze plaque.
Fiske Butte
[November 16, 1974]
Al Doty wanted a good hike and we got together on a climb that he had already done, Fiske Butte at the end of Spencer Terrace. It is an inconsequential hump at the end of the Redwall promontory west of Copper Canyon, but the fun is getting down the Supai to the Redwall rim without walking for miles first.
We were prepared for a long day and we met at the junction of routes 180 and 64 a bit before 6:30 a.m. We drove directly out to the head of the Bass Trail using the cutoff behind Moqui Lodge and got there by 8:00. The day was fine and cool and we made good time down to the Esplanade and out toward Mystic Spring. On Al's former trip he had run into a white man inscription on the bare rock under foot. He was looking for this and he wasn't sure where to begin watching. He thought it was out rather close to the descent from the Supai rim. We weren't able to see it this time. He doesn't recall whether there was any date with the name. It would only show up from a few yards away and one can take any number of equally good routes through this area.
I couldn't say a thing about this inability to find the inscription again since I was unable to show him the Indian ruin which I had found fairly close to the direct route along the east side of Huethawali when you are going to Mystic Spring. I should be able to locate the ruin if I go armed with my location picture showing trees lined up with Mount Huethawali in the background.
We wanted to see Mystic Spring again, but for a time we hesitated about going there before or after we had been to Fiske Butte. I talked Al into the short detour and we got down a crack through the rim of the Esplanade that comes out between the spring and Seal Head Rock. I took Al to the latter first. Then we noted that a little water is flowing at the spring, but very little. There was more coming from a seep around the point north of the old Bass Campsite under the overhang. Al was intrigued by this ample overhang and especially by the tunnel and hole up to the surface just to the north. We had needed considerably less than two hours to reach the spring from the car although we spent a few minutes trying to locate the Indian ruin east of Huethawali.
It was only a short walk from the spring to the rim of Spencer Terrace where Al had started down through the Supai. This is just east of the narrow promontory which extends farthest north. The route looks quite unpromising although other places along here are clearly impossible. One goes to the right along a bench below the first crack and on a lower bench you swing quite far to the left to go down another crack. Then you go quite far to the right again to go down to the level of a bench that leads still farther left to a pinyon pine. Here you go around the corner and see a long and narrow ridge of perfectly bare rock extending to the north. The descent route is again at the base of this promontory and just east of it. The descent leads to the real puzzle of the whole route, a pile of large and small chockstones filling up a wide crack. Al used a rope to get down here the first time and I had brought a light rope to do this again if necessary. On his return he had found a small and not straight passage under the rock pile. At first this time he couldn't locate the hole again and he considered the idea that the rocks had shifted during the past five weeks and the hole had been closed. Finally he found it. We had to remove our day packs and pass them down through the hole. However, I am sure that I could have handled my pack here without help. Below here the route was simple and we reached the top of Fiske in just under three hours from the car. We had a fine view of the river and Hakatai Canyon from the rim of the Redwall.
I wanted to see what sort of trip we would have along the rim of the Redwall to the west and south to Garnet Canyon. Some parts of this were decidedly slow and rough, but much of it had a burro trail. We encountered three burros where the rim was broad and followed their trail up to a seep at the bottom of the Supai cliff. Down in the Redwall streambed below Mystic Spring we came to some good rain pools and refilled our canteens. We were rounding the corner into Garnet Canyon by 2:50 p.m. and we had only a little problem or two bypassing falls in the Supai in Garnet. We reached the car on the return from Fiske in five and a half hours.
Fourth try for the Stiles Route off Point Huitzil
[November 23, 1974]
A recent letter from Gary Stiles told me that I would recognize his Coconino Route by a log ladder near the top of the Coconino somewhere below Point Huitzil, and that he was quite sure that it was Point Huitzil rather than Montezuma. I figured that it would now be easy to go back there and find the place.
I picked up David Grede at the south campus at 6:30 and we got away from the permit desk by 8:20 a.m. On the way out of the park on the Rowe Well Road we saw a flock of about 15 wild turkeys, the first I have seen for quite some time. David was also thrilled by a doe that dashed across the road.
The road was dry enough and we had no more than the usual rough spots to hold down our speed. I drove off the track that goes west from Pasture Wash Ranger Station along the telephone line and parked where it ends, about a mile from the station. We followed the line past a large tree that has fallen across the wire and on across a shallow valley. After walking perhaps 20 minutes along the line, we swung to the north, crossing another narrower valley. I could see the main canyon rim from one higher point, but farther north we seemed to be looking toward the lower land south of the canyon. When we came to a deep valley running down to the west, I was confused. First I led Dave west without trying to cross, and then changed my mind. When we got to the top of the high ground and out to the rim, we could see Montezuma Point to the north and we knew that we were on Point Huitzil.
We went back south into the valley and followed it out to the bay south of Point Huitzil. I had resolved not to pass up any chances at getting through the Coconino anywhere below Huitzil. First we went along the rim north of the end of the valley and came to a good break for a descent in about 100 yards. Below the top ledge, the faint trail turned north and in a few yards we came to a good overhang that had smoke stains on the ceiling and ashes in the floor. The trace of a trail went down from this cave and we got nearly to the Coconino directly below. Here we went across the wash to the southwest and got down to the actual rim of the Coconino. If we had gone farther west here and had studied the Coconino wall across to the northeast, we would have saved a lot of time. As it was I didn't notice the possibility of getting down a ledge system from north to south starting down from the base of a yellow and broken section of the Toroweap.
We did see that we couldn't follow the top of the Coconino to the north very far since it connects with the Toroweap in a straight cliff. We could go back to the top of the Toroweap and we went north along a perceptible sheep trail. We went back down to the Coconino at the yellow, fractured zone. This peculiar part of the Toroweap makes a fine landmark with its outlying towers of the yellow, laminated rock. Bob Dye and I had come up here. Now Dave and I proceeded north along the rim of the Coconino with frequent detours to inspect every least suggestion of a way to go down off the rim for even a few yards. I recognized the place where I had rappelled down before, but this time I hadn't brought the rope since I expected to locate the ropeless Indian route. We got around the corner of Point Huitzil and I recalled that the north side Coconino wall is absolutely impossible as seen from across beneath Montezuma Point.
I was now ready to give up on Point Huitzil. The idea had occurred to me that Gary might have confused Point Huitzil and Centeotl Point, so Dave and I went back and climbed to the top and walked over to Centeotl Point. We were starting down the wooded slope to the Toroweap when we looked back at the wall below Huitzil and saw the sloping ledges going from below the yellow towers down into the wash below the Coconino. It was now 1:30 p.m. so I figured that there would still be time to go back there right where we had eaten lunch and try that route. This we did, but I was stopped by a 10 foot drop of smooth Coconino to a sloping platform. I hadn't seen any petroglyphs or ladder, so I gave up. I may come back with a rope for this 10 foot drop. It is an interesting chase, but it makes me feel foolish. The Montezuma Point Route seems safer.
Enfilade Point Route, Specter, and Fossil
[November 27, 1974 to December 1, 1974]
Jorgen Visbak, Ed Herrman, and Gary Stiles came on Wednesday and we went to the south rim arriving about 12:30 p.m. After getting our permit and eating, we rattled out to the rim north of Enfilade Point a little before 3:00 p.m. I found the right place to leave the rim very easily. Someone has built a good cairn there and also put one at the top of the Toroweap descent and also one at the bottom of the Coconino. I know that this route has been used by Jim Sears and by Joanna McComb and very possibly others since Davis and I worked it out. My log of 4/24/71 says that Davis and I built some cairns.
The four of us took one and a quarter hours from the Jimmy to the Esplanade at the waterhole. I went on around a point or two but I couldn't see any more water. I didn't feel sure that we would find water below the Supai descent in the Redwall where I had slept on April 24, 1971, so we decided to camp where we were on the Esplanade. Although it was only 34 degrees by morning, I got rather chilly in spite of having a new bag and my Dacron underwear along. I got out almost an hour before the others and scouted the area, but I still didn't find Donald's ruins. At this time and on our way back, I saw three good mescal pits in the neighborhood. I also found another water pocket with cleaner water lower in the wash that is directly below the Coconino descent.
We camped on some soft soil covering the rock one terrace below the highest part of this section of the Esplanade and left in the morning at the same level contouring around several points before we got out on the level ground leading directly to the Supai descent just south of Fossil Canyon. On the return we got too high and then lower than we should have been. In these wanderings I chanced on a neat little natural bridge about three and a half feet high and perhaps 20 feet long. Along here is where we saw three mescal pits. We needed less than an hour to go from the waterhole to the base of the Supai and only 50 minutes this time to go from there along the top of the Redwall to the slot leading down through it. At the top chockstone we lowered our packs with a rope, but the way is easier than I had remembered it. Only at the bottom eight feet is it necessary to face in and look hard for hand holds. The lower chockstone seemed a bit harder. Jorgen liked to hold to the rope here and for a little while I wondered how I had done it alone in 1971. I could grip the upper edge of the stone and get my feet on a step over to the right. We got down as I have described the route in my previous log. I had forgotten just where the break in the lower brick colored cliff is, but we located it just to the left of the dry fall. This is where there is a rock pile to serve as a step, presumably left by the Indians. As I got down here I glanced to the north and saw a fairly well preserved ruin of low walls just 30 yards away from this crucial part of the route. It took us a total of five hours to get from the car to the river and we all felt challenged by the difficulties of the route.
After lunch we proceeded downriver to Fossil in about one hour. Just beyond the large sandy beach north of Fossil, we came to a good spring which supports a thick growth of willows and tamarisks. About 15 minutes later we passed another smaller flow of spring water in a narrow slot of a gulch. Quite often the walking was relatively easy along terraces of Tapeats Sandstone, but it finally got as bad as I had guessed it would be, precarious walking along a steep slope among all sizes and forms of rocks. Jorgen began to slow down. I told Ed and Gary that they should go on ahead toward Specter if they wished and that I would go back with Jorgen to the first good campsite and come on over to Specter in the morning. Ed and Gary agreed to this and left us.
Within about 15 minutes Jorgen and I got on a ramp that led down to the river where there were a lot of rocks spilling into the water and also some good sand. I found an overhang that had a smooth floor and spread out my pad and bag there. There was plenty of wood and Jorgen and I sat around and talked until 10:00. On Friday I got away at 6:55 a.m. while Jorgen was still asleep. This camp is easily located since it is across from and below a fine cave opening, a big one near the top of the Redwall about a half a mile south of the mouth of Mile 127 Canyon. Perhaps this is the one that Donald's friend was excited about. The walking became much slower beyond this point, but about a fifth of the time, I figured that I was following a bighorn trail. There were lots of the tracks and droppings all around this area.
I have heard that bighorn won't drink from a waterhole fouled by burro droppings. For what it may be worth, I saw a small water pocket with some bighorn droppings in it. Presumably the animals will continue to drink from a rain pocket that they have fouled themselves. Ed and Gary didn't make it all the way to Specter Thursday evening, but they also found a way to get down to the river. There were two or three rain pockets in the bedrock of narrow washes on the way to Specter. It took me two and a half hours to walk from our campsite over into the bed of Specter or a total of four hours from the mouth of Fossil and five hours total from the foot of the Enfilade Point Route.
When I got to the bed of Specter, I couldn't see any footprints left by Gary and Ed, but I went on up to inspect the possibility of climbing the Redwall without them. There was no problem about clambering over the blocks of slide material in the bed of the longer southwest arm until I got to within about 60 feet of the top of the formation. There were two rather smooth chutes ahead and the upper one was stopped at its head by a neatly fitting chockstone. Perhaps I could have made it up the lower chute (a feat that Gary did do), but I figured that I couldn't get up the upper chute. Gary agreed with me on this. I also looked to the right side at a big block of bedrock with a rough vertical crack. There seemed to be some rather meager holds and I believe some sharp climbers could get up here and probably walk across above the upper chute and the chock. If this were possible, one would be up the Redwall in Specter (I should have tried the travertine or talus to the northwest of the bed).
When I had been going down about 15 minutes, I met Gary and Ed coming up. they had assumed that Jorgen and I would be slow in getting started and had slept in. Jorgen had told me the night before that he didn't care to struggle over to Specter and that he would spend his time in lower Fossil. I could see that if I wanted to get down to the river in Specter and get back to my bedroll and food, I couldn't wait to do that with Ed and Gary. Somewhere I had gotten the impression that one can't go down Specter to the river, but Billingsley had recently told me that you can. He was right of course. The drops are quite easy to bypass without going out of the bed. At the largest one, I thought that I needed to do this and I went up quite far to the south, about 60 feet high, and came back to the bed below the fall. The river at the mouth of Specter is particularly impressive. A narrow black rock was sticking up out of the water ten feet or so. The black shiny walls of the Middle Granite Gorge are still getting higher, and Steamboat Mountain is a showy backdrop.
The only water in all of Specter was a spring that starts in the upper Tapeats and gets bigger with more seeps. All this water is salty and bitter, and I made the mistake of filling my canteen before I tasted it. I should have taken on river water.
I got back to my bedroll in a little less than two and a half hours and had time to get supper by daylight. I spent twelve and a half hours in bed and kept quite warm and slept more than I ever do at home. I was ready to move on by 7:00 a.m. and I got to Jorgen's camp just as he was waking and getting breakfast. He told me about the lower gorge of Fossil and how he had been stopped by a pool below a chute with a trickle of water coming down it. He walked back up Fossil with me for sociability. When we got to the pool with the chute in it, I took off shoes and even trousers and waded in. I was able to brace against the rather smooth surface and work my way to the top of the chute. Immediately above this is a chockstone stopping the way. I didn't seriously try to get by it since there was nothing but smooth wall and smooth stone forming a tapering crack between them.
When Jorgen and I were walking back down the canyon, we met Gary coming up. He offered to go up and get me past the chockstone with my rope. He went up the chute out of the pool as easily as I had come down and then I used the rope as a handline to go up again. Then he wedged himself into the crack at the right of the chockstone and doubled up his fist in the narrow inner part of the crack. He was able to wriggle upward until at last he was through. It was easy to do with the rope as a grip. We soon came to a higher climb up to the next chockstone. The key was to get up a projecting angle of white, travertine like rock with small bumps for grips. I don't think I could have done this, but Gary struggled up it. At the very top, next to the chockstone, it was not so steep, but there were no bumps to hold to. Here Gary really had to struggle, but he knew that he could do it since he had done it before. The rope made it easy for me. There was one more chockstone, but I could handle it without help. Likewise at the route out of the bed just before one comes to a high fall with a travertine apron, I was able to walk up the rockfall and then use the grips in the rough limestone to get out on top. I recognized that I had been here before and thus Gary had enabled me to do another rim to river route. If I would fix ropes in position as I came down, I could do this alone. There might be a problem concerning where to tie the ropes, but I suppose one could drive some sort of rod into the gravel.
Gary and I arrived at the place we were all going to camp together the last night right at the bottom of the route we had used to come down. I felt foolish since I didn't recognize the place and Ed had to assure me that we were right below the break in the low cliff and the Indian ruin. We had a pleasant evening around the fire and a rather cold but clear night. We went out without incident except that Ed, who was leading up the lower ravine, didn't remember what he should do when it gave out. I shouted to go clear over to the left, but he went a little to the left and then started up a narrow and extremely difficult slot, almost straight up. It led over into the right ravine up through the main Redwall.
We did the rest all right except that I got a bit confused in trying to go directly to the waterhole. We could see the right break through the Coconino, but I expected the water in the ravine too soon. During this wandering we saw two more mescal pits than we had seen on the way down and we also walked over the little natural bridge. At the top of the Coconino some of the party didn't realize that we had to go up the first ledge of Toroweap in the same bay where the Coconino route comes up. We used the harder of the two ways to get through this ledge just as I had done in 1971. We got from the river to the rim in six and a half hours, including the time we were sitting still to eat lunch. We all felt that we had been in great country and had a fine time.
P.S. While Gary and I were going up through the Fossil Redwall, Ed was looking for Indian ruins. He didn't notice the meager rock shelter where Bob Euler had left a Kodachrome can under the overhang on the east side of Fossil just inside the gorge, but he found a much better one facing the river north of the mouth of Fossil.
Another thought: there was lots of water at this time in the ravine at the top of the Redwall just south of the Supai descent. The pool right below the top fall was over a foot deep and eight feet across.
Saddle Mountain Route to river Mile 50
[December 14, 1974]
Ron Mitchell and Dale Graham had told me, after their trip from Buck Farm Point to the Nankoweap Trail, that they had spotted a way down through the upper cliffs to the Supai. Last August 1, when I was looking for this route, I had seen a promising place right on the north side of the park boundary promontory east of Saddle Mountain. When I got home and consulted the map, I felt rather sure that they had told me that the break is in the bay farther north. On the present trip, I was chiefly interested in reaching the head of this next bay to the north and checking it.
I picked up Dave Grede at the South Campus at 3:30 Friday afternoon and got Steve Studebaker at the junction of US 89 and the Navaho Trail at 5:45. We just reached Cliff Dwellers in time to be served a good meal and then continue to the hunting camp by 9:45 p.m. I thought I would have no trouble driving that road in the dark, but about the time we should have been going up the last grade to the camp, Dave noticed that Orion was showing on the wrong side of the car. We were heading north. When we turned around and went back, I discovered that I had taken the left turn onto the road that goes around to Buck Farm Canyon. When we went up the right fork, we soon came to enough snow on the road to force me to back up and go at the place faster in low gear. They have torn down the mess hall and all the dormitory rooms, but the cabin that used to be the cook's bedroom is still there. The roof is still good, so perhaps they are going to leave that cabin. We hope so, because it protects one from the wind and the floor is much better for a bed than the rough and sloping ground outside.
We went to sleep with the understanding that whoever would be awake by 6:15 a.m. should wake up the others. I got about five hours of sleep before 3:30 and was the one who rousted out the others. We were all ready to leave by 7:15 a.m. and I led the hike down the trail across Saddle Canyon and up the other side. There was a bit of snow in many places at this elevation and the morning temperature was only 18 degrees. Our progress was not hindered, however, and we reached the end of the trail in good time. I went down on the flats instead of up to Boundary Ridge as I had last summer and we got our first glimpse of Marble Canyon after two and a quarter hours from the car. We were looking at the promontory that I had gone out on last summer, so I turned north.
On our way from the trail end to the rim, we encountered quite a ruin outline. Steve and Dave were especially successful in spotting sherds, many of which were well decorated in black and white designs. On our way back we found two more ruins and quite a few more sherds and bits of chert that had been worked. Judd was right about seeing numbers of ruins with the cowboys for guides. Dave even found a sherd that had been ground into an oval shape and been pierced for hanging around the neck.
When I thought we had gone far enough to check the bay that had been recommended by Mitchell and Graham, we followed the rim for a while without seeing the least chance for getting down from the rim through the Kaibab. Then we went south to the breaks that I had noticed last summer. Our first attempt was via the main draw and we got down through several ledges. What made us think that this might go was a good shelter cave near the top with smoke stains on the ceiling. There was an interesting sherd on the floor. However, when we had descended about 150 feet, we were stuck. We couldn't go east around the corner at that level, so we went clear up to the top and then east to the place that I had thought absolutely sure to get one through the Kaibab and Toroweap.
This place was indeed a lot better, but we got down to one ledge where we had to face in and might have needed to use a rope for regular overnight packs. About two yards apart there were just two ways that we could get down. Along this bench at the top of the lower member of Toroweap, I thought it best to go northwest to a point where I figured that the Toroweap and Coconino might go. When we got there, about a quarter mile from our Kaibab ravine, we found that we could go through the Toroweap, but the Coconino was impossible for average climbers. From here we saw the promise of probable success in a bay just to the east of our upper descent.
As we got back here, I thought a slot through the top Coconino on the east side of this bay would go for sure. However, when we got around there and looked down, we couldn't see that the crack was a regular wall, vertical for 30 feet or more. From here we could see a much better chance of getting down this crucial upper Coconino in the ravine on the south side of the bay. I had no trouble getting down this brush and scree filled crack until I was about 20 feet from the bottom. Here I think I could have climbed down using some minor steps and dead trees for grips. However, Steve had brought his rope, so we made it easy by rigging it for a hand line. Below this place it was a simple scramble through loose rock. Dave had been bruised in the calf by a larger rock that had rolled beneath him, and he figured that he shouldn't try the descent any farther since he had already proved that he could make it.
I wanted to get down to the Redwall and thus connect with my route when I had walked all night in December, 1969, and Steve wanted to follow the top of the Supai around to the little butte of elevation 4832. I turned back just five minutes before our deadline of 1:30 p.m. having reached the Redwall, and Steve found that he could climb the butte before that time too. He raised the first cairn on top and left some sherds in a rain pocket that he found. I had thought that it would take me longer to get down to the Redwall and return than it would take Steve, but when I was well up on the Hermit, I could see him coming along the slight deer trail that we found just above the Supai rim. I waited a little and then decided to continue up to join Dave who had been waiting for us for over an hour. I recognized the right (the east) ravine and came to the rope and soon joined Dave. At my suggestion he went on ahead to the rim to warm up while I waited for Steve where I had left my pack and canteen. He missed the proper fork (Packard and Walters came up here too) and I had to shout that he should get into the east fork rather than the west fork of our big ravine. The main drainage into this whole big bay is still farther to the west, but there is little chance of thinking that it furnishes a route.
We walked back without incident and Dave found that his calf wasn't really bothering him. He could probably have out walked both of us. As related above, we spent a little extra time at the two ruins sites where the other men found quite a few sherds. We thought that the popularity of this area for the Indians might have some connection with the existence of the descent route that we had just found. When I was coming up the Supai, right near the top, I noted a pile of rocks which may very well have been piled to form a helping step. I had already come up through all the Redwall on November 19. This is one of the most direct routes off the rim down to the river from a comparable height, 3200 feet. If one were to go without any fumbles from the hunting camp down to the river using the Saddle Mountain Trail and then the easy walking east of all the ravines off Saddle Mountain, he could get to the river in something like five hours equally divided between walking over to the rim and getting down the 3200 feet to the river.
There is a fine landmark for the break in the Kaibab rim, a mushroom rock on a narrow and slightly curving neck. In fact, Steve suggests the name Mushroom Rock Route for this way down to the river. I thought of calling it Mile 50 Route, but I slightly prefer calling it the Saddle Mountain Route.
When we were going along the trail at 5:30 p.m., Steve announced that he needed a rest and some food. He had by far the best light for walking at night. Dave and I elected to keep on in the hopes that we would make it to the car before it got completely dark on this moonlight night. We succeeded, but just barely. It was just 6:00 p.m. when we saw the car and the cabin, and we had missed the trail as we came out on top. I recognized the poles of the corral which is just downhill from the former camp, and knew that we had arrived. Steve got up here about 7:30 better prepared to sit out the night by a fire if necessary than either Dave or I since he had his down parka and matches along. We were glad that this wasn't necessary and we were all together in the cabin again by 7:30.
We had a pleasant drive in fine weather on Sunday back to Shonto where Kay gave us a delicious meal before Dave and I came back to Flagstaff.
Fifth try for the Stiles Route at Point Huitzil
[December 20, 1974]
At Thanksgiving Gary Stiles talked with assurance about how he had used the Point Huitzil route through the Coconino more than once and convinced me that I had simply overlooked something easy. I thought I could go out there just once more and walk right down it. This would be the day, but I would take a rope along just in case it seemed harder for me than for Gary.
I got off to quite an early start and was ready to walk away from the car parked a mile west of Pasture Wash Ranger Station by 8:25 a.m. I followed the telephone line for about 15 or 20 minutes to where it takes an abrupt turn to the left. I went north and was down in the draw that is south of Point Huitzil in less than 15 more minutes. In only 35 minutes from the car I was at the shelter cave just north of where the bed of the wash reaches the open canyon.
When I reached the Toroweap, I first walked around to the southwest across from where I understood the route to be. This viewpoint wasn't reassuring. I couldn't make out any safe way to get down to a ledge about 50 or 60 feet below the Coconino rim. I could see where I had stopped before and I could see another place farther to the south where there might be a concealed route behind a block. I walked the Toroweap rim over to the yellow towers of Toroweap and got down south of where I had been before. I looked down on the place that had stopped me the other time, and I could see that I would need a rope here too.
I remembered that Gary had said he had first proved this place by trying it from below and I adopted the project for the day of going over to the known place at Montezuma Point and getting down. Without really thinking about how the time would work out, I started over there along the bighorn trail along the bench between the Toroweap and the Kaibab cliffs. There were places where the trail became obscure and many spots had a lot of exposure. Crouching to get beneath low limbs also cut my speed, and I took just over an hour to go from near the draw south of Point Huitzil to the Montezuma Point descent. I ate an early lunch here and went over my plans again.
Now it became clear that I would take a lot longer to get down on the Esplanade using the rope and leaving it in place and then going over to the presumed Stiles Route south of Point Huitzil. Since my purpose was to check the Stiles Route, I changed my mind and walked back the way I had come. On the way back I heard some animal in the brush, presumably a bighorn sheep. I had also heard one when I was scouting the Stiles Route from across the bay.
When I got back, I went down to where I had stopped on 11/23/74. I found that the best place to tie the rope was through a hole through the solid rock. I would have had a few more yards of rope if I had used a large Mormon tea bush, but I preferred the safety of the hole in the rock. I took my Jumars down with me but did a body rappel for about eight feet to a sloping ledge. I could walk about 20 yards down to a crack that dropped straight down to the intermediate terrace. I figured that if I were down there I could probably get down the rest of the way without a rope. Unfortunately, the rope only reached a little way into this crack, and I didn't dare try to climb down this chimney that seemed to widen out at the bottom.
A pinyon pine just a bit above this lower crack would make a fine anchor for a second rope if I had one. A 50 foot rope for the upper drop and a 60 foot rope for this crack would work fine. As it was, I used the Jumars to get back up the eight foot drop at the top. I suppose I could have done this short climb with knots in the rope for grips.
When I was clear away from the area, I realized that I could have made my 120 foot rope reach if I had tied it above a place where the cliff was vertical right down to the intermediate terrace. Jumaring back would be more tiring, but I have done places like that. I wish now that I hadn't made the false move of going clear over beneath Montezuma Point but had rappelled 50 feet down to the terrace.
Lee's Ferry to Soap Creek
[January 25, 1975 to January 26, 1975]
Ron Mitchell for one has walked the full length of Marble Canyon below the rim and I have also had that ambition. Dana Gable walked from Lee's Ferry to Soap and told me that this part is not too hard. I knew how to leave the canyon on the right side about the middle of this stretch, so I decided to spend the night, between two days of walking, in a good bed at Cliff Dwellers.
Bill Rietveld agreed to go with me and he wanted to bring his hiking companion, Mark Storey. Just a couple of days beforehand, Tom Wahlquist came into the office and I invited him to go too. We were to leave from our house at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, but a few minutes before that time Bill called up and said that he couldn't go because he had the flu. Mark came over on his bike several minutes late because he had been waiting at home for Bill, and Bill couldn't reach him by phone. Tom was still not there at 6:45 so we went without him.
I drove the Toyota at the legal rate and we also showed Mark around the different sections of the Ferry before he and I took off downriver about 10:10. We followed a fisherman's trail below the top cliff for a couple of hundred yards, but then we had to go up on top for a similar distance. At the first break where the beach had begun we went down. It was also our last chance until we reached Mile 2.7. Here a side canyon comes in and hikers footprints showed in the sand. I figured we would have time enough and I went up the canyon to see what sort of route it is. Eventually it became very narrow and interesting. There were a couple of places where some trail construction helped a lot. I got out near where the power line crosses the canyon and looked around. Then I hustled back to the river in just under 20 minutes, so I figure that I must have gone up canyon for about a mile to where one can get out.
Mark had waited for me at the river, and it was a good thing because Tom Wahlquist had driven up from Flagstaff to go with me. He had brought along his friend, Jack Gelbreath. They had talked to Roma who was still at the beach when they arrived.
The water was very low on Saturday morning in the winter and although the Paria was flowing at quite a good clip, the water remained clear all the way down the river. There were quite a few wild ducks on the calm water. We also saw two V's of geese flying downriver, and later we saw them on the water too. Beaver cuttings and tracks were so thick that I think those animals are becoming much more numerous even while the river is getting more use by the boaters. Before Mark and I got down to river level the second morning, we saw a beaver swimming across the river.
Even before we got to the side canyon at Mile 2.7, Mark and I had to pass places where the cliff came down into the water. We were able to walk on meager ledges with very slight handholds. Most of the way was through clearings and brush and over sandy places on the rock slides, but sometimes we had to climb through big rocks and try to decide whether it was better high or low. At Mile 3.7 we came to a place where there was no possibility of walking where a cliff came right into the water. We could see that the bottom was at least neck deep beside the overhanging cliff. Tom climbed up and came down from a height of about 35 feet beyond this place. I followed his example and was glad to have him help me find the holds. When Mark and Jack got to the top and looked down, they decided against trying the climb. Tom went back over the route and got his pack, but still Mark and Jack declined. They went back to the car at the Ferry via the side canyon at Mile 2.7.
A little downstream from the bridge you have to follow the bench up high above the beach. A little way upriver from Mile 5.7 Canyon, there is a slide that covers the cliff and we took this opportunity to get back down to the beach. This was a good decision since the side canyon goes back quite far and I am nearly sure that the bench cliffs out. Just beyond Mile 5.7 we could have gone up a rockslide, but I was sure that there was another way up that I had used on 10/27/57. We found this true just around the corner and up on the bench the progress was slower, but there was a four inch wide trail much of the way to the ravine that breaks the rim at Mile 6.5. This trail was so friable that I believe it has been trampled by small and light animals such as rodents and ring tailed cats and perhaps coyotes. There were no deer tracks along it. We got from the riverbank to the highway in about 80 minutes and I arrived at the waiting car within seconds of 5:00 p.m. when I had told Roma that I should be there. We took Tom to his car. He and Jack spent the night on the ground while Mark went with us to the motel.
Mark and I got an early start on Sunday and were leaving the car when it was just light enough to see our footing. We left the car shortly after 7:00 a.m. and were down at the river by 8:20. We saw the beaver in the water when we were up on the high bench. We got to Badger Creek Canyon about 10:10 and left our packs in a prominent place so Tom and Jack would see that we were up the side canyon. In about 20 minutes, we came to an overhanging fall. There was a good deal of ice in the bed below here, and an icicle decorated lip. With a 20 foot ladder or pole, one might climb this fall. This barrier was formed by the Coconino.
Tom and Jack hadn't come along when we reached the river again so we took our time and got some pictures of Badger at extreme low water. The others caught up about 11:30 and we stopped to eat when we came to the sunshine. This was below 10 Mile Rock. It had hardly any of the river water between it and the left bank. There were also extensive boulder bars out in the river that were exposed at this time. We wondered whether the boaters realize that they have a deeper channel to the right of one place that was now an island. The wider channel is to the left. We ate lunch about noon and then reached the mouth of Soap about 1:10 p.m.
The channel of Soap Rapid was so narrow that I think you could throw a softball across it underhand. I took two or three pictures and started on ahead of the young men. I walked for more than an hour by myself and passed the fork before they caught up. The lower canyon is gently sloping and you can make time until you come to the Coconino. I had done this on 3/4/61 but I wasn't mentally prepared to find the canyon from here on up such a jumble of huge blocks. You have to use your hands a lot. I forgot where they formerly had a cable fixed, but it is gone now. At one place we had to climb up a few feet and then side step over to a gentler slope to get up a fall. There were dozens of places where we had to use our hands. We of course knew that we should take the left fork or the one called the south fork on the map. After we were through the big stuff, we came to a side canyon from the north. We had the help all the time of seeing footprints in the sand and now there was a cairn to show us that one could and should go out this side canyon. The line on my map proved that I had done this before, but I didn't remember the difficulties. They weren't bad, but we still had to scramble up some ledges. I suggested climbing out of this draw on our right as soon as we could, and when we got a view, we were heading right toward Cliff Dwellers. The wind was so strong here, a terrific contrast to the calm sunshine we had along the river, that I couldn't keep a steady stride.
I got to Cliff Dwellers in two hours and 20 minutes from the river this time. I note that my log written in 1961 says to allow about two and a half hours for the trip out.
These two days accounted for 11 more miles of Marble Canyon. I still need to do three more legs to cover the rest, from Saddle to Buck Farm, from there to South Canyon, and from Rider to Soap. This trek also gave me my 84th rim to river route, at Mile 2.7.
Pierce and Emery Falls Canyons
[February 16, 1975 to February 17, 1975]
Mark Storey, Bill Reitveld, Tom Wahlquist, and I left around 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning and got to South Cove so late that we just boated to a cove near Pierce Canyon that afternoon and camped. We did have time for a walk up over the foothills to see where the real Pierce Canyon was. We went through the tops of tamarisk trees to get into the cove and we found a burro trail leading over the hill north of us that went uphill parallel to Pierce Canyon and finally went down into it.
On Sunday I got off at least a half hour before the others were ready to go. To keep warm I climbed past where we had looked into the big valley and sat in the sun reading Time until the others came along. It took them about a half an hour to come up to me and then I caused a further delay by walking on without picking up my camera. I had to walk back a few minutes to get it. Where we went down into the bed there was a little outcrop of broken rock near the foot of the hill. The Redwall was already a high cliff on the north and we entered the bed about even with the high cliffs on the south. The bed isn't steep and has no barriers requiring any bypasses, just sand and small boulders. I had left the boat about 7:20 and we must have gotten down into the bed about 9:20. When we were on our way down, I noticed a cave on the north wall not too far up from the bed, but we entered the bed at least a quarter mile upstream from this cave.
When we were coming up the ridge before dropping into the valley, I saw a window through the rock on the skyline across the river. It seemed to be through a fin southwest from a high square topped butte.
We passed the first side canyon, from the south, about 10:30 and we passed several good water pockets on the bare rock upcanyon from this tributary. From the appearance it is really rugged and scenic. I wish we had allowed time to investigate it. I assumed that it would soon present an impossible fall. There seemed to be a couple of possible routes to the top of the Grand Wash Cliffs in the shallow steep canyon south of Pierce Canyon. It would be interesting to try climbing out to the top in one of these places.
About 20 minutes walk up Pierce from the best water pockets we saw all day, we came to a major fork. The fork continuing in the direction of lower Pierce is steep and rugged, and again we preferred going on in the main bed which came from the southeast. There was an intriguing cave at the base of the cliff just north of the tributary. There was a big slope of small broken rock west of the cave and for a little while I thought this might be the tailings of a mine, but the cave was natural. It had a smoke blackened ceiling and there was a little used metate and mano in the cave. They were made from buff colored sandstone exactly like Coconino. The bed of the main canyon is very impressive and wild for the next half mile. I think we were getting through the Redwall here, but it didn't look like the typical formation that showed plainly lower in the canyon but high on the walls above us.
The valley opened out again. We were past the tributary from the south when it began to look very much like rain. The others had left their bedrolls out in the open. Since my gear was in the cabin of the boat, I could go on without worrying, but at 1:00 p.m. the other three started back to take care of their bedrolls in case of rain. I reached the final split in the canyon at 1:30, when I had told myself I would turn back. The south fork here was obviously not the main bed, but since it promised to go up sharply I thought I might be able to climb out to the top of the plateau in another 30 minutes. In only 15 more minutes, I could see the impossibility of doing this. There were great perpendicular walls at the end. Before I turned back I passed some bedrock that was exactly like Coconino Sandstone, cross bedded and buff colored (not Coconino), so I figured that I had at least gotten another Redwall ascent done that day.
When I had gone down canyon about 15 minutes from the final fork, I noticed a sure way to climb out the south side to the top. Someday it would be good to go up here and then walk around to the head of the main canyon and see whether one can come down it. I was in three short showers on the way back. It took a bit over four hours to go from the upper forks to the boat. I think it would have taken a bit longer if we had been camped at the mouth of Pierce Canyon, but it would have been interesting to see what the lowest mile of the canyon is like. I could see that the bed went through another narrows below where we entered it.
One further note: We saw another somewhat smaller cave not far above the bed on the north side of the bed east of the Redwall narrows. I checked and didn't find any other sign of use then smoke on the ceiling.
We knew that we would have time for a shorter hike on Monday, so we combined getting more good water with visiting Emery Falls Canyon. I had been above the fall previously, but I had never had time to go up the canyon farther. The lake was so high that the old trail in from the point was submerged and not high enough to make boating over the treetops easy. We had to force our way through the twigs to get moored over on the west shore of the cove.
We didn't notice it until we were on our way back, but there is a trail up from the lake from just north of where we tied the boat. Enough people go above the falls to keep a dim trail open. There were also a few old footprints that went quite far up the canyon. This one is quite a bit steeper than Pierce, but it extends surprisingly far south before you reach the Redwall. There were great blocks tumbled down in the bed and at several places the bypasses needed inspection to find.
Quite near the start of the hike above the falls, you enter a spectacular narrows through what I think Billingsley calls the Rampart Cave member of the Muav. It seems that you should get stuck in here by a sheer drop. The stream was flowing well and I had to get my feet wet two or three times. I took my shoes off once and then just waded in with them on. The others had stayed down low at the lip of the falls and I hadn't noticed where they had gone when they got up ahead of me, so I was the first one up this whole canyon. The others said that they were able to keep their feet fairly dry by climbing along the walls through this narrow place in the stream. The water begins at the top of this section.
We all agree that this canyon has more spectacular scenery than Pierce, and there are several detached towers of Redwall. We were able to get past the places where the 1:250,000 map shows a tributary from the southwest. This is really a hanging valley with a great fall at the junction. I hadn't known whether the others wanted to come up the canyon, so I set my sights on turning back at 11:00 a.m. When I was nearing this deadline, I was also coming to the place where I thought there might be a dead end. I broke my resolution by 10 minutes and climbed to the west side of a tower that splits the bed here. Up where I thought I had done some good hand and foot climbing, I found deer droppings. Here I came to the end of the line (go on up at the west end of this bench and you get clear through). I could stand in a notch and look up one of the wildest canyons through the Redwall that I have ever seen. To get down into the bed beyond the tower, one would have to use a rope, and then it seemed very sure that 100 yards farther there was an absolutely impossible fall (wrong, it goes).
On the way down, I met first Tom and then Bill coming up. They continued to the end of the line where I had turned around. Mark was waiting for us farther down the canyon, and he stayed where he was to come back with Bill. When I got to the lower end of the Muav narrows, I climbed to the west to see a cave that I had noticed on the way in. There were some bits of charcoal on the floor and two places that would have given shelter in bad weather. There was also a tunnel that went through to the other side of the promontory, and one could climb back to the streambed here. It is a most interesting maze of channels, and I wonder how these holes developed.
When I was through at the cave, Tom was already past me and Mark and Bill were in sight. We all got to the boat about 1:30, about when we thought we should be heading back to South Cove. One other point about the cave in the Muav was that there is a smooth slab lying on a shelf in plain sight with the initials J.G. and M.R. on it. I couldn't read the figure that denoted the month, but the day seemed to be six and the year 17.
Rider to Soap
[March 8, 1975]
In March, 1961, before I had been down to the river at Mile 19 on 5/7/61 and down Rider to the river on 5/28/61, I went down Soap Creek with the idea of following the Supai rim over to Rider. My log doesn't say that this was the project, but I say that I gave up the idea when it began to rain, and I recall that I had this traverse in mind. I must have assumed that I would find a way out Rider or else I figured I would come back and go out Soap. Finally now, after this traverse had been done by at least five other people, I was ready to do it. The weather predictions nearly scared me off again since they said there would be a major storm on Saturday.
Roma was glad to help out with the car driving, and I planned to do the entire trip in one day. Ken Walters was available and accepted my invitation to go along. We drove to Cliff Dweller's Lodge Friday evening and slept indoors with the alarm set. At 6:00 a.m. when we drove away, it was already light enough to begin walking, but we were in the car for the next hour and a half. The roads south and east of the Cram Ranch seemed to have been shifted some and I was confused. After one dead end detour, Ken and I got out and spent a half hour walking over to the rim of Rider for a look up and down the canyon and then walked east to the fractured part of the rim.
On a hunch I led Ken beyond the first three cracks that penetrate the rim quite deeply to the one that is farthest northeast. There we found a well built cairn and started down. We had to go beneath one big block on the left. I had remembered crawling behind one block so I was taken back when we came to quite a drop. Ken tried to climb down on the outside, but we could see that he would have to drop about eight feet onto an uneven surface, so he came back up. Finally, I noticed a crawlway beneath the block on the right. When I had gone down, Ken lowered my pack to me. While he was doing this over on the south side, I noticed the bigger hole behind the block on that side. This was the way we had done it before. Only a few yards to the west, I saw the crack where the wind had been coming out on the former occasion. There was no perceptible air current here now. I hadn't remembered the rest of the way to the bed of the wash, but it is only a few yards east of the mouth of the rim crack. Ken tried a hazardous climb at one place and finally chose to come over and use my simple route. It must have taken us more than an hour to go from the car to the bottom of Rider.
I am sure that floods have changed the bed since 1961, because I recall that Allyn rested in the shade of a juniper, and there are no trees left in the bed now. Without further incident, we got down to the eight foot drop in the Supai of the bed. Someone has piled up a couple of rocks to form a step near the middle of the fall, but I see from my former log that I climbed down from the ledge that goes around to the south. Ken went on down the bed figuring that he could make better progress there and still climb up to the Supai later. I chose not to rely on this idea and took off to the left on the Supai rim right there. He got ahead of me and then had to backtrack and catch up later. One thing that he had noted was two or three boards over near the south wall. We wondered whether they had been washed down there or had been carried down for some purpose.
I got out above the river at 9:40 and reached a point opposite Hot Na Na Wash by 10:15. I had allowed for a speed of only a mile an hour along here, to judge by our time in going from Salt Water Wash to Tanner and then from Tanner to Hot Na Na. The walking along the right bank seems to be easier because we made the six miles from Rider to Soap in three hours and 40 minutes, plus about 20 minutes for eating.
I studied the possibility of getting down to the water at the mouth of Tanner. I think one could climb down some cracks to a bench that slopes from the mouth of Tanner upriver, but near the very end, I couldn't see a way to the riverbank. On our side there were places to reach the river as far below Soap as Mile 13.
We got to Cliff Dweller's Lodge by 4:20 p.m., an hour before it began to rain quite hard.
Parashant Whitmore area
[March 22, 1975 to March 27, 1975]
Jim Sears wanted to do more geological mapping in the area, and I wanted to see Parashant Canyon for the first time and then get south to where I had been before on the right bank near Mile 205. He rode with me with the understanding that we would be doing our own thing although our routes might cross. He is a far faster walker than I, but by the time he would be going out on points to observe faulting, I would be getting ahead.
We were in a hard sleet and snowstorm before we got down to Hurricane, and on the way past Diamond Butte into Bundyville, we were driving through snow and mud with more snow coming down. I thought it smart to stay by the school house for the night until the mud had frozen. We slept on the bare floor of the school where the roof is still good although windows are broken and the door doesn't fit. Sunday was clear as a bell and the mud was frozen. Lower on the grade below the rim, the ground was bare and dry. The road is steep but better than the lower part of the road down Peach Springs Wash and a lot better than the road south of Mount Dellenbaugh.
About four miles before the cabin on the west side of the volcano, the cinder cone that is in the middle of the valley, I got started on carrying my 35 pound pack with food for more time than I was going to be down there. I am not used to staying out more than four days at once, and I hadn't planned well.
I let myself through the fence and followed the road while Jim Sears ate some more breakfast. I didn't see him again until Wednesday. When I had walked for 75 minutes, I came to a stock water station. The rancher has built a concrete dam to hold rain in quite a pool in the bedrock. There must have been several tons of water here at this time. There was also a small overhang offering rain protection and an old mescal pit nearby, so I knew that Indians had used the area. Much farther on, where the road is turning north around the promontory separating Whitmore Valley from Parashant, the bulldozer had cut through another mescal pit.
Jim had told me various things about trails through the area, but I wasn't sure that he had done them himself or had just studied the map. I didn't make notes on my maps, and what was worse, I didn't have a seven and a half minute quad map of a vital part of the route. The road wound down and across some very deep ravines and then up to a broad saddle between the promontory and the elevation 5203 on the 1:250,000 map. Then it swings north over surprisingly smooth country and ends above Parashant just south of big rain pockets on the tops of outlier rocks of the Supai rim. I didn't have the Whitmore Point Quad, or I would have known that I should go to the east to find the trail down to Frog Spring. On Monday Jim did this. You can get from Frog Spring west along the Redwall rim to the big fault where you can go down and get the trail to the bed of Parashant.
After walking out and observing the water beyond the road end, I started east but the sight of the Supai cliff to the northeast discouraged me. I didn't know there was a nearby break, so I turned west and went to the Supai rim above the big fault. I could see trails down there, so I figured that I should go south until I came to a place to get down through the fault cliff. After much delay in trying to stay close to the rim through the big blocks and looking briefly at one break in the edge, I went back to the road and followed it south to where the strata warps down to the south. Without finding a trail, I started down a ravine that offered a route, and it went through, clear to some exposed Redwall. Jim later told me that a trail goes down the next ravine to the south, and I could make out a faint trail from where I reached the bottom. It went north in the fault valley and I saw faint footprints here. When I reached the saddle at the top of the fault valley, I wondered whether there might have been a shorter way down. The Supai cliffs didn't seem too bad from below. There were barrier drops in the bed of the north sloping ravine where the trail went out of the bed to the west. The bed of this ravine in the Redwall is to the west of the main fault line. I was beginning to worry about having to camp without water when I came to a supply that is available to cows even down here. There are bigger pockets lower in the same ravine that the cows can't reach and at the lower end of this wash, available from the bed of Parashant, there is a large water hole that the wild burros use.
In the morning I first made sure that I couldn't get down the ravine to the bed of Parashant. I did get down far enough to look right ahead to the bottom. Then on a hunch I walked east from my campsite and came to the main fault leading to the bed. Just as Jim had said, I could get down here. In fact a well built trail with a wire gate at the bottom goes down. Along here the bed of Parashant is strikingly narrow, and Jim says the very best is upstream from here. The entire Redwall and some of the Devonian is above ground to the east of the fault but you are only below about a third of the Redwall to the west of the fault. The narrowest part that I walked through was farther to the west, perhaps where I was below all the Redwall and was passing through the top of the Devonian. At two places I passed beneath plastic tubes that hung beneath supporting wires and were supposed to carry water to the cattle.
After walking the bed for about 70 minutes, I came to the mouth of Andrus Canyon, but I didn't figure that there was time to go up it. About 20 minutes farther on I came to another canyon from the right, and this time I put down my pack and scrambled up it. After getting past three barriers I was stopped by the fourth. There were several good pools of water up here. The deeper pools always have mosquito wrigglers in them so I prefer the pools that are merely temporary. I was surprised to note that my detour without the pack had taken 50 minutes.
From the map I thought I should expect two more canyons coming in from the right before I would reach the river and I had my sights set on arriving at the Colorado by 3:00 p.m. When I came to it about 1:00 p.m., I cached about five pounds of extra food here behind the only black lava boulder that lies in the bed on the right. I felt much better about walking more than 25 minutes at a time after my pack was lighter.
For the first quarter mile downriver from the mouth of Parashant, one needs to walk the broad beach, but after that, one should look for the burro trail that stays pretty consistently up near the base of the cliff. Exceptions occur of course when side canyons come in and there are perhaps two other places where the burros stay on the sand terrace below the slope. On the way south I stayed low more than I should have and lost time fighting through brush or hobbling along on the rocks near the water's edge. There are places where the trail more or less disappears, but on the whole the upper route is faster.
I had begun the walking day at 6:45 a.m. and my feet were hurting most of the time, so I decided to call it a day about 4:45 p.m. I slept on a smooth part of the trail without worrying about rain in the night. I was ready to go on by 6:15 in the morning, and the first few hours of Tuesday were also fine and sunny. Then it became windy and threatening. Eventually I came in sight of the slope where Jorgen and I went up the Redwall on the Price Point Trail and I crossed Spring Canyon with its nice little brook. In spite of the cold wave, there were a pleasing number of wild flowers in bloom and plenty of singing birds. There was more than one version of the trail going up the slope to pass the rough crags near the river at 205 Mile Rapid, but I walked south until I was sure that I had passed the place I had been before with Jorgen Visbak. When I turned around I was on the trail I had found from the south.
Jorgen and Bill Mooz had told me what an interesting canyon Spring is, so I began to walk up it. By this time, however, the weather was distinctly ominous so I gave that project up in favor of walking north looking as I went for an overhang as protection from the weather. For an hour or more I had my plastic sheet over my head and pack during light showers. Several places that I inspected as possible shelters were rejected, but finally I came to one that looked good on the north side of the ravine at Mile 201.7. Under the projection, the floor had been cleared and smoothed and showed bits of charcoal. I also noticed a mescal pit where the trail goes down into the wash. The best find was some interesting pictographs on a block of limestone that had been attached to the ceiling. They were done in very faded red clay and at least one was different from any design I have seen before. They were put on square with the angles of the block which had fallen since the artist had done the work. There were also a couple of designs on the neighboring rock that had not fallen. These are the only pictographs I can think of which clearly show that the rock has fallen in the last 800 years. I placed my ensolite pad down where there was a large enough protected place and then discovered that pack rats had brought in a lot of mesquite spines. I threw away those that came clear through the pad. When I first found this place the sun had come out nicely, and I thought that the only good of my shelter would be for prevention of dew on my bag, but a little later a hard rain with lots of wind came along and lasted for a half hour or more. I nearly had to get into the bag for warmth during that gusty rain that was almost sleet.
The moon shone in the night, but soon in the forenoon, the sky was threatening again. I packed my knapsack with the plastic sheet around all my gear and prepared to keep on walking in the rain if it should come down again. I thought I would keep warm enough from the exercise, but fortunately it didn't come to that. All that day the sky looked ominous, but nothing ever happened. I followed the high burro trail quite consistently and made better time on the return to Parashant than I had on the way south. Jim Sears hailed me when I was on the broad beach about a quarter mile south of the mouth of Parashant. We had a talk about what we had been doing. He told me that if I wanted to return to the car the way George had led them several years ago, I should go upriver to the broad sandy area at Mile 196. He was vague about which ravine to use but he said that if I found a hairy climb, I had missed the right way. He also agreed with me that there was a dike near the route.
The walking was much slower upriver from the mouth of Parashant. The burros seem to have agreed among themselves that there must be an easier way to make a living than to go upriver, for there were no more burro signs. I had followed four in Parashant itself and had seen one at a distance down near 205 Mile Rapid. As I approached Parashant on the return, I saw several mule deer, and there were faint signs of deer trails going upriver past the mouth. I also saw deer droppings all the way upriver and a few droppings and tracks that may have been from bighorn sheep. At one place when I was dodging the thickets on the river terrace by following the very edge of the water, I startled a beaver who dove for the water just a couple of feet ahead of my feet.
At Mile 196.4, I could look ahead and see the cliffs coming down into the water. To get to the broad beach area beyond I would have to climb up the narrow ravine to a bench and then proceed east. I noticed that the rock in the bed of the ravine was of an unusual texture, but it was light instead of dark that I thought was an indication of a dike. At one place for safety and ease, I removed my pack and parked it on the platform above me before climbing up. The ravine seemed to go on and on as far as I could see, and very straight too. If I had given it a thought, I would have realized that this straightness was another sign of a dike. Since I phoned George after I got back to Flagstaff, he confirmed me in thinking that this was the right way out. As it was, I continued over and down to the sandy open area and then was too confused about which ravine to try. If I should get hung up and have to spend the night without water and protection from the cold weather, I might find myself in a bad spot. I thought I had probably passed all the worst spots for progress and that I could get quite close to the foot of the Whitmore Trail that evening, Wednesday.
The part of the plan, to keep near the river with water and firewood for warmth if necessary, was good, but the idea that the walking would average better turned out to be false. I also made some poor decisions, going higher than necessary at times. I would worry about having to backtrack if a lower ledge would play out around the corner. At Mile 193 a strange cinder ridge comes down to the lava cliff that goes directly into the water. The highest part of the ridge is a plateau and may be a filled in volcanic crater. My impulse was to go up the draw west of the ridge and cross it near the top, but instead I stayed close to the river as long as possible and then had a rough time climbing the cinders at the angle of repose. On top it provided the best walking I had had all day, and I was soon past the mouth of Mile 193 Canyon which comes down from the mesa south of the river. I still had a high lava cliff separating me from the beach, and I began to worry about reaching the river for camping, since it was already after 5:00 p.m. Just when this problem was getting acute, I came to a nice break in the rim of the lava that let me walk down to the usual struggle to get through the brush to the open sand and boulder beach. It was the coldest night yet, and as soon as I had my soup done, I crawled into the bag to eat my dinner. The sand was damp and I was glad to keep my plastic sheet beneath me. Most of the night was clear and there was enough wind to prevent dew from forming.
In the morning I guessed that I would trust the beach to continue to a safe passage past the next lava cliff, but I just wasted my time. After getting started at 6:05 a.m., I was back at my campsite ready to climb through the break in the cliff at 6:30. The next moves were particularly discouraging and slow, across one small ravine after another above the lava cliff. When I was 70 minutes from my latest chance to reach the river, I could look across a broad opening where I would have to get down to the water again and then have to climb up past another lava cliff. In the series of cliffs ahead the lava went far higher than it had previously, and I was not a bit sure that I could even climb above the top lava. The lower ledge was cluttered with spilled bombs and cinders and I knew that this might be hard to pass in safety. I was ready to give up the project of reaching the Whitmore Trail. I had my inflatable boat with me and I had two other options. One was to cross the river to the left bank and proceed to the Whitmore Trail upriver, and the other was to use the boat as an easy way back to the mouth of Parashant Canyon. From there it would be a long but uneventful walk back to the car. Since I figured it would be easier to get to the river level ahead then back for 70 minutes, I went ahead. In less than 30 minutes I was down ready to see what lay ahead at the intermediate lava slope. I could proceed as far as I could see it and then give it up if necessary.
Some of the travel along here seemed more precarious than anything I had done before, but I could go ahead. Finally when my spirits were lowest, I came to the trace of a trail. Some small rocks seemed to have been moved over to smooth a narrow path. Before long I was sure that there had been a constructed trail this far south at the Whitmore area. Actual trail construction got me down to the next broad slope to the river where there was little need for a trail, and at last I lost the one I had. There was one more big lava cliff coming down straight near the water, but there was a talus of broken rock right next to the water. I got along all right and reached the base of the Whitmore Trail by noon.
The mouth of Whitmore Canyon had been hidden until I was right to it in the approach from the south, but it is wider and more open than I had expected. The river trail shows again when one is getting close to the main trail. It avoids the dense thickets on the flats by staying high at the base of the cliff. Scratched on the wall at one place on this part of the trail were two names with the notation that they were surveyors from Casa Grande, Arizona. I had found another sure indication of some former use, an old rusty tobacco can only a couple of miles upriver from the mouth of Parashant. I wonder how many besides myself have made this nearly 11 mile traverse. I should try to learn which side of the river Colin Fletcher was on along here. If you were choosing sides, you should be along the left as far downriver as Mile 193 or lower. Then there is a place where you would have to cross or go high. If you were crossing anyway, it would be tempting to stay in the water and do quite a bit of easy floating. Whitmore would be a fine place to start a float trip to Diamond Creek, say.
I saw three boats of the Hatch Company go by on Wednesday. In the low water they were pulling up the outboards and floating through without power and sidewise or anything. The trail out was above my expectations for scenic value and for the walk from the river to the car took three and a half hours, less than I expected.
The great lava spills into the valley from the northeast made me think of the glaciers in the Canadian Rockies turned black and speckled with green. I would like to know the whole area better.
Blue Springs Trail area
[April 6, 1975]
Ever since Donald Davis reported some strange markings on two rocks near the head of the Blue Springs Trail, I have wanted to see and photograph them. Ken Walters and Bob Packard were going out to descend the Blue Springs Trail in Ken's four wheel drive Toyota, so I accepted the invitation to go along. The road near the highway at Desert View was rather muddy, but we made it through the slop. Ken drove fairly fast over the rough road, and we got from the highway to the parking at the head of the trail in one and an half hours. We had the map along and didn't take any wrong turns. At my suggestion on the way out, we went to the north of Cedar Mountain, but we tried the other side on the return. The shorter way on the south side is a little rougher but we think it may save a few minutes. Since I was out there on 2/11/66, someone has extended the road until a four wheeler can get up a very rough grade and part right at the head of the trail.
I went down through the rough park of the Kaibab with Ken and Bob. The scramble seemed a little rougher than I remembered it. I was a little surprised that I took it in stride with a four day pack on my back on 5/27/58. Ken climbed past everything with ease but Bob hesitated a bit. They are both in fine shape and they got down to the river in an hour and 30 minutes and back up in an hour and 35.
After I had reviewed the top part of the trail, I went to look for the petroglyphs that Davis had seen. He had told me more precisely where to look after I failed in the search on 2/11/66. This time I found them with no delay. They are on two big rocks that have fallen away from the rim of the plateau above the main draw drainage into the Blue Springs bay, on the north side and just east of the last tributary from the north. As Davis had said, they are clearly modern representing capital letters, a date, and some designs that seem like cattle brands. the word MAKE appears and the numbers 195 followed by a 4 backwards. I would guess that some Navaho was watching the sheep in this vicinity with time on his hands and he practiced some letters he had learned in school and also some brands he had seen.
I had agreed to be back to the parked car by 3:00 p.m. so I spent the rest of the time going north near the rim. I reached a point above Mile 8.8 on the Little Colorado and ate my lunch in a rather cold wind. I hope I got some good pictures of the mouth of Big canyon and of Salt Trail Canyon.
I returned farther away from the Little Colorado gorge and thus avoided some of the shorter gullies. I found a couple of pools of standing water in potholes in beds of the deeper ravines. I also saw four mule deer down in one of the ravines. I had supposed that the deer won't find much of interest in that country where the Indians graze their sheep.
There was no water behind the dams for cattle tanks, but I believe that the big plastic sheets are more successful in catching water. We saw a couple of those.
I was walking back to the car with my poncho over me since there were repeated showers. We drove out with the wiper going and new snow was staying on the grass but not in the roadway. Fortunately, we had nothing worse than a wet pavement all the way to Flagstaff. We reached home just after 6:30 p.m.
Mile 36.8 Canyon
[April 19, 1975 to April 20, 1975]
Ron Mitchell had told me that there is a descent route south of the fall over the rim of Mile 36.8 Canyon. He and Graham had used the route to put water where they could find it when they walked from South Canyon to Buck Farm Canyon to complete his traverse of Marble Canyon last December.
Mitchell had stayed at the top of the Supai, but in addition to my interest in doing the rest of Marble Canyon below the rim, I wanted to see the Bridge of Sighs. If there would be a route through the Supai to the rim of the Redwall, this seemed like a logical way to do this. I also wanted to compare the route along the rim of the Redwall with the way that Mitchell had traveled.
I had been planning a two day trip alone, but Steve Studebaker called me and arranged to be met at the Tuba City turnoff, and than I was invited to say hello to the Mooz party who were going down the river and pick up Jorgen and Ed for any hike I was doing. The connections went off quite well. I left Roma at 5:30 and had to wait only 15 minutes for Steve. We found the boaters with no trouble, and there was a slight delay in getting them down to the water, but we got away from the Ferry by something like 9:30 or 10. I made one false move in getting onto the right road to the head of Mile 36.8 Canyon by going through the gate to Buck Farm Point. We had stopped to look down into Buck Farm Canyon to get our bearings, and while Ed was still outside the car shutting the gate, I decided that we had come too far. The right road doesn't have the sign South Canyon Point as it did the last time I was there. It is now called 445 E. We drove to the end and got the view and then came back a little over a mile before walking to the rim of Mile 36.8 canyon. On coming out on Sunday, we found that it would have been a lot closer if I had parked another half mile farther south. I now have the right place marked with a little two stone cairn.
With Ron's mark on my map for help, I had no trouble picking out the place to leave the rim and when we got over to the place, there was no problem in seeing where to get through the Coconino, at a rock slide to the northeast of the Kaibab descent. The way off the rim was hard enough to be interesting, but deer use it. The slopes below have a lot of loose rock and it is safer for one man to get around here than for a party. When we went down to talus covering the entire Coconino and much of the Hermit, we should have gone to the bed of the wash rather directly. As it was we floundered along on the steep loose slope much longer than we should have. After we had gone some distance, a shale cliff cut us off from the bed, and we couldn't get down without going quite a bit farther. Jorgen tried staying high too long and we had to wait for him. Steve experimented in trying to get down sooner than was safe and he also got behind. When we came back out, I had intended getting out of the bed in the same place that Ed and I had come into it, but I missed the exit. Instead we went on up the bed with much better results. We saw one shallow pool of water along here. There was some water in the Supai bedrock of the wash, but the better pools would have required a rope to reach.
When we were finally all together again, we took off along the Supai rim on the north side of the canyon since I had seen an almost sure Supai descent on that side. On the return I noticed that it took us 55 minutes for this contour walking to the head of a slide area that covered the Supai all the way down to the Redwall. One place near the bottom called for a careful move over crumbling rock. Ed and I passed this successfully, but Steve started a landslide and he and Jorgen went around and came down a better way. Where the Redwall was bare in the bed and a narrow gorge with impossible drops developed, there was plenty of water for camping. One pocket was eight inches deep, but these would dry up in hot weather. Farther east one can get down slides to the bed 100 feet deep in the Redwall. I didn't go down to see water in bigger pockets, but I believe there are some that can be trusted. We also found two good shelters nearby, on the south side and a bit east of the water where we ate. The nearer one was fine for one man's bed and had fallen rock walls at both ends, the only signs of former human use for this area. The other was a cave that would shelter four or five in a pinch. It is at a slightly lower level but easily reached.
Just before 4:00 p.m., we put our packs down at the water and took off again along the Redwall rim to go upriver to try to see the Bridge of Sighs. We covered the ground quite fast without our packs, and in 45 minutes we were definitely beyond where the Bridge of Sighs is supposed to be. It must be well down in the Redwall because when we were up on the top we couldn't see it. Near the end of our jaunt, Ed stayed at a lower level and found two places where tubes go down through the limestone. One of them makes a fair bridge that might be seen from the river, but it was definitely not the one we wanted to see.
The most interesting thing I noticed was a way down through all the Redwall to the river on the east side at Mile 35.7, practically across from the Bridge of Sighs. Pat Reilly had found an Indian ruin on the east side of the river. Very likely it was reached from this descent. Now I want to go down Tatahatso Canyon again and go upriver along the Redwall rim and get down here. I might get a good view of the bridge and also see the ruin. We got back from our search upriver before six and had plenty of light to get supper.
The continued walk upriver along the Redwall would be slow and difficult. Where we turned back we had a steep ravine to cross, and up at Mile 33, the Supai hardly leaves any space to walk. The slope to the rim of the Redwall looks very steep.
Clouds came along about the time we were thinking of retiring and I slept at the previously used shelter and the others used the cave. I woke up so early that I had time to eat and take a walk downriver and back before 7:00 a.m. I reached a point opposite the mouth of Tatahatso Canyon. The Redwall seems quite promising as a route downriver, but if you would like to come out at Buck Farm, you should remember to go up through the Supai in the bay just north of Buck Farm Canyon. There is no way up the Supai again until you are well past Buck Farm Canyon. (Dye's route on the south side of Buck Farm.)
We all got started out before 8:00 a.m. and stayed in the bed with better results than we had on our descent. We stopped for quite a while to eat a snack, but we reached the car by noon. We were short of water so we drove to Lee's Ferry before we ate the rest of our lunch.
The weather had been bracing and clear and everything was right for a fine trek. I was most interested in the place where we camped and the possible tours up and down river from there, but I would agree with Mitchell that the best way to go from there into South Canyon would be along the top of the Supai. I believe that this loop could be done in one day, especially if someone would drive the car from the closest approach to Mile 36.8 Canyon around to the Buffalo Ranch to meet you. Without stopping to camp, water would not be a problem.
Coconino from Centeotl to Quetzal
[April 26, 1975]
The idea of finding a good descent through the Coconino in Aztec Amphitheater was still bugging me. I had the idea that Gary Stiles might have been thinking of Point Centeotl when he was sure that he had come up at Point Huitzil, so I wanted to investigate this possibility. At the last minute Jim Ohlman agreed to go along. He told me how he and his roommate had become confused when they were separated from three other hikers in trying to get down to Royal Arch. He mistook Point Quetzal for Apache Point. Jim and his friend had gotten through the Toroweap and Coconino (the Kaibab was a walk down) just southeast of Point Quetzal, but he said the route was hairy.
We decided to use the road to the Supai cemetery for the approach to the rim. Jim studied the map while I drove. We overlooked the turnoff again, but this time we drove back from Mexican Jack Tank and found the easily missed road. When you are driving along at a good clip, it is easy to confuse the side road with a bit of grading by the bulldozer. It took only 15 minutes to walk from the cemetery to the rim and we walked another 15 minutes along the rim toward Point Centeotl.
I wish now that we had continued along the rim until we came to the big ravine that cuts low through the rim just west of Point Centeotl. I thought I was looking at the projecting part of the Coconino at Centeotl, but we got down through the Kaibab before we reached the big ravine, and there may be some feature of the Coconino that we missed by not going that far east. The way we got through the Kaibab was fairly interesting with some hand and toe climbing, but we saw a simpler way just west of our slot.
Our next move was to go out on a flat topped Toroweap projection to look at the Coconino. Jim figured that there was a likely route directly below as he looked straight down from the edge and I thought more of a sort of ramp, a narrow ledge that supported a few trees in the hollow to the west. We went around to the west of this ramp and I gave it up because there seemed to be a long drop from the lower end of the ramp. Jim's suggestion seemed very risky to me and I insisted on going on to the west along either of two bighorn trails, a lower one right near the edge of the Toroweap or a higher one in the steep clay slope. At one place the trail we were following had given way leaving a long stride over nothing. Jim stepped across handily where I would have had to jump. I bypassed it slowly by digging into the clay above while holding to some gypsum outcrops.
At two or three other places, Jim thought he would like to experiment with climbing down through the Toroweap and Coconino, but I thought it would be better to go to the place where he had already proved the possibility by getting down to the Esplanade near point Quetzal. We were getting close to his route when he saw a better then most place. He impressed me by the ease with which he climbed down a crack between the limestone walls and reached a place where he would have to get down two precarious drops of eight or ten feet with only crumbling rock to hold to. If we had had a rope with us, he could have gotten down to a good looking crack in the Coconino, but he agreed to some back up rather than take a chance on getting stuck. I have a strong conviction that this Coconino crack would only go part way through.
He then took me to the way he had gone down, and I didn't like the looks of that place either. We had no trouble getting up on top and used the dim sun showing through the low clouds to steer the course back to the car. We thought we could intercept the spur road to the cemetery by heading south, but we reached the main road west of the turnoff. We could have left the car on the main road and saved a couple of miles of driving, or we could have stayed close to the rim until we were sure we were north of the cemetery. I should have carried a compass, since the weather closed in for some real snow a little later. We were to the car before 3:00 p.m., and I got home in good time for an evening of chess with Dick Hart.
Tatahatso Canyon to the Bridge of Sighs
[May 3, 1975 to May 4, 1975]
When we were looking for the Bridge of Sighs by coming down Mile 36.8 Canyon, I had noticed an almost sure way to come down through the Redwall and reach the river. Pat Reilly had once stopped here to photograph the Bridge of Sighs and he had climbed up on the Devonian ledge and had found some Indian ruins. His location fitted so well with mine that I was really sure that there was a way to the river.
I left Flagstaff at 5:30 a.m. alone. I figured on going downriver from Mile 35.6 in my tiny inflatable, so I couldn't invite anyone else along. I made one error in driving to Black Spot Reservoir on the way to Tatahatso. I know now that I should avoid the south fork of the road as one approaches a unique rocky outcrop in the plain west of the Tooth, about eight miles from the highway. After going for 1.3 miles on the north fork, one should take the south fork where the road splits again. This time I got on the north fork and came too close to Shinumo Altar. I used a minor road that angled southwest and arrived at Black Spot Reservoir. Still I got from the highway to the parking south of Tatahatso Canyon in 45 minutes and noted that the distance is just under 20 miles.
Although I had covered this ground only last summer, I had forgotten that you need to walk about 15 minutes to get from the car to the rim above Tatahatso Canyon. A closer approach by car would be to drive along the lower ground north of Eminence Break. I saw a dim car track in that valley. I was also unsure where I should get off the Kaibab rim. Since there are some small cliffs in that formation to the east, go down from right above the vital crack in the rim of the Toroweap that I found last August. After some fumbling, I did this and found my own cairn to mark the crack. This place is so narrow that I had to remove my pack and move it ahead of me to get through.
This time I took the slope to the left at the lip of the Coconino fall. It was a little longer to reach the fault on the south side, but I avoided the awkward place on the north where I crawled under the big rock. I was afraid I might have problems getting my pack through here. In the fault crack, I looked up and saw where Packard and Walters had their struggle to pass the chockstone. I am amazed that they could do it at all.
Tatahatso Canyon is slow to descend since there is such a jumble of big rocks in the bed. I saw about as much water in pools as I found last August. There was some near the top in the Toroweap and I am fairly sure I saw some in the Redwall slot that would have meant quite a detour. The useful location is in the Supai near the junction with the north arm of Tatahatso.
Redbud trees were in all stages of blooming, budding out near the top, in full bloom lower, and through blooming still lower. Several different kinds of birds were singing, particularly canyon wrens.
When I left Tatahatso to go north, I found a trace of a deer trail for much of the way across 36 Mile Canyon. Also on a flat part of the Redwall rim, I noticed a cooking fireplace and wondered whether Jensen or Grua might have spent the night there.
The most interesting sight connected with 36 Mile Canyon is the biggest rockfall I have seen in the entire Grand Canyon. It is not as massive as the one brought down by the earthquake west of Yellowstone, but the fresh scar shows that a part of the wall or perhaps a whole promontory let go from the Kaibab down through all of the Coconino. I would estimate that the scar is 100 yards wide, and the valley beneath is choked with the debris. Strangely the largest blocks seem to have stopped farther up the slope than the smaller boulders and gravel. The latter followed two courses. Some spilled down into a tributary of 36 Mile Canyon but most of it has filled a minor ravine just south of the bed of 36 Mile Canyon. Where there must have been a V shaped valley, there is now a broad surface of yellow gravel that bulges up in the center. Very little vegetation has taken root in this detritus and the piles of Russian thistles in nearby depressions show that these weeds are among the first to grow in this disturbed area.
I walked down the bed of 36 Mile Canyon as far as I could. There are some big drops below. From the rim north of this canyon, I could see the Bridge of Sighs. If we had been sharper we would have seen it from the west side. It is just north of the promontory where Jorgen stopped and waited for Ed and me to return. I hadn't remembered that the bridge actually spans a drainage basin. I was so intent on making time that I didn't look down as we crossed this drainage. From the east rim I could see that one can go down just north of the bridge and actually walk across it. There also may be a way to climb up from the river and stand under the bridge too.
When I got up north of 36 Mile Canyon, I could look down and see the broken slope that I had seen from the other side two weeks ago. This ravine is not to be confused with a side canyon right next to it to the north. The way is all obvious until you are almost down. Then there are a couple of drops from ledges where you have to look for the best way. Indians piled up rocks to shorten the last step down at two places. Just north of this bit of construction, under a slight overhang were three room outlines. These must be the ones that Pat found. This is also in all probability where the chopper pilot let Bob Euler get out of the machine while he rested one skid only on the ledge (probably at the ruin on the right hand side of the bridge). Getting down to the river was no great feat but you have to look for the best way.
I had come from the car to the river across from the Bridge of Sighs between 8:25 and 3:00. I dropped my pack at the ruins, and although I was weary, I had the pep and inclination to walk upriver as far as the bank lasts. I had to climb up to the Devonian ledge immediately, but in about 50 yards it ends. Right above 35.6 Mile Canyon, someone has cemented a short pipe into the rock. I reached the next delta about a half mile north of the one opposite the bridge. If I had used my three and a half pound inflatable, I might have passed a place where the water comes to the vertical wall and reached Nautiloid Canyon at Mile 34.8. I also regretted not having brought the boat along since I could have floated back to camp on the gentle current.
I had intended going downriver in my boat, see Buck Farm Canyon in the Redwall, and return by the Eminence Break Route. I would be able to land above 36 Mile Rapid and launch the boat below it. However, I caught sight of a fairly brisk riffle farther down with no boulder bar for a bypass. I would probably ship water here and I didn't want to get cold and wet. As it was, I rested on my bedroll with a magazine for company and got an early start back at 5:15 a.m. on Sunday. It was cloudy and the riffle didn't seem very impressive in the dim light. I wish now that I had gone through with the whole plan.
As I came out, it was windy and cool and I didn't stop for pictures. I got from the campsite to the car in less time than I had needed to go down, from 5:15 to 11:50 a.m.
It is an interesting route, but Tatahatso Canyon is rougher than the Eminence Break Route and this is surely longer than the way to President Harding Rapid. This route has the charm of seeming much less familiar.
Oak Canyon and Music Temple Canyon
[May 18, 1975 to May 19, 1975]
We waited until after 12:30 p.m. to meet Dock Marston at Lee's Ferry and then launched at Wahweap. After a cool night camping on the east side of Warm Creek, we took the Wards to Rainbow Bridge and next went up Oak Canyon (Secret, in Stan Jones' first edition). We had to pole our way through 30 yards of driftwood and paddle where it seemed too narrow for the motor. We could land above the old barrier fall at 3649 foot elevation for the lake surface.
The Wards and I started off together on foot, but they agreed to let me forge ahead at my rate. I had agreed to get back in two hours and I wanted to see whether I could find a way to leave the bed of Oak Canyon and arrive on the flats where I had been before via the old Indian Trail cut in the rock leading up to the east from the submerged hogan in the other arm of Oak Canyon. Within 20 minutes from leaving the boat, I had passed one crack going up to the east and had reached the next one. This one seemed more worth trying, but far above it seemed to turn into a bare crack going nearly straight up. I tried it, but about halfway to the top of the cliff I came to a chockstone blocking my way. If I had shinnied up with as much determination as it takes to get up Siegfried Pyre, I might have passed this stone, but the way ahead looked still worse, so I gave up while there was still time to try something else.
There were sheep and horse droppings in the bed of Oak Canyon, so I knew that I was above all barriers for travel in the main arm. I recognized a big overhang roofing over on the west side of the bed at a concave angle, and about eight minutes of walking beyond brought me to another long ravine that sloped up to the east. The average angle of rise was not as great as it was in the other one, and I was distinctly encouraged when I found a trace of a trail going up here and even some sheep droppings. The last half of the thousand foot rise was over simple talus material and if I had turned back shortly before I reached the pass, I would have figured that I had found the right place. Instead I pushed back my self imposed deadline and continued to the top to make real sure and see where I would be getting down on the other side. I was disappointed. There was no way to get down short of using a fairly long rope in two places. I recognized the open area below and I am sure that I had walked along those flats beneath the east wall of Oak Canyon. On the way back I checked to see whether one can go up along the crest of the wall to get farther south and look for another descent, but there was no way. I'll have to try for another way farther south.
We camped Sunday evening on the right side of the lake on the south side of a promontory that is southwest of the mouth of Hidden Passage. On Monday morning we headed out into the main lake and started for the Escalante. It was so rough that Roma talked me into seeking shelter. It didn't take much persuasion to get me into the inlet above Music Temple because I wanted to repeat the climb up to Emmerton Arch that Dennis Bonnet and Arnie Stephanson had done. We found a fine place to tie up with the chance to step out on rock while the keel was grounded on sand. One could climb around quite freely over quite an area below the main wall, and I found a crack I could go up to the west, on the south side of the water, of course. After getting past a difficult place rather near the bottom of this crack, I could go over the top staying in the crack and get down the west side and reach another crack that led up high enough to reach the easier slope of the sand rock where rubber soles would grip. For safety, one still had to find the best way, but fairly soon I was out where it was a simple walk up a valley. There were even some water pockets on the way up.
I hadn't memorized the location of Emmerton Arch and I overshot it badly. On my way down I got closer to the edge where I could look down on the water of the inlet, and I found the arch. It seems to have been formed by a cave breaking through and I would estimate that it is only ten feet wide by six feet high. I got to the boat in just over 90 minutes.
After lunch it still seemed too windy for safety on the main lake, so I took off again to explore a bit more of the high country. I already knew that I could get down into the valley of the Music Temple Canyon above the barrier fall. At the level 3649 the bedrock at the end of the water formed a campsite for two boats. I found that it was just possible for me to climb down a crack and reach their camp. In fact I had quite a visit with these two families. Just around the bend, there was a shallow plunge pool and an impossible fall. With water 30 feet deeper, I will be able to get the boat in above this fall and it will be simple to walk up the valley for miles towards Nasja Creek as well as go south toward Anasazi Canyon. As it was I climbed the cracks to the west of our campsite and walked south over the plateau. There was one very green depression in the bare rock and sheep tracks were quite fresh in some still wet sand. There was also some old horse manure in this area. It would be a pleasure to spend the day roaming over this area. I did get far enough to find the land dropping in the direction of the Anasazi drainage. I had agreed to get back by 5:15 p.m., and I almost made it. At least I was within sight of our boat by then. I hope to take another crack at this fascinating area.
One observation was a cottonwood tree that had been girdled by beaver cutting at the old water level where there was no chance for a beaver to stand and work from any more substantial platform than the water.
On Monday we also went up Reflection (Cottonwood) Canyon. At the end of the water it would have been easy to get out on the bank and start walking. I am sure that the main arm of Cottonwood Gulch goes out on the open area leading to Fifty Mile Point and the Hole in the Rock Road.
By 5:00 p.m. Monday evening, the main lake was fairly quiet and we could have gone back to Wahweap then. We thought that the wind would die out in the night, but instead it picked up force all night and blew a gale of wind and sand all Tuesday until about 3:15 p.m. We took off and got past the Rainbow Junction and then the waves seemed quite threatening again. I brought the Crestliner into what we call Hippie Harbor and we had a perfectly protected place for the night. It was a lot better Wednesday morning, but we got away by 5:30 a.m. in order not to take any more chances of getting marooned by a steady gale. We reached Wahweap in time to eat breakfast at Page.
Espejo Butte and possible routes
[June 24, 1975]
Last year a geologist told me that he and a friend had been able to go up Palisades Creek to within 60 feet of the top of the Redwall. When Billingsley heard this, he said that it would be possible to get down from the top with a rope and go all the way to the river from near Espejo Butte. I figured that a good one day hike would be the project of seeing about getting off the rim.
John Carroll was glad to come with me although he isn't interested in severe rock climbing with exposure. We talked to the rangers at Desert View, Don Chase, Bryan Swift, and Mark Brosovich. The latter is a seasonal from Seattle and is very much interested in climbing Vishnu Temple. We made a tentative agreement to team together and do it in about three weeks.
We left the Jimmy at the junction of the Straight Canyon and Cedar Mountain roads and started walking at 8:55 a.m. The day was cool and clear and it felt good to be doing some real hiking again after my operation 22 days before. It took a bit over 20 minutes to reach the place where the road goes down very steeply into the bed of the south arm of Straight Canyon. The Navahos had been bulldozing this section to improve the road against the wishes of the Park authorities who want this section of the park to be designated a wilderness area. The Indians want to keep on using it for sheep grazing. They told us at the ranger station that the park four wheelers can make the loop drive around Gold Hill.
We followed the road along the bed of the wash for a short distance and then went up over the hills to the north. Since we wanted to get the view from Comanche Point, we took the left fork at the T and went closer to a hogan before striking north fairly close to the rim. When we got close to Comanche Point I made the mistake of going up over the points along the scalloped rim rather than getting down into the valley and going up on the proper point at the end. We were confused about which point was Comanche, but we finally got to the real summit. It is just as much of a climb away from the rim as Fossil Mountain and thus should be counted as a Grand Canyon summit.
We took in the spectacular view and then I began studying the possibility of getting down to the river. I could see how to pass the lower basalt of Espejo Creek on a talus and then it appeared sure to get to the base of the Redwall. Besides the chance of following the ravine of Espejo Creek through the Redwall (I couldn't see whether there are impossible drops in the bed), I could see two places northwest of the bed where the Redwall has a non vertical pitch and may be possible. Espejo Butte would be a cinch for a person reaching the saddle between it and the rim. I also noticed from Comanche Point that the best chance of getting through the Redwall on Temple Butte may be at the south end. It is sure that one could get through half of it here. You would need to start up around on the middle of the east side and follow the bench around to the south end.
We proceeded rather close to the rim north from Comanche with quite a lot of effort to pass all the notches and ravines that drain away from the rim to the east. Finally we found that we had gone past Espejo and we doubled back looking for ways through the rim. The best chance seemed to be just north of the saddle. Near the top of the scramble it seemed about as hard as the Shinumo in Papago Canyon and lower there seemed to be a place where a 20 or 30 foot rappel would be necessary. I would like to bring someone like Doty or Walters back here. We might need to bring three ropes along.
We were looking down on the north side of Espejo Butte at Palisades Creek. After one would get down from the rim through the Kaibab and Toroweap, everything else looked easy. We had set 1:30 p.m. as a turn around time, and we did start back at 2:00. By going southeast to the flatter country, we were able to get back faster than we had come. There were some ravines to cross, and we finally followed a streambed to the south. When we climbed up to the east, we realized that we had been paralleling the road for quite a distance. We got to the car from the rim above Espejo in two hours and 50 minutes. It probably would have taken two hours if we had used the car as far as the north side of Gold Hill.
Access to Oak Canyon from the east
[July 1, 1975]
I had gone up the Navaho Horse Trail to the east of Dougi Canyon (east of Oak Canyon) several times and I had tried to locate a route down into Oak Canyon from the flats south of Dougi Cove. Check the log for 9/1/74. Then I had tried going up Oak Canyon above the water of the lake and last October and this May again, I had tried to locate a way to go from the bed of Oak Canyon up through the cliffs to the flats where I had been. This would be one more attempt, and I have to credit Ann Hopkins with persuasive support for the project. Jim was not keen on giving me four hours in here at the upper end of navigation in Oak Canyon, and Roma was of the opinion that this trip was to please Jim, not me. I really cut it close when I said that four hours was all I would need.
After forgetting the camera and then coming back for it, wasting five minutes, I got started at 10:15 a.m. The water stood at the highest level ever, 3669, and we had only a little struggle too pass through some driftwood, not as much as when the Wards were along. Ann had her fishing pole and the water was not too cruddy for a cooling dip, so I didn't feel too bad about going off and asking the others to wait.
Right around the corner was one of the best narrows with some lumpy bedrock just beyond and another spooky narrows. Within a few minutes I passed the place where I had tried climbing only to be stopped soon by a chockstone. In a little over 20 minutes I reached the impressive overhang and in 30 minutes I was passing the place where I climbed to the pass and looked down on the sheep pasture south of Dougi Valley. Finally, in about 75 minutes, I came to a place where there was a lot of desert varnished rounded boulders and gravel over the red sandstone on the east side.
I had already seen places where I could have gone high on the steeply sloping slickrock, but I waited until I came to this change in the surface before trying to go up and to the east. I had been watching for the mouth of a gently sloping ravine where I had come down past two waterholes last September, but I didn't see it. There was a trace of a sheep trail where I went up over the gravel slope, and then I continued high on the bare sandstone. There I had to choose the south or north side of a high fin, about the highest thing around. I could see how I might make some real progress on the north side, but on a hunch I took the south side. Here I soon came to an impossible drop, but as I looked ahead across the gulch, I could see steps cut in the steep rock. I felt sure now that all I had to do was to go down and start up the gully to the south of the high fin.
When I got nearly to the bottom, I spotted a fine big cairn that would be visible from up Oak Canyon. After following the bed of the gully, I came to the place where I would have to continue up the bare rock of the narrowing gully or strike off to the south where I thought the steps were. I took the latter course and passed by another fissure gully that might have led me over and down into the sheep pasture, but eventually I came to the steps. There were no cairns along the way, but I followed the easiest walking from the rounded rock ridge and started the descent into the sheep pasture area. I was now quite sure that I could get down, but before I succeeded I came to quite a few more places where the Indians had cut steps. When I reached the familiar flats, I was at the southwest corner of the area. I didn't have time to continue north and find the place I had descended toward Oak Canyon and then had been stopped by the 10 foot drop. A fine distinctive landmark for this area was the presence of six mushroom rocks about the same size, about 15 feet high. One could call it Mushroom Rock Park. I ate my lunch under one of them and started back at 12:50 p.m. I got down from Mushroom Park to the bed of Oak Canyon in less than 30 minutes and back to the boat in 105 minutes. The scenery was all grand, superior to what you see from the boat and it was most satisfying to locate the route without having to get a guide.
The next thing would be to find the way from the Airport down into Anasazi Canyon and farther east. Cooler weather would be a real help. I lay down in the water twice on the return to the boat.. Spring water was flowing in Oak Canyon a little below the talus of water worn rocks, and there were a few water holes below there.
Promontory east of Cliff Dwellers
[July 17, 1975]
Dock Marston had told me that he had a report of Indian ruins on the headland or promontory just east of Cliff Dweller's Lodge. On our way to the north rim, we were staying at the lodge overnight, and there was quite a bit of daylight left after dinner. I got Nellie interested in a little hike.
We went up the slope to the east of the dry east arm of Soap and she kept with me nearly to the top cliff of resistant sandstone. I had thought that there would be some convenient breaks in this rim rock, but when I tried a couple of places, they seemed a bit risky. I am sure that a fairly good climber would have been up either of them in a hurry, but I recalled the recent climbing accident in Hermit Basin and chose a safer place farther northwest of the next to the south end of the promontory. It was getting a little dark when I succeeded in making the top of the plateau, so I shouted to Nellie and she returned to base before it got dark.
I was surprised to see that the promontory was connected to the mainland by so narrow a neck, only about 10 feet wide. Just south of this constriction were several short barricade walls which seemed never to have been made with mortar. There were also some good sized cairns near the neck. Other than these, I saw no signs of ruins. However, I could imagine that these walls were the basis of the reported ruins. It seemed fairly obvious that the aborigines used this platform as a refuge in case of attack.
Before the light failed, I could see a road that had been bulldozed to the level I was on but the road reached the edge of the plateau on the far side of the bay to the east. I hurried to beat the darkness, but I suppose it took about 15 minutes to get around to the road. It was easy to stride down the road, but there are a lot of big rocks on it now. It must date back to the uranium excitement. When I was a third of the way to the bottom, I was startled by the buzz of a rattler. There was just enough light to see that it was a big one about six feet away. It coiled and I recoiled.
I had said I would be back to the motel in a half hour but I took three times that long. Nellie had not tried to get up on top of the plateau and she got back okay.
Scouting Sullivan Peak
[July 18, 1975]
I have been recommending Sullivan Peak to Baxter and Dexter as an unclimbed Grand Canyon summit, so I have been interested in seeing whether there is a shorter approach than getting through the Coconino on the north side of Point Imperial. While Roma took Ruth and Nellie to Cape Royal and back, I gave myself two hours to study the possible routes for descent.
My method was to drop below the highway at the scenic view which is near Sullivan. I was easily able to get down to the rim of the Coconino and just a bit lower in the ravine directly below the viewpoint.
Then I walked up above the Toroweap and went down the next ravine to the west. It is next to the point that goes out in the direction of Sullivan. This time I was able to get down to the middle of the Coconino. I didn't go absolutely as low as I could have, but there was a big drop below. I then went up to the bridle path and walked out on that point. Clear around to the west there seemed to be a couple of places where the Coconino might be climbed. Through rather far, they would be closer than the known break on the north side of Imperial. I then went down toward the Coconino rim on the east side of the point, mostly to look back and see whether I had missed a possibility of getting through the Coconino, but my watch told me that I should turn back before I got a good look at the cliff where I had gone halfway through the sandstone. I got back to the highway quickly and walked down toward the Y. While on foot along the road, I saw three grouse.
Dry Rock Creek Route
[August 30, 1975 cf., 9/17/70]
We were taking a Lake Powell trip and Roma and I had agreed that since we would be there for three days, I should get most of one day for hiking. We slept at Warm Creek Friday night, and it was 9:30 a.m. before we reached the place to begin the hike in Dry Rock Creek. Unrealistically, I had figured that one two quart canteen would do for the length of time I wanted to take for the hike, but I knew I wanted to go farther than I had gone when Henry Hall was waiting for me at the boat.
I knew from my previous experiences that I should walk up the southwest side of the valley. As before, I noticed deer droppings and very old cow chips. On the way back I ran across a neat little natural bridge. It consisted of a flat slab, about one foot thick, four feet wide, and ten feet long. It was at the head of the bedrock gorge of a tributary in front of a prominent big base relief arch in the Navaho Sandstone of the main cliff. For quite a bit of the way I could make out a game trail. It took me two hours to go from the boat that was moored just across the estuary from where I camped with Henry up to where I had turned back before.
A good landmark for this place where the trail gets steep is a mushroom rock formed by a hard cap on top of a column of red sandstone. This part of the valley has been filled by slide material at one time, but now there are great ravines through it. The game trail goes up a ridge formed by caps on top of the slide material.
I wasn't in too good shape for climbing because of the heat, but I got nearly to the top of the slide area in an hour and left my lunch in a shady hollow below a big rock. I went on to the top of the broad platform that separates Rock Creek from Dangling Rope Canyon, and I tried to walk across this rough platform with lots of rounded rocks and junipers, but I couldn't get across far enough to see the lake in that direction within my time limit. What I could see, however, was exactly where one should go on up to the top of the Kaiparowits. The route was relatively close and simple looking. On a north facing slope the vertical cliffs were missing and the steep slope had a broad forest of junipers and pinyons. I estimated that in another two hours I should be able to get on top. The map shows a trail going down on the other side, so I figured that I might walk up there and down into Reflection Canyon to the lake the same day.
I spent a half hour eating in the cool overhang near the top of this intermediate plateau, and then as I descended, I began to realize that I hadn't brought enough water along. I held back, but still I drank my last drop by about 3:15 p.m. I became weak and nauseated although I avoided throwing up. I had to lie down every 15 minutes or whenever I came to some shade, and I was over an hour later getting to the boat than I had figured on. One of my disabilities was getting cramps in the legs. More water and more salt would most likely have helped me get back just as well as I had gone out in the morning.
It is a great area and I would like to do this again in cool weather. (George Bain walked to the top and back in 10 hours. There is a spring near the rim.)
Espejo Butte
[September 6, 1975 cf., 6/24/75]
Jim Ohlman went with me and we drove the Jimmy about eight miles from the paving at the checking station, down near Cedar Mountain and then across Straight Canyon. I parked it at first before we reached Straight Canyon, and then I remembered that the rangers had said that they could take four wheelers clear around Gold Hill and come up the steep grade out of Straight Canyon. We wasted about 10 or 15 minutes going forward on foot and then coming back to drive the Jimmy on to where the road starts downhill toward Gold Hill. I had forgotten how bad and rocky the road is about a half mile north of Straight Canyon, and the car would have been helpless if I had tried to get up without using four wheel drive. As it was, I was afraid I would get hung up on big rocks beside the track or that the rocks might hurt the differential.
It took us an hour to walk from the parked car to the rim above Espejo Butte. We were able to come back from the rim to the car in 45 minutes, so I figured that this was because we used a better route on the return. One should stay at the level above the broad flats. Here the canyons that cut through the ridge that forms the rim seem to spread out fairly level.
When we got to the place where the rim cliff is somewhat broken, I didn't recognize the place I had spotted when I was with John Carroll last June. First Jim went quite far down and stood on a very exposed small platform and thought that there might be a way down a crack. On further inspection, both of us didn't like this way at all. For a time, my reaction was that I couldn't see a way where we ought to try it even with a rope, and at one time I suggested that we abandon the project and take a hike out to Cape Solitude for the view. However, before I gave up completely, I went down to the shelf which Jim had wanted us to reach by using hands and toes while facing in. These 10 foot difficult places alternated with simple talus slopes, and when I reached the broader bench about 150 feet below the rim, we could go south and find another series of climbs and walks down to the Coconino.
One encouraging sign was that there were deer droppings at several places along the route. the general plan of the route is to go down the top ledge where we built a cairn, then north for 40 yards, then down and then south and down again. The Coconino made us look around for a route also, but by angling down to the north once more, we had no real difficulty with it. Rather than stay high in the Coconino and go around south to the Espejo notch, we chose to go down through two thirds of the formation and then go up the ravine to the notch. We very likely missed a shortcut by not staying higher.
From the notch our route up Espejo was mostly along the ridge, but it was often easier to go down a few yards to one side or the other. There was a real drop at one place about halfway to the top where we had to go around to the north, and then on the last leg, I figured that a ravine up through the Toroweap along the north side was quite a bit easier than Jim's route pretty much along the top of the ridge.
There were no cairns before we built ours on the twin summits. We both went west to a lower point to get the view of the river and of Lava Creek Valley. We could see that it is quite possible to come down the notch just north of Comanche Point clear through the Coconino and probably all the Supai (Ken Walters found a way through the Redwall). Getting through the Coconino in the ravine of Espejo Creek looked hard. This part of the descent is much easier in Palisades Creek.
Jim brought my pack down in his hand after I had scouted the descent to the Toroweap. Once he slipped and lost his balance and had to let go of my pack. It caught behind a rock just before it went over a 100 foot drop. Fortunately I was carrying my camera. Jim also stepped on a small rattlesnake before he saw it, but it wasn't hurt and didn't try to strike.
Montezuma and Huitzil Point Routes
[October 4, 1975]
I had had six frustrating experiences trying to find the route through the Coconino that Gary Stiles had found near Point Huitzil. I had tried about everything except going down below and trying to come up. This seemed like a good day project, and I didn't have any reason for hurrying home at an early hour. I also had another project. Packard and Walters had come up near my rope route at Montezuma Point and had then gone farther north and had found a ropeless route up. I wanted to see that too. This would be my seventh attempt at finding the Stiles Route, but I hoped that I had made all possible mistakes and would at least find it. Scott Thybony accepted my invitation to go along. He is a stronger hiker and climber than I am, and I was glad to have his moral support.
We got away earlier than usual, at 6:00 a.m. Since we don't need a permit for a day hike, we took the shortcut from Moki Lodge directly out to the Topocoba Road. It saves three miles and furthermore the road from the South Rim is cut by ditching. I drove for about a mile along the old telephone line west of Pasture Wash and parked by 8:45, my fastest time from home to this place. In the woods we stayed so far east that we didn't even see the valley which drains the south side of Point Huitzil. We got down into the valley just north of Huitzil and then had to walk to the east a bit to get down to the bed of the deep ravine. It comes out level with the top of the Toroweap and we walked mostly on sheep trails around to the terrace beneath Montezuma Point. There is a small cairn here to locate the descent through the Toroweap.
Before we started down my rope route, we looked farther to the north along the top of the Coconino. Scott called my attention to the possibility of getting started down over here, but I thought it would just lead to more frustration and we used my old route with the rope around the clump of shrubbery. When we got down here we went north and looked for the Packard Walters route. It was only a few yards away. Without our packs it was mostly quite easy climbing, but one place for about 12 feet I had some difficulty in finding toeholds in the chimney. Scott was also impressed by this place. I chose to come down the rope again while Scott climbed down where we had both just come up.
We ate lunch on the south side of the east arm of Royal Arch Creek and noticed a good shelter under a Supai overhang across the way. We both went over to investigate and found a couple of petroglyphs and two big mescal pits. There were also some broken metates and bits of pottery and worked stone. Getting along the Esplanade beneath Point Huitzil was rather rough because of ravines.
On the south side of the point, we got up to the base of the Coconino and began checking all possibilities. At one place Scott went up a crack and investigated the chances higher up. He was sure that it was not a route for the average good climber. We went on to a place south of here where a narrow ledge leads to the Coconino above a basal cliff. Here again Scott went ahead to report what he thought of our chances. With his encouragement, I started up in the lead. When we had gone to the south end of our bench we could double back to the northwest. We saw two cairns near here and quite a few steps cut in the sandstone. At one place some rocks had been piled below a three foot ledge for a step. There was a lot of walking on sloping slabs, and at one place the angle seemed a bit disturbing. To avoid this Scott wrestled up a crack but I found the slope not too bad and gained time here.
A crack between two blocks led to a higher bench which I recognized as the place I could reach by a 50 foot rappel that I had considered last year. The north end of this bench is the place where two ropes would be needed, so I went south. Right away I saw the display of petroglyphs, and quite soon we came to the big crack behind a block where a couple of logs are fastened to form a ladder. One seemed to have been cut by a steel axe, and when we had climbed up this ladder we found a steel drill bit that had been left by a miner. Another short log led by a concealed route to the broken slope at the top of the Coconino and up through the Toroweap. This place is marked by a couple of cairns and has more petroglyphs at shelters.
Sullivan Peak, Colonnade
[November 11, 1975 to November 12, 1975]
I had told Lee Dexter and Scott Baxter that Sullivan was an impressive challenge that had never been climbed, so Lee was glad to take my invitation to the North Rim with that goal in mind. Steve Studebaker joined us at Point Imperial after camping with his family and the Steve Agins, friends from Shonto, the night before. I hadn't realized that Steve has all the climber's equipment and some experience with the experts.
We started away from the road on the north side of Point Imperial about 7:30 a.m. and by 9:50 we were at the base of Sullivan. The impression I had obtained last summer, that much of it is a simple scramble uphill, was erroneous. We first walked around beyond the south side to see whether we might be overlooking a route, but there was none remotely easier than the one nearest us. Lee had scanned the whole north side of the monolith and had picked a route up a sort of ramp from lower right to upper left for half the ascent. Then he figured that one should go up to the right and finally climb to the summit near the north end.
The only thing learned, except in the negative sense, by our trip around the south side of the base, was that a nearly sure route up through the Coconino existed going north at the angle in the bay west of Sullivan. We could see that the brush and thorns would be pretty bad in that direction, but still I suppose that one could get over there and go up to the rim faster than he could backtrack around the end of Point Imperial.
I started up the approved place on the northeast base of Sullivan about 40 feet until the going got hard for me. I should have been willing to tag along with Lee and Scott and use my Jumars on the belay rope after it was in place when Lee had come to a good anchorage. I was afraid that I would slow them down materially and I backed out after watching them climb the first pitch. A few yards of this looked hard for Lee, and I was convinced that I shouldn't attempt it. Lee put slings around two trees during the first pitch and Steve stood at the bottom paying out the rope until Lee had arrived above the worst part. Then Steve climbed without putting weight on the rope. While he was undoing the lower belay sling, I started back via the break in the Coconino to the west.
Before I came to the one that seemed a sure route through the Coconino and Toroweap, I came to a good looking break, the first one in the westerly direction from the saddle north of Sullivan. The fine thing here was that I could walk up an open gully instead of fighting for every yard through the dense brush and thorns. When I was at least halfway through the Coconino, I came to one obstructing ledge clear across the ravine. There were at least four places where a good climber could have gone on through, but they all seemed a bit chancy to me. I descended and fought my way on west to the better looking break. This one was hard to reach, but there was some help from a deer trail for much of the way up. I reached the car about 4:00 p.m. and I only had to wait for an hour for Lee and Steve to come back. They had succeeded by the route that Lee had spotted from a distance. One place at the headwall had been all that Lee could manage (5.7, he called it), but he didn't have to use any pitons or chocks. Steve got a bit of support from the rope here, and they rappelled freely using two ropes on the descent. They came back up the Coconino via a possible break at the eastern base of the promontory extending toward Sullivan. It was rough and they had to do some more belaying to get up there.
On Sunday Lee had something else to do, but Steve went with me to see how hard it would be to get up the Colonnade. I knew that Al Doty had done it, but I also knew that this didn't mean that it would be easy. We drove south on the road that goes parallel to the south end of the Widforss Point Trail. It stops about one and a half miles from the rim. It was fortunate that Steve had brought his map and a compass. We got to the rim all right in about 45 minutes, and when we looked out, we saw that we were quite a way east of the Colonnade. We went out on the point overlooking that butte and then backed up and started down on the side facing Tiyo Point. A deer trail goes down here and then south along the top of the lower Toroweap. I was expecting more thorny brush, but this part of the rim seems quite free of it. The worst we encountered was some low manzanita. I was surely gratified at this since my hands were in bad shape from the previous day.
We got through the Toroweap ledges just south of the end on the west side of the promontory and there were no really bad moves to work our way down the crest of the ridge through the Coconino. Just at the end of the steep descent, we had a bit of route finding on the west to get down to the relatively level wall pointing to the Colonnade. The top of the wall was quite simple until we came near the south end. Here some big blocks forced us to choose a descent to the talus on the west base of the wall. I had thought from the Maxon geological map that there might be a lot of Coconino left at the notch below the ascent to the Colonnade, but this is not so. At the south end of the wall one can easily walk down the talus on either side. Thus one could come down here and go along the Hermit over to Manu Temple. The brush isn't too bad anywhere along here and I feel that with an early start, Manu could be climbed in one day from the North Rim.
We must have followed Doty's route up. There is a fairly narrow and safe ravine just west of the north base of the ridge going up on the Colonnade, and we could use it. It required some care and a fallen tree near the top of the crack forced us to go out of it to the west for the last few yards. On the return, Steve pushed the tree down in front of us and we used the crack all the way down. He had carried a relatively light rappel rope all the way to near the top of the Colonnade, and we used it as a handline in getting down this last place.
I was ahead on this lower part and when I got to where I could see a big block in the center of the ridge, I felt discouraged. Also the clouds were coming in from the west and I suggested that we give up the effort. Steve encouraged me to continue. We found ways around all the obstacles, and it turned out that the part I had already done was about the hardest move of all. At the top of the Coconino Steve was ready to go to the east to look for a way through the lower cliff of Toroweap. I said that I rather remembered seeing green breaks in the cliff on the west side. When we went around there we soon saw a way to ascend again. About when we thought we were arriving at the top, we discovered that we were only on top of a promontory extending to the northwest from the real summit. It was still quite a way to the top, and Steve put down his equipment and rucksack near the base of this last scramble. There was no difficulty except the effort of walking uphill and we came out on top. There was a big cairn on a rock slightly below the very summit and a smaller one on the very highest point. I'll have to ask Doty whether he built both of these. We got to the top only a little more than three hours from the time we left the campground.
We would have enjoyed going south along the ridge of the Colonnade to get the fine view down into Phantom Canyon the way Doty did, but the weather was looking worse all the time. We wanted to get down before a rain or snowstorm would make the rocks, some covered with lichen, bad under foot. We ate lunch at the north end of the connecting wall between showers. There was a little pellet snow mixed with the rain. The way up to the rim seemed like quite a long drag to me, and then we had to find the car.
We probably should have stayed near the rim until we arrived at the place where we first reached the rim on our way in the morning. As it was, we went away from the rim and then went east to avoid having to cross all the valleys draining to the west. We had intended on staying west of our morning route, but we ran into the Widforss Point Trail actually east of where we had walked south to the rim. After going north on the trail for over ten minutes, we branched off to the northwest. We couldn't see the sun, but we had Steve's compass. The first thing we had done on leaving the car was to cross a deep valley to the east of the car, so we now crossed to the west. When we were getting up on the high ground, I had a feeling that the knoll to the northeast, back across that valley, but with another to its east, was the right place for the road end. We decided to continue to the higher ground where we were headed and then turn back to the northeast if there was no road. In just a few more minutes, we ran into the road and found the car after walking south for only five minutes.
It was a fine time of year for the north rim with all roads dry and hard and aspens still fine. I had done three more Coconino routes and my 73rd peak.
Jicarilla to Slate
[October 25, 1975 cf., 10/1, 14, and 18/61 and 2/7/70]
I got Jim Ohlman interested in joining me for this trip with the ambition of climbing Castor Temple. We knew it would be a long day so we left Flagstaff by 6:00 a.m. By 9:00 we were parked a half a mile along the Jicarilla Point Road in from the Park Boundary Road. For some reason I became leery of the road beyond but there would have been no more difficulty from there to the end than I had already had. I needed to be careful not to hit the side mounted spare tire on the trees.
We came to the rim south of the natural bridge and walked to it first passing the place where one gets down through the Kaibab. Jim hadn't noticed the bridge when he was here two former times. When I saw the long traverse along the Hermit to get to the base of Castor, I had qualms about my getting around and climbing Castor and getting back by daylight. I had been having second thoughts about doing Castor before, but now I definitely decided against trying it. Jim hadn't climbed Pollux and I had never been down the Supai to the Redwall rim of Slate from Jicarilla. We agreed to these lesser objectives, but before splitting up, we looked over the petroglyphs near the notch below Jicarilla.
I first showed Jim the spiral designs to the west and he went on in that direction and showed me some that I hadn't seen before. One set was a very realistic imitation of animal footprints. They showed pads about as large as a silver dollar with dog like claws out in front. Another was a circular maze. We also went around to the east and examined the profuse display that Sears and other hikers had discovered. Doug Schwartz should certainly retract his remark that pictographs and petroglyphs are very rare in the Grand Canyon. Another retraction would be my remark in a previous log that there are no ruins in the area and that there is no importance for this area regarding routes to anywhere else. We now know that there are a couple of ruins in the Toroweap facing east just a few yards from the petroglyphs, and that routes through the Coconino go along the top of the ridge and also down the slot towards Slate Canyon.
After Jim and I parted, he checked for a route along the west side at the top of the Coconino, but he got cliffed out. We already knew that there is no way at that level of Toroweap to start north along the ridge. When Jim came to the block where Bob and Al went down the face and I used a rope, Jim found a way along the east side. It involved going along a very slight ledge but he regarded it as safer than using the slight cracks of the face. When we got home I showed Jim my slides taken the day that we climbed Pollux and he says he didn't use Doty's way off the Coconino to the west. He found a well built cairn farther north and he thought there is a better way than Doty used. This also goes down to the west. He climbed Pollux and noted four mescal pits in the saddle instead of the two that we had seen.
I went down the slot east of the notch and found the moves harder than I had remembered them. I suppose it always seems safer to go up a climb than down. At any rate, I hesitated and wondered whether I should give up. However, I had a couple of short pieces of rope in my day pack and after tying them together, I let my pack down the chimney near the top and then came down very slowly. This is certainly a harder move than anything on the Enfilade Point Trail. At the next barrier I also lowered the pack through some redbud trees before I let myself through them. These stout little trees are growing at the south edge of a chockstone. They get in your way, but I think they help too by offering a safe grip. On the return I came up with my pack on, but I had to wriggle to free it when it caught on the limbs. One more place gave me pause. There is a clump of buffalo berry bushes growing at the top of a precarious place where one must use some steps that are not squarely below the best grips. Below this one walks down an exposed short ridge and then gets off to the north into the gully. The rest of the way to the Redwall rim of Slate is routine.
Jim had previously gotten down the Redwall in the arm of Slate directly below this Coconino route, but Allyn and I had used a different, safer way. It was hard for me to recognize our way. By the time I found it, time had run out, so I didn't make sure that it is just as easy for me now as it was in 1961.
On rereading my 1961 log, I see that our relatively easy route was near the point separating the arm from Jicarilla from the main south arm. It starts down on the side of the point facing the Jicarilla arm and involves some toe and hand holds, but I called them perfectly safe in 1961. Donald Davis, among others, has taken exceptions to my statement that the Redwall passage here is routine. The hiking club, or the elite members of it, got down beside a big chockstone in the bed of the arm from Jicarilla after a long search for an easier way. They had started from Flagstaff around 6:00 a.m. and took until 4:00 p.m. to reach the Redwall rim. Jim led the way past the chockstone finally and they reached Boucher Creek long after dark. They had agreed to meet another party there with whom they had arranged a car shuttle.
My most unusual experience of the day was an encounter with a bighorn couple, a ram and an ewe. The ram was mature with a great set of horns. They stood about 60 feet away in full view looking me over before they showed any alarm. When they started on they stopped momentarily. They went away at a fast clip but in good order with the ewe in front.
Near the top of the Coconino slot, parallel with the chimney there seems to be a possible climbing route. At least it looks possible from below. I told Jim that I couldn't remember going up the chimney in 1970 and that I must have used the alternate route. He tried it and got in real trouble. He couldn't get out to the top and his moves back down were harder. He took a long time making up his mind and finally took the biggest chance of the day to get over into the chimney.
In getting up the Kaibab ledge near the top, Jim could get up using the meager holds between the crack to the north and the place where the pole is resting against the wall to the south. I had previously used a rope fastened around a flake at the top of the crack and when I came back from Pollux, I climbed up using this pole. This time, I slid down the barkless pinyon pine trunk. On the return, I tried the poor holds that Jim had used and found that at the very top, I wanted more to hold to. He uncoiled enough of his rope to give me a better grip.
We left the car at 9:00 a.m. and were ready to leave the notch, after looking at the petroglyphs, by 10:30. By noon I was eating lunch on the east side of Slate on the Redwall rim. It took roughly two hours to go back up to the Jicarilla notch and 45 minutes more to reach the car including about 15 on the rim walking to the car.
On the drive back I decided to investigate a pair of wheel tracks leading south from the Park Boundary Road. They turned off east of where the fence is next to the road. The general trend is southwest, so I may not save any distance by going this way even though I can take the cutoff to Moki Lodge rather than drive to the village before going home. There was a locked gate at the park boundary fence, but someone had lifted it off its hinges and Jim opened it in that manner. This variation saves time, however, because one can drive the well graded road at 35 instead of the 15 mph in second and first gears along the boundary road.
The day's hike was considerably less impressive than I had planned, but still I had been intending to get down from Jicarilla to Slate for a number of years, and I was glad to fill in the line that would give me another route from the rim to the river at the mouth of Slate.
When I consider how obvious the route is up the Supai, with a distinct possibility of getting through the Coconino also, from the Redwall rim, I would think that this is the actual Clement Tadje Route to the rim. From where they would get to the top of the Redwall in Slate, the way up the Supai and Coconino towards the Diana notch is not in evidence. They would also have been a couple of miles closer to Bass Camp if they had headed toward Jicarilla, and the Kaibab ascent is also easier just southwest of Jicarilla than it is west of Mescalero Point. From now on I am going to call this the Clement Tadje Route. In another log I recorded that John Wehrman found the Coconino slot east of the Jicarilla notch to be possible after I had concluded that it was impossible.
Montezuma Point to Apache Point
[November 11, 1975]
Long ago I had formed the ambition to cover all the trails within the Grand Canyon which were shown on the Matthes Evans map. Between 15 and 20 years ago I had been over all of them except the place along the Esplanade on the south side of Aztec Amphitheater. I had been down to the Redwall Gorge of Royal Arch Creek from both sides in more than one way, but I had intended to complete the Esplanade Route someday. Since I had left my climbing rope hanging down the chimney at Montezuma Point I decided that for a good one day trip, I would retrieve my rope and cover the missing part of the Esplanade Route.
Bob Packard went along particularly to see the Stiles Route through the Coconino and Jim Ohlman and his roommate, Rocky Dutt, also wanted to share this hike. We parked a mile west of Pasture Wash Ranger Station and started walking at 9:15 a.m. After following the telephone line for 10 minutes, we headed north and succeeded in missing the valley that drains the south side of Point Huitzil. When we started down the draw going west about 30 minutes from the car, I was fairly sure that we were in the wash draining the north side of Point Huitzil, and when we got the view of the whole Canyon, we were sure of it. This was 45 minutes from the car.
We took our time at the Coconino, spreading out to minimize the danger of rolling loose rocks on each other, and the rest of the party looked over my way through the Coconino while I was coiling the rope. They were impressed by it and we were all sure that Packard's way was a better discovery. Bob wasn't very sure that he had found the right approach to his route from above, but I was able to assure him that he was going down the right place. It is impressively steep but safe. We crossed the wash between Montezuma and Huitzil at the shelter cave and the mescal pits and went up the ravine filled with boulders to the Esplanade a little to the west. We could keep to the Esplanade Trail about 90% of the time. It would be clearer if the rangers hadn't killed so many burros several years ago, but there are still some fresh burro signs in this region.
Near the top of the Supai in the wash draining the south side of Huitzil, a seep was running that would give enough water for a couple of campers, but one would have to build a clay dam to collect the water. We kept watching for possible places to get through the Coconino west of Huitzil, but we could rule out a couple of places that Jim had considered possible when we were above them. He couldn't even find the place that he had climbed down near Point Quetzal, and we weren't even sure which was Point Quetzal.
Jim got ahead of us and then descended to a lower level. Down there he found about ten cairns leading to a break in one Supai cliff. He assumed that they indicated a route through that formation down to the Redwall. While he was away, we changed our minds about turning back and going up the Stiles Route at 2:30 p.m. I thought that it would be about as easy to go ahead and get to the rim at Apache Point. When Jim caught up and heard about the new plan, he commented that we must want to take until 11:00 to get home, but he was eager to see Apache Point, and he didn't object. It was after 3:15 when we reached the place to start up from the Esplanade and it was 4:45 when we reached the rim at Apache Point. Jim took my suggestion and went to the top of the pinnacle north of Apache Point to see the Indian ruin, but he caught up with me before we topped out. I was the slowest in the party, but there were places along the Esplanade where the others would elect a more difficult route and would get behind.
We intercepted the telephone line in broad daylight and followed it fairly closely. As long as it was light enough to find it, we were able to stay on a horse trail that paralleled the line, but when there was only the moon for light, we tried not to lose the line. We had a little trouble dodging cactus and fallen timber, but the main trouble was my weariness. I also felt the cold in my light sweater, and we were all relieved when we could make out the car in the moonlight off to the side of the line. An extra big pine that had fallen on the line was the sign that we were close. It was a hard day for me, ten and a quarter hours of actual walking between 9:15 a.m. and 8:15 p.m.
Jicarilla Point and Diana Temple
[November 22, 1975]
I got Jim Ohlman interested in going back and climbing Castor Temple. We left Flagstaff at 7:30 p.m. and met Steve Studebaker at Bright Angel Lodge about 9:00, and then we drove the Jimmy to the end of the road at Jicarilla Point. I didn't know that the cable barring the way from the West Rim Drive to the Park Boundary Road is now down, and I went out the Rowe Well Road to connect with it. On the return Saturday evening, we tried going to the pavement directly and found that this is now possible. I succeeded in driving between the trees on the Jicarilla Point Road without hitting the side mounted spare tire or the side view mirrors, but in full daylight on Saturday I had to stop abruptly with the tire against a tree and later I broke the right hand side view mirror when I went by a tree limb that I thought was non resistant. The young men slept on the ground and kept warm enough in ordinary down bags while I slept on a pad on the floor of the Jimmy and needed one down bag inside another before morning.
We got off shortly after seven Saturday morning and found the descent route without delay. I slid down the pole while the others used the bumps in the little cliff. On the return, Jim went up again without removing his pack while Steve handed his pack up to Jim before climbing up himself. As before, I asked for a rope and for a handline near the top.
I hadn't remembered how difficult it is to go along the ridge towards Pollux. Some scouting for the route is necessary at a couple of places, and there is quite a bit of exposure. Then we came to the place where Al Doty had done all right by himself, but when he took me the next time he turned back. Then when he took us out to climb Pollux again, he was sure that he had gotten down the face of the steep place. The others were able to climb down and up here, but I had my rope along and used it as a handline. On the present trip, the place seemed higher and steeper, and I didn't even spot the bush where I had tied my rope five years ago. I should have climbed down as far as I could and should have looked at the rest of the way. If I had done this, I am sure that I would have seen that it was the same old way. Jim had done this steep part just four weeks ago, but he didn't press me to come ahead and try it. Both he and Steve were carrying their climbing ropes, so I could have had a handline again. Instead we backed up and Jim experimented with getting down to a lower ledge on the west side of the ridge. He found this impossible after getting halfway to the bottom of the Coconino. I was in one of my depressions concerning rock climbing and we also saw that a complete trip to Castor and back would take using more night walking and climbing. We all turned back to the car. We did a bit more climbing to the top of the ridge north of the notch below Jicarilla Point and we also looked over the Indian ruins and the petroglyphs on our retreat.
In thinking over what we could do with the rest of the day, the young men liked my suggestion about climbing Diana Temple. We parked 1.3 miles along the Park Boundary Road southeast of the Jicarilla Spur Road, and set off towards the rim. In 35 minutes we reached it about 10 minutes walk west of the takeoff. I checked the view from the rim into the canyon several times and finally remarked that we might be overshooting if we went any farther. Steve called my attention to the fact that I was standing within two yards of a cairn which I had said we should find before we started down. I went down 10 yards and looked around carefully before I recognized the slot leading to the main Kaibab route where a handline is useful.
Here I decided to walk the rim to the east while Steve and Jim got over to Diana and back. I had pioneered this route and now I thought I would only hold them up if I went along. They had a fine afternoon and even used a new route to the top south of the bighorn trail that I had used. While they were up there, Jim ran onto a bighorn ram and it stood its ground while he got a picture. Jim and Steve tried to see how it went down after it made a 15 foot jump off the rim. They couldn't see it, but they could hear it going down a loose rock slope.
I walked to where the drift fence comes to the rim and then returned to the road in 20 minutes and went along the road to the car in 30 more. The climbers reached the road only a couple of hundred yards from the car.
Pearce Canyon
[November 27, 1975 to November 29, 1975]
Originally Jorgen talked me into wanting to go down Emory Falls Canyon instead of doing something in Clear Creek and Vishnu Creek for Thanksgiving. I was more eager to go back to Pearce Canyon than to do Emory Falls Canyon, and Bill Belknap swayed the decision. Ed Herman would have gone along with either project. I took our boat to the Hackberry Meadview Road Junction Wednesday night and slept in the Jimmy while the other three reached the same place several hours after my rather late arrival and slept on the ground.
We launched the Crestliner at South Cove and camped where we had on 2/16/75. It was only 10:30 a.m., so there was time to do something good that day. From a distance I had picked a possible route up the cliffs to the south of Pearce Canyon. It was not in either of the two most prominent bays south of Pearce, but was easily reached from the burro trail that we had followed over into Pearce. At the saddle where we had formerly descended to the bed of Pearce, we continued up the ridge to the east and then followed it southeast to the vicinity of a small steep canyon, the closest to Pearce. What I hadn't seen from a distance was that there is a cliff about 60 feet high that seemed continuous as we got nearer. We looked at the fall in the little canyon. Ed thought it might go, but about 15 yards to the west he found a place that he liked better. It was hard enough to give him a struggle, and when Jorgen tried the lower part of the route, he gave up. I tried and gave up a possible route a couple of yards away from Ed's and then went up his route as easily as he had. The rest of the way up through the Redwall was not difficult, but it was an interesting exercise in route finding. We got into the bed and went up a short distance and then scrambled up a bypass to the east. After a hundred yards up a rockslide area, we reached a ledge that led us to the west and south around a corner and then back to the bed of the main ravine above the impossible falls. Where the valley broadened we were above the Redwall, and we could walk up with little difficulty to a projecting ridge pointing west below the large triangular mesa directly west of the first south side tributary of Pearce Canyon. Ed and I went as high as we could to the bench going along the south side of the triangular mesa and the section of Sanup Plateau south of Pearce Canyon. We decided that there wouldn't be time to do anything else significant, so we turned back.
When we had climbed down the difficult pitch that had turned Jorgen and Bill back, we were going west to descend to the burro trail when we saw Bill and Jorgen on a bench above the cliff that had caused the difficulty. They had found a fault ravine which was much easier and safer than our climb. They had also found a cave with a piece of pottery and a metate at the base of the cliff to the east of this break. We had all seen two mescal pits between the burro trail and the main climb to the base of this lowest cliff, and the fault ravine cut off an outlier Redwall pinnacle from the main mass. However, before we all started back to the boat, we checked to see that this bench continued around to where Ed and I had been. It did.
Around the campfire that Thanksgiving evening, it was decided to split up. Bill and the others would pack as much water as would be necessary for a two day trip into Pearce Canyon while I would try to go up the new route to the south of Pearce Canyon and try for a view of the great bowl shaped slump area at the upper end of the first south side tributary into Pearce. Our evening around the fire was cut short by a definite rain after a lot of minor threats consisting of a few small drops. We had a time getting the canopy raised over the rear deck of the Crestliner since the plastic slides are getting broken, but we got enough support so that it held fairly well in the windy rain. We all slept under cover. The rain was the best thing that could have happened for the backpackers into Pearce because it put water into pockets. They needed only about a quart apiece from the boat.
I ate breakfast in the dark and started, after conferring with Bill who was sleeping with me on the back deck, about 7:10 a.m. I was pleased with my stamina after some discouraging signs of weakness relative to the extra fine hikers who have been with me on recent hikes. With my knowledge of the route, I was able to reach the ledge where Ed and I had eaten lunch three hours after leaving the boat in only two and a half hours.
I followed our previous course to the top of the ridge in the Supai and then saw that the best way to approach the saddle separating the tributary of Pearce from the canyon draining to the west, the one south of where I had come up through the Redwall, would be along the low angle slope above the Redwall. I didn't see a way directly down to the south, so I went off the ridge where I had come up and walked around the point to the west and then turned east. Below the end of the promontory were two more mescal pits.
Progress was easy in this high valley and I was soon climbing up the gully at the southwest corner of the valley. It was easy to get to the base of the final Supai cliff below the Sanup Plateau at the south end of the saddle connecting it with the triangular mesa immediately south of Pearce Canyon. In the hope of coming to a place where the final cliff could be climbed, I proceeded south above the Pearce tributary. I had decided to turn back about 1:00 p.m. and when I saw a way down into the bed of the tributary, I was tempted to use the last of my time for this. Just then I also saw a possible way to get to the top of the plateau, a break leading halfway through the upper cliff a few hundred yards past a vertical ravine with a chockstone halfway to the top. The route ahead went all right. The final cliff was broken by a route about 50 yards farther to the south. I was rewarded by a fine view of Snap Point and I was also near the rim of the huge bowl where the Supai has slumped into some sort of broad pit that formed beneath after the upper rock was deposited. It was a little later than I had wanted to turn back, but the trip down went so well that I was back to the boat by 4:45, less than four hours from when I turned back.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do on Saturday. The thought occurred to me to take an easy hike like finding out what lower Pearce Canyon is like below where we enter it from the burro trail up the ridge from our cove. I knew it would be a long day to do what I had failed in doing last February, find out if there is a way out of the east arm of Pearce Canyon, the longer one at the final junction. After I woke up early I decided to go after it. Last spring I had waited a half hour for the others and we had also spent some time inspecting the cave near where the main Pearce Canyon turns south through the Redwall narrows. I set a quick but steady pace and stopped for a snack about 10:30. By noon I was at the last junction where I had learned last February that the south arm is impossible. Only about five minutes from this junction, a short distance around the bend in the canyon, I saw a definite possibility for climbing out to the south. Burro droppings and tracks had continued up this arm, although they seemed much more scarce than in the lower parts of Pearce, so I assumed that one should be able to walk on out of this arm. To take the surer way, however, I climbed up the 400 foot rise to the south rim and found no difficulty. When I saw that there is a slump in the surface of the plateau down toward the bed of this arm, I thought that there must be a walk up in the bed, but when I got near for a good view, I found that there is still a 70 foot cliff. I had come up the only possible way near the end (John Green got out to the northeast of here, but I couldn't do his climb). The view of Snap Point whitened by fresh snow was terrific. I also took a picture of Point Gerrett, the extension of the Upper Grand Wash Cliffs to the south. I was surprised to see that a road penetrates this section of Sanup Plateau from the north. The new seven and a half minute quad map which Bill had brought didn't show a road going this far. I turned back at 1:30 p.m. and reached the boat by 5:35. I was gratified to see that I still felt god enough to come down much of the burro trail to the lake on the double.
While I was doing the above good hikes, the other three were having a fine time too. On Friday Bill and Jorgen checked the first tributary from the south and found what I had guessed, impressive scenery but a completely impossible high fall. Ed explored the narrow tributary that continues east where the main bed goes to the south. He found the best potholes of water here, probably reliable except during the hottest time of the year. He was not stopped, so on Saturday all three went up here and came out on top of the mesa that is separated from the mainland to the east by a saddle. When they had enjoyed the view they descended the simple broad slope into the main bed above the Redwall narrows and returned to their camp via the main bed. Their camp was a fine cave to the north of the best waterpockets, about 10 minutes walk up the bed from the first south side tributary.
East side of Cremation Canyon
[December 13, 1975]
Bob Packard and Ken Walters climbed Newton and Pattie on 12/6/75 and then while Ken went and climbed Lyell, Bob investigated a Redwall descent at the promontory on the south side of the bay separating Pattie from Newton. He found that the end of this point is split off by a crack which he could descend to the north. Further there was a good route through a lower cliff and the rest of the way was a simple rough walk. I wanted to see this route for myself and I also hoped to finish a Redwall route at the very head of the east arm of Cremation.
Jim Ohlman went with me starting from Flagstaff at 6:30 and Steve Studebaker had arranged to meet us at the Visitors Center. The ice on US 180 kept down our speed and we didn't reach the Visitor's Center until just before 8:30 only to learn that Steve had called from Desert View saying that he was coming but would be late. I talked to Kathy Green at the permit desk and gave her a copy of my trails marked on the Matthes Evans maps up to December, 1975. Steve arrived just before nine and we left our cars at the head of the Kaibab Trail about 9:20.
There were no snowbanks on the trail and only a few mud patches and our progress was good down to the bottom of the White Switchbacks. Proceeding across the rolling Tonto hills on faint burro trails at times, we started up the ravine just north of the place I had picked for Bob's route. We could have gone up a scree slope considerably to the north, but there seemed to be only one easy way through a lower cliff in our ravine. We first recognized Bob's tracks at this place. There were more going up to the slot separating the tower at the end of the promontory from the main rim. It was easy and safe to climb up this crack and walk out on top of the Redwall closer to Newton than Pattie. Jim tried climbing the low cliff to the top of the promontory but gave it up as a bit too risky.
We went south along the Redwall rim passing by the easy descent through the major fault ravine. I didn't recognize the route I had tried at the end of Cremation from above. We could get down fairly far through the top, broken part of the rim. When it seemed from above that the descent to the west of the main ravine only led down to an impossible wall, we went down the easy way to the ravine itself. It ended at a 50 foot dropoff. I checked the possibility of going west along the wall about 30 feet up from the drop off and gave it up. I wish I had done the same thing at the very bottom of the ravine. We gave up this attempt and went back to our packs on top.
By now we could see that we were going to be short of time. The other two were leaning toward the route down the Redwall in the major fault and the return up the Kaibab Trail from below the White Switchbacks, but I thought that we could make better time along the rim of the Redwall back to the Kaibab Trail. I had forgotten precisely how slow this had been in years gone by. By the time we were halfway we had all come to the conclusion that we had taken the short but slower way. There was a faint deer trail for much of the distance, but from the east side of the end of Cremation to the Kaibab Trail took us two hours and 20 minutes this time. I had also forgotten where I had previously gone up through the slide area in the Supai to the trail. This time I led the young men up to a wall in the Supai below the trail. Jim was able to muscle up a shortcut while Steve and I took a longer way to the north.
By now snow was falling in pellets and higher on the trail the wind came in gusts that sometimes made me crouch to keep from being blown off the exposed ridge. Steve wasn't in the best of shape and probably shouldn't have come. Near the end of the day he told us that he had recently missed a day of school from having the flu. He elected to stop at a sheltered place on the trail and heat some chili. He was driving his own car and we figured that he could look out for himself.
Jim could go quite a bit faster than I, but I was able to keep up a steady pace. We did the last mile and a half in 55 minutes and then took two and a quarter hours to drive home.
East side of Cremation Canyon
[January 3, 1976]
On 12/13/75 we had given up trying to get down the Redwall at the end of the east arm of Cremation Canyon. Before 1959 I had tried coming up through the Redwall here and had given up only a few yards from success. I still wanted to finish this project even if a rope would be necessary. I didn't mind going alone since I could set my own pace.
Since the NPS no longer requires a permit for a one day hike, I drove directly to the South Kaibab Trail and started down at 8:15 a.m. The trail was just a bit icy, but with my lug soles, I had no trouble keeping my feet. I reached the place to leave the trail in order to follow the top of the Redwall going east in 45 minutes and the bottom of the White Switchbacks in 70 minutes. As usual I could find some signs of burro trails while I was going across Cremation Canyon. I got down to the bed of Cremation at the same place as in December, downstream from the Packard Route through the Redwall.
On the present occasion, I used the break through the Redwall where the geologic map shows the big Cremation Fault. I had been down this route years ago with Allyn Cureton and I recalled that it is relatively easy, but I didn't recall the precise approach from below. After going up the proper drainage to where the bedrock forms the lowest cliff, I found a seep. It formed a slab of solid ice about a square yard in area and several inches deep. When I came by about 2:15 p.m., enough ice had melted to form a little muddy pool. I could have camped with this much water, but I don't consider it reliable for hot and dry weather. Evaporation would keep up with this much flow.
There was a burro trail going to this seep and then the burros seem to follow the base of the cliff up to the west. I should have gone up the little cliff right near the seep. I came down this way and there was no difficulty, but I thought I should follow the burros on the way up. I had to leave the trail and scramble up a broken cliff and then work my way to the left to get into the fault ravine. I had remembered the chute to the west of the main bed and the only barrier consisted of overhanging bushes. It was still cold when I ate my lunch at the top of this route.
As we had done in December, I went down the drainage into the east arm of Cremation from the south side of the final bay in the Redwall. The fault accounts for the broken rock on this side of the promontory as well as the route on the north side. When I got down to the 40 foot fall, I went up a couple of yards to the west to a stout tree and looked for possible ways to get down and across to where I had come up so many years ago. I used the tree as a safe place to tie the rope and rappelled. After the first drop of eight feet, I moved the rope farther west and could get off the rope after going down about 12 feet. The rocks are so broken that a good climber might manage this without a rope.
I started to go down to the east in order to head the valley and come to the bed by the easy talus over on the south side. This would mean that I was abandoning the rope to be recovered on another trip. I had the Jumars with me and decided to go back the way I had come down. However, I first looked for a ropeless route. I could go higher a little to the west of the rope, and then I tried working my way back to the ravine to the east. The holds were as I remembered them from so many years ago, not quite good enough to reassure me. I believe men like Walters, Cureton, or Doty would have done this handily, but I came down and used the Jumars.
I returned over the same route as in the morning. I seemed to be in worst condition than in December, and my right hip socket was bothering me. It took me three hours and five minutes to cross the Tonto and get up the trail to where we had taken two hours and 20 minutes to do the same thing along the top of the Redwall.
Tincanebitts and Burnt Spring Canyons
[January 5, 1976 to January 7, 1976]
Billingsley and Jensen couldn't go on this boating and hiking trip, and near the last minute I learned that Bruce Braley wanted to go. He was quite an interesting companion and was my superior as a walker and climber.
We reached South Cove about 6:20 p.m. on Sunday and got a fairly early start from there Monday morning. The lake level was about the same as it had been last Thanksgiving. I probably should have let the boat plane upriver, but I had the fear of hitting a mud bar too fast and only proceeded at about 12 miles per hour. There was no problem with the bars until we were past the Bat Cave, but above there several times we would have to raise the prop out of the mud and pole the boat loose. Then we would go back a short distance and cross the river.
Ed Herrman and Jorgen Visbak had tried exploring Tincanebitts Canyon, so I decided rather on the spur of the moment to stop there. Billingsley had been most interested in Burnt Spring Canyon, but I figured on coming back to the boat at night, and in three days we would have time to do both.
We moored the boat upstream from the middle of the tamarisk covered delta of the canyon, but we still had a lot of fighting through the jungle to get to the clear walking above the tangle along the east side of the silted in triangle. It took about a half hour to get above the tangle to the open streambed. Walking was quite easy but we took from 10:10 until almost noon to get from the boat to a sunny spot north of the fork in the canyon. I had forgotten what Ed had told me about the prospects of getting out on top. The long north arm of gentle gradient looked like the one with more chance of success, but there were only a few bighorn droppings along this route. In the Devonian we did a bypass or two of chockstones, but then we came to a huge barrier with a bypass. There were several rather deep pools of green (algae) water and some clean smaller pockets of water. Perhaps the sheep and deer come up this arm for a drink. We turned back at 1:30 and reached the boat rather early even though we took a good look at the steep bed of the eastern fork of the canyon.
The small scale army engineer's map shows only a bay here instead of a real arm of the canyon. When you look up from the main bed, you might not notice that it takes a turn to the north and isn't obviously a dead end. Around this corner it maintains the steep gradient and there is some scrambling to get past big boulders. When you are about 800 feet above the fork, there is an impressive chockstone blockade. This can be bypassed to the west by climbing a limestone wall with small handholds. I can imagine that this might turn some hikers back. We had been seeing many more animal droppings in this arm, so we wanted to prove that Ed was right about it going on through.
It was late enough for one day when Bruce had proved that one can climb this limestone wall, but we returned on Tuesday to make a real try. Incidentally, we moved the Crestliner up the river about 300 yards to a clearing on the bank where others had gone ashore to camp. It was quite a bit easier to get through to the good walking from here. We got back up to the fork in less than 90 minutes. I had intended to carry a rope so that Bruce could belay me or give me support of a handline at the bypass of the big barrier, but I forgot it. I found a fairly easy combination of holds and handled that little climb easily.
Not far above here we came to another distinct angle. A narrow crack seemed to cut across with the left hand one (going north) being the best chance to get out. There were more animal droppings along here, and at one place in the clay I noted bighorn tracks. If they can get up this canyon, I would like to see the system. At one chockstone, I put my canteen and camera up ahead of me and then struggled to make the right moves up a few yards. There were a couple of other places in the Redwall that required hand and toe climbing, but the hardest was in the Supai. Bruce found a way requiring a long reach to the right, but I used a zigzag route along two ledges to the left. Along the lower ledge, I had only a few inches to sidestep while holding to grips above my head. There were no grips for the upper ledge, but it was wide enough for me to crawl along. A nervier person could walk this ledge. There was no doubt about success above here, and we came out on the Sanup Plateau about three hours and 35 minutes after leaving the river. Perhaps the sheep use this route only for the descent. I would surely need to haul up a real backpack at several places on a rope.
A geologist would be interested in seeing the black volcanic rock that shows near the top for only a short distance. The rest is buried under the scree. This dike continues southeast through the Redwall but in that direction it doesn't crack the Supai above. When we walked across the narrow promontory that separates the two arms of Tincanebitts, we could see the dike through the Supai northwest of us.
Just south of the top of this route is a pinyon pine that seems to me to be a botanical freak. Each needle grows out of the twig by itself. I had heard that there are two sorts of pinyons, one with two needles in a cluster and the other with three. (I have now checked with a couple of biologists, and they say that the two kinds are those with two needles and one with the latter very rare.)
We got back to the boat taking our time at the chockstones and could have gone upriver to camp at the mouth of Burnt Spring Canyon then, but we had the canopy up from the night before where there was a heavy overcast, and we didn't want to take it down and then have to put it up again in a half hour. In the morning we had eaten and I had the canopy stowed ready to move the boat before 8:30. We had quite a bit of trouble dodging mud bars on the way upriver. We tied up at the foot of a neat bedrock slope on the east side of the mouth of Burnt Canyon. It was 9:30 a.m. when we got started hiking.
Quite soon we found a faint trail along the slope above the tangle of tamarisk jungle. There was a three stone cairn where one should leave the bed of the stream and go up to catch this trail. The gradient was gentle and uniform over gravel and rounded boulders with no barriers requiring climbing. After walking for two hours we reached a fork where two big arms come together. The one to the right had the steeper bed and seemed to be rather straight. One could see that it went a long way with no sun on the bed, and we were looking for a sunny place to eat lunch. We chose to go up the other (western) arm.
On the east side of the bed just south of the junction, I saw a terrace under an overhang that seemed to have charcoal in the soil. We investigated and found that the ceiling was smoked and fine charcoal permeated the soil quite deeply. Some showed a foot below relatively sterile sand where the bank had been eroded. There were traces of walls from at least a rock shelter. On our return past this place we checked a terrace 30 yards north of this overhang and saw that it is covered by a mescal pit. Bruce called my attention to a seep in the east wall about 100 yards south of the shelter. There were signs that animals paw the gravel away beneath the two seep sources to get water here, but the gravel is so loose that I would think making bowls of clay beneath these seeps would be the only way to use them.
Up the west arm we had lunch in the shade where the sun fell on the slope about 50 yards up the slope. Walking continued quite simple and after starting on at noon, we had to go up about 250 feet to get out on top, and there was one place requiring hand and toe climbing. We could see that this arm continues about due north and seems to present no problems since it is so long and uniform. There were sheep droppings along the way, so I assumed that it would make an easy route out on top. The map shows a road going to Oak Grove Ranch near the upper end.
We got to the boat from 1:40 to 5:10 p.m. and this wasn't steady walking. Bruce investigated the trails around the knoll above our boat and found a neat rock cabin made with a sheet iron roof with a shaded work table in front. Names in a glass jar indicate that a lot of river runners visit this place. I recognized Ron and Sheila Smith and Ed Abby. The earliest name was accompanied by a note that a prospector had lived here from August 15 to November 6, 1962. He must have furnished the glass jar for the register, but the names were written on random scraps of paper. I wish I had noted this occupant's name, but I know it was not Harry Aleson. This man said nothing about building the shack himself, so I wonder whether Aleson might have been the first occupant. This is surely a much more livable place than one of the shallow caves near the mouth of Quartermaster Canyon which is so close.
There are a couple of places where water runs in the bed of Burnt Canyon, but these are relatively close to the river, within walking times of 25 and 35 minutes, respectively. They would be good for backpackers coming down from the plateau in a long day who didn't trust the river for drinking. Below the lower of these sources is a grove of rather large trees. I was expecting them to be cottonwoods, but a good look shows them to be willows (probably ash trees) 30 or 40 feet high. I believe this is the only place in all my wanderings where I have seen this species rather than cottonwoods at a wet place in the bed of a tributary canyon.
Around Coronado Butte and along the Redwall
[January 17, 1976]
I wanted more pictures of the foot wide fossil footprints on the west Redwall rim of Mineral Canyon and I also wanted to settle the kind of rock they are in. Davis, who found them, was rather sure they are on a block of Supai that has rolled down from above, and I had Billingsley's backing for thinking that the rock was Coconino. I was glad to have Jim Ohlman along, because as a graduate student of Geology, he figured that he could give me a sure answer. His roommate, Rocky Dutt, and Bob Lojewski, also came with me.
First we went to the Visitor's Center and I made sure that the permit people were really interested in keeping my maps marked with the routes covered. I talked with four rangers in all, a full time veteran named Kline, and three younger people, Mary Langdon, Tim Mans, and another young man whose name escapes me.
We then drove east and parked where the shoulder is paved about 100 yards beyond the place to leave the highway to reach the head of the Hance Trail. It is now marked with a couple of metal fence posts, but they haven't provided any parking right at the take off point. There were tracks in the snow leading to the right ravine, and I noticed that it took us only three or four minutes to go from the pavement to the head of the trail.
The snow wasn't deep, but it was frozen hard and I was glad that I had lug soles. There are a lot more cairns to mark the route than there used to be, and from the tracks we could see that the Hance (Red Canyon) Trail is getting a lot more use than in former years. The whether was surprisingly warm for January 17, and we did most of our walking in shirt sleeves. The air was clearer than I have ever seen it, or at least as clear. The full moon was sharply visible right down to the horizon as it set, and Navaho Mountain was strikingly outlined as we drove past Desert View on leaving the park.
There was no difficulty in staying on the trail this time, and we reached the rim of the Redwall in Red Canyon in an even hour. There were plenty of places where we had to slow down in going along the Redwall rim, and it took us another hour to reach the footprints about 200 yards northwest of the head of the Redwall gorge in Mineral Canyon. This Redwall is deformed and bent in this gorge, and I was impressed by the observation that there may be a route down through the Redwall here. The investigation would give me a project for another one day hike.
Jim immediately called the block containing the footprints Supai. However, Davis might not get much of a thrill from the other statement of Ohlman's. Jim says that these tracks are the same kind as all the geology students observe along the South Kaibab Trail down a little way into the Supai. However, he says that those along the main trail are not connected as well into a continuous track going several feet. We had Jim's geologist's hammer and I took a piece from the underside of the footprint rock. I can show it to Stan Beus or any other geologist who may be interested in classifying the rock. (He says it is Supai.)
It took us another half hour to walk on north to the end of Ayer Point where we enjoyed the clear view of the north side of the canyon and also where we ate lunch.
I suggested the possibility of going down the Redwall to the west of the neck leading to Ayer Point and returning via the Old Hance Trail. Jim suggested going along the Redwall rim around into Hance Canyon, and we went from there up to the Coronado Saddle. We had the benefit of cairns for the start, but we lost them and then had to do some hand and toe climbing before we were out to the top of the saddle.
I was trying to spot the upper end of the tunnel cave Tse An Bida, but I missed seeing it. We all had a fine hike although I was slowing the others down.
Redwall Route, east prong of Horseshoe Mesa
[January 24, 1976]
The first project for this hike was the Redwall in the bed of Cottonwood. About 1958, Allyn Cureton had come up the bed by himself. On 10/21/61 I had led several hikers down here. Pete Huntoon was along with his climbing rope, but when we came to a 50 foot drop that seemed precarious, we gave up the attempt. A second project was presented to me by Bob Packard who told me that Ken Walters had found an interesting way down the Redwall near the end of the east prong of Horseshoe Mesa. Near the end of the week, Jim Ohlman's trip overland to Rainbow Bridge fell through, and he and Rocky Dutt came with me for the Grandview hike.
We left North Hall at 6:30 a.m. and got to the Grandview Parking lot by 8:30 over a fine dry road. There was snow on the trail well down into the Supai and Jim had trouble keeping his feet. My lug soles worked a lot better than my other type of hiking shoes and I didn't fall once. There was thick fog at rim level and the Canyon was hidden until we had descended about 300 feet. The footing being what it was, we didn't break speed records, but we reached the mines in an hour and 20 minutes. For a while the weather seemed to improve, but then it became much worse. For an hour there was a fine light drizzle, and then not all the time, but about ten thirty, it really began to rain.
One good thing about bringing Jim was that he could show me a neat cave on the east side of the mesa. It is only a little north of the old rock cabin and it is just north of the middle of the concave bend in the rim. The miners may have enlarged the entrance, and they installed a ladder to get on down the first 10 feet. We hadn't brought a light so we didn't go down to explore it, but Jim had seen that it is fairly extensive on a previous trip. I'll have to ask Davis about this cave.
We went around the east side of the butte and found an established trail along here. There were plenty of hiker footprints in the snow of the Grandview Trail, and there were a few tracks going out or coming back from the end of the east prong of the horseshoe. We looked over the rim into the horseshoe itself to check for possible Redwall descents. I recalled that when we were coming back from the foot of Sockdolager, Allyn had left the trail and had gone up the Redwall somewhere over toward the east. We couldn't see any promising place from above.
Jim went out to the very most northern point of the prong while Rocky and I went to the east where we could see that there was promise of finding a way down. We could see that one should get down a narrow steep ridge to a simple slope that covers the rest of the Redwall. Jim led the way and handled the climb with dispatch. I took it slowly and had to search for the best toeholds, especially near the base of this narrow ridge. Still, I feel sure that I could do it alone. The rest of the way to the Tonto was obvious and not far away, to the west and down.
When we were down the hard place, the rain began in earnest and we decided to go up the trail on the west prong of the horseshoe and eat lunch in the cave on the west edge of the mesa. While I was following them up the switchbacks, Ohlman and Dutt went out on the tip of the west prong and felt rather sure that they saw another route through the Redwall. The rain stopped and we ate lunch on the Redwall rim near the base of the horseshoe. I looked across to the east and figured that I had identified the place where Allyn had climbed the Redwall. I am rather sure that I would have to use a rope to come down there.
We talked about doing the Redwall in Cottonwood Canyon from below, the way Allyn had done it, but when the weather began to threaten more rain, we kept on going up the trail to the rim. It got nice again before we came to the view down into Grapevine, about 2 p.m. We all thought it would be interesting to go north and climb the peak without a name at the end of this ridge. I changed my mind and so did Rocky, but Jim went ahead and climbed it. He built the first cairn on top. The rest of the hike out was through an inch of fresh snow.
Shinumo Canyon to Tatahatso
[February 14, 1976 to February 16, 1976]
A lot of possibilities occurred to me for the three day weekend, but I finally settled on seeing the Shinumo Wash Trail to its end and then continuing along the Redwall rim. Jim Ohlman and I played with the idea of repeating Jensen's stunt of going clear to the Eminence Break Route to President Harding Rapid, but it turned out that this would have been too much for me.
Jim was waiting for me promptly at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday and we got up to Cedar Ridge without incident except that there was a very unusual fog for about 30 miles. I was wondering whether I would have trouble keeping to the right roads away from the highway if all distant landmarks were invisible, but before we got to Cedar Ridge we were clear of the fog. The road was somewhat muddy, but we didn't make any wrong turns this time. We were ready to start from the car at 9:30.
The two previous times I had gone down the Shinumo Wash Trail I had lost it as soon as I reached the bed at the bottom. During the past few years more hikers had used it and someone had taken the care to note where it went and mark it with numerous cairns. After a hundred yards or so along the streambed, it leaves the bottom and goes up on the left. When the Supai begins to show a real cliff, it gets down and crosses the bed to the right. For roughly a fourth of the way to the Redwall rim, it stays over on the right and then crosses to the left for a similar distance. For the last fourth of the way to the Redwall it is over on the right. We missed some of this leg and followed the bed until we saw the trail finally going up on the left. It is clearly recognizable clear to the old cable anchorage almost directly above Redwall Cavern. Jim had been no farther downriver than the break at Mile 30.4 and he was eager to see the approach to Vasey's and Stanton's Cave.
About a quarter mile short of the tram site, we came to a ravine that used to give access to the river's edge. A steel bar still shows where they used to have a rope fastened. Some of the hiking club members have been here and actually trusted their weight to the old rope and reached the water. At the bottom the wall is inclined about 60 degrees with the horizontal and some have said that they might get down without using the rope. We felt that we had miles to cover still and we didn't try this descent. Besides the collapsed shack and the concrete lower anchorage for the cable and rock foundations for some other structures, we were surprised to see planks lying on the Redwall rim on the other side of the river. A date scratched in concrete was 1951. By then they could have used helicopters, so this may have been the means by which the boards were delivered to the other side.
It was still cool and it had been quite wet recently so that Jim and I carried no great amount of water. We kept on the lookout for more supplies. There were numerous pools in Shinumo Canyon, and of course we could have gotten river water at Mile 30.4, but the best supply was in the ravine that was an access to the river. Most of the small notches in the rim were dry or the pools were inaccessible. There was a small supply, enough for camping for two, in Nautiloid Canyon at Mile 34.8. I was rather tired by this time, 4:00 p.m., and I considered settling on this as our first night camp. I had been telling Jim about the neat descent to the river at Mile 35.8. so he talked me into going on. We made it before 5:30 and were glad to be down where the ground was flat under substantial overhangs at the Indian ruins. We had been pelted by a few drops of rain off and on, but by morning on Sunday it was clear.
From map study and the appearance of the Supai leading to the top of the ridge just north of Tatahatso Canyon, Jim figured that it would be a great saving if we would climb up there and get down to the bed of the canyon whenever there was an opportunity. I didn't oppose his doing this experiment, but at first I said I would use the way I had done it, around on the Redwall rim into the side canyon. However, when I got close to this ridge, I realized that there was no doubt of getting to the top. I changed my mind and went up behind Jim. On top though I didn't see any good way to get down to the bed. When I came to a big ravine with a lot of dissected clay and rubble, I started down. This is the ravine that starts between an impressive outlying tower and the rim of the plateau. I got down to a place where the bedrock shows almost all the way across the ravine. Over at the east side, I considered taking off my pack and trying to get down. I could see another questionable place farther down, and I decided to stay up and follow Jim who had apparently continued high above the Supai rim. After a few yards in that direction, I got discouraged by remembering how far I would likely have to proceed before being able to get down. I backtracked to the valley upriver from Tatahatso Canyon and started to do what I had done before. This detour had taken two hours.
When I was coming up Tatahatso Canyon, I saw a couple of fairly sure ways I could have come down, farther west than the ravine I had given up. I also heard Jim shouting to me. He had continued high until he was almost to the north arm of Tatahatso where he found a good talus for the descent to the bed. He had left his pack there and had then retraced his route above the Supai rim until he reached the ravine I had tried to descend. Without his pack he came down handily to the bed of Tatahatso and walked downstream to meet me.
About 2:00 p.m. when we were about halfway through the Supai in the bed, it began to rain enough to wet things. Right where we happened to be, there was a fine overhang and I was tired enough to want to quit for the day. Jim had to go for his pack and bring it back to this campsite, about a 50 minute trip for a fast walker. By 3:30 p.m. the sky was clear again, but I knew that it would be a death march for me to reach the car that night. We had a leisurely dinner and enjoyed conversation by a campfire until nearly 8:00 p.m. There were some little rainpools nearby and much bigger pools both downstream and up.
On Monday we got away from camp at the same time as before (7:45 a.m.) and reached the fork in the canyon in a half hour. I felt the effort of getting around and between the big rocks in the bed more than I used to and it took us three hours to get clear past all the difficulties and out on top. Jim was impressed by the neat crack I had found to get down the highest cliff. We soon found a sheep trail leading from the bed of Tatahatso around the point to the north and followed it more or less consistently to the flats west of Eminence Break. After an hour of this walking we ate lunch and soon thereafter reached a place where we dropped our packs to pick up after we had found the car. The walking time after we were out of the canyon was just less than three more hours.
Some observations along the way might be in order. We saw the footprints of a lone hiker going north on the Shinumo Wash Trail. Also, there is now a cairn marking the descent to the river at Mile 35.8. We saw a sign that someone had camped where we did, opposite the Bridge of Sighs. Jim saw tracks of more than one hiker in the area toward Tatahatso Canyon. I can't say that I saw other footprints in Tatahatso Canyon itself. Perhaps these hikers had come around the Redwall rim from the Eminence Break Route.
There were a few sheep droppings in Tatahatso Canyon all the way down and a few rather old mule deer droppings. About the strangest bit of wildlife was a very small frog right in front of the overhang where I had my bed. It could barely hop in the rather chilly afternoon.
Something else that took our eye was a tower near the east rim above Nautiloid Canyon. It can also be seen from the road through the swale as you drive to the rim of Shinumo Wash. It would be a real achievement for any steeple jacks who could climb it. The one directly north of Tatahatso Canyon would very likely be easier than this one.
Hermit Trail and river at Mile 94.5
[February 21, 1976]
I left home a minute after 6:00 a.m. by myself this time. The day was clear and cold and there was almost no snow on the ground. I reached the parking lot at the head of the Hermit Trail by 8:00 a.m. This is a popular hike now, and there were a number of other cars parked. The NAU Geology Club had gone down on Friday and I learned later that a group of boy scouts from Tempe were also down at the river. I soon caught up with a group of four men who were going to camp at the mouth of Monument Creek and go on to the Bright Angel Trail on Sunday. They wanted to take their time, and I wanted to see how long it would take me to go to the river and back. I had done so poorly with Jim Ohlman lately that I wanted to see whether I would be better setting my own pace. Even when I am walking ahead of a good hiker, I tend to go a little faster than I would by myself with the result that I end the day more exhausted than I should be.
When I came to Santa Maria Spring, I noticed the little spur trail that goes up to where the pipe is buried. I went up to see anything that had been done here, but there doesn't seem to be anything unusual. There is no artificial concrete basin, just the iron pipe coming out of the clay. More water comes from seeps lower down.
In the bay just around the corner to the north of the spring and rest area, I studied the slope to see what I thought about Donald Davis' climb up the Supai here. It didn't seem as remarkable as I had thought, although the low cliff about a hundred feet below the trail might stop me. On the way back I considered going down to it and seeing how it would feel to try getting down a crack I noticed, but I was fairly sure that it would be somewhat risky for me. At the top on the return I met Jim Ohlman and he was confident that he could do that climb.
There are some new rockfalls on the trail and it is surely not any better now than when I first knew it, but it is just about as easy a way to go to the river as it used to be.
When I was going down the Cathedral Stairs through the Redwall, I heard someone, presumably climbing Cope Butte. Jim Ohlman told me that he and his roommate were going to try that again. After some shouting back and forth, I finally saw them. They had gone straight up the west side by a route that seemed much harder than the way Chuck Johnson had told me about and that I had done solo. At my suggestion, they came down the easier way, a way that is hard enough to be a challenge.
It is only a couple of hundred yards to the right from the junction of the Hermit Trail with the Tonto Trail to see the route down to the river at Mile 94.3. The way seems easy and not far. The Tapeats seems a lot lower than it is east at Plateau Point. There were a couple places in the bed that caused slight delays. I bypassed one steep place where someone had built a cairn over to the west of the bed, but the scramble along the ledges was harder than the steep travertine of the bed. I used the latter on the return. At another place the bed was cut through a dike of very red granite and then under an overhang of breccia consisting of blocks of Tapeats cemented together. There was a trickle of water running through the sand along here for quite a few yards. It didn't taste too bad even though it seemed to be leaving a white deposit where it dried up.
I reached the river in three hours and one minute after leaving the car and this without consciously hurrying. Down here I talked with two young men who had come along the river from Hermit Creek. They had had to climb high to pass some of the river cliffs. After a leisurely lunch, I walked out in four hours and 45 minutes. This included an inspection of the spring at the base of the Coconino to the north of the trail. The water is low in the concrete basin now, but there is enough to dip a canteen. The rock shelter nearby has a wet floor at this time of year.
It had been a pleasant day and I had gone to the river at a new place.
Cane Spring Trail
[March 16, 1976]
As usual I had big plans for the spring break, using the boat to explore canyons downriver from Surprise. First I was delayed by the starter needing to be replaced on the Jimmy, and then when I took the boat to the repairman and called attention to a bolt that had sheered off and was lying in the bilge, Glen Miller made no promises that he could get it done immediately. Ken Walters had been planning to go with me on the boating expedition, but he elected to do something else and I took the Jimmy by myself to the Whitmore region. After spending a good deal of Monday seeing about the boat, I got off around 3:00 p.m.
After dinner at Cliff Dwellers, I drove on and gassed up, including two five gallon cans, at St. George. I slept in the Jimmy about ten miles south of town. On Tuesday I got away early and drove by headlight up to Wolf Hole. The road was quite dry and there was no driving problem except for dust in my nose and on my glasses. I didn't miss any turns although I hesitated slightly about three miles south of Mount Trumbull. The road goes through a gate and makes a quick left turn. The correct turn is much more used. I parked at the same place as I did with Jim Sears last year, at the shack just west of the volcano. By 9:30 a.m. I was walking away from the car.
My project for the day was to see the trail down to Cane Spring and then try to get to the river using the trail that Billingsley had sketched on the map of Whitmore Rapids. Because of careless map reading, I began looking for the trail to Cane Spring right by the volcano instead of west of the prominence over a half mile farther down the road. After a few yards I checked the map again and had no trouble finding the trail.
The last statement isn't quite so. First I got into the bed of the wash at the place where the 7.5 minute 1967 map shows the road ending. (It now continues around Whitmore Point and ends above Frog Spring road gone now 1982). When I came to a big drop in the bed, I climbed up to the east and found the constructed trail. It ends on the open flat as shown on the map, but cow paths lead up to Cane Spring. I had to consult the map to find the spring since there is no tangle of water loving growth to mark the place. There are a couple of cement basins and water coming down to them from 50 yards higher. At the source there is a meager growth of reeds giving the name to this spring. A plastic hose has been buried in the wettest place and water runs through it down to the tanks.
Only about 150 feet of Redwall shows on either side of the lower exit of this valley. From a distance I supposed that if I followed the narrows I would soon come to a big impossible drop, but since a cowpath went through here, I did too. In fact I followed four cows then and there. The Redwall is vertical along the sides of the defile, but it is more fractured than elsewhere. At the narrowest place the path went through a gate. There seemed to be little purpose in having it here since there was no fence across the bed of the wash. Beyond the narrows, the cows went left and I went right, where Billingsley had marked my map.
The most difficult place on the route was along the steep shale slope above the cirque of lower Whitmore Wash. I had to move carefully at several places, and I think that a cow might be stopped. The route crosses south on the next platform of lava. I am sure that a ravine from this platform goes down to the bed of Whitmore and thus there is a way to the river via the south side of the cirque. I was more interested in seeing the trail, but now I wish I had gone to the bed of the cirque and came up the trail. The trail leaves the platform where the lava meets the sedimentary rock. Instead of getting down to water as soon as possible, it parallels the river well up on the slope.
When I got back from this hike, I met Orville Bundy, who manages the ranching operation down here. He expressed the idea that this trail was constructed so that cows could drink from the river. The fact that I found it down as far as mile 190.5 when it could have reached the river 1.5 miles upstream, seems to argue against the view that it was built for cows. I would guess that it was a prospector's trail. I would like to know whether it was built before the standard trail upriver from Whitmore Wash. I have just reread the account by Powell of his trip from the camp in the Uinkarets guided by the human pickle down to the river, but an Indian ruin near the spring and the garden make it unlikely that they reached the river via the Toroweap Trail, the Whitmore Trail, or this one farther downriver (lower end of the Whitmore Trail). It is unusual for there to be two trails as close as the regular Whitmore Trail and this only two miles downriver from it.
My right hip was bothering me and this may have been the reason I chose not to go along the bank into the cirque and up to the trail by the ravine. As it was I followed the route back to the car in a little less than three hours in spite of favoring my right leg.
Shortly after I reached the car, Orville Bundy drove up from the west with his horse standing in the back of his truck. Then he used the horse to find a mare and her newborn colt. He fed the horse and gave them water from the big tank where he keeps rainwater from the roof of the shack. After we had eaten by ourselves, I visited with him by the light of my gasoline lantern and had a cup of his Mormon tea. He was a bit disturbed by the thought that they may declare his leased land a wilderness area and expel the cattle and destroy the road he has bulldozed. I agreed with him that it is better as it is, access for hikers to reach the best parts before walking, and some good use being made of the grazing possibilities.
Before 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday I was ready to leave. I had thought I might walk from the line shack, but with Lone Mountain and the dike at Mile 196.7 as my destinations, I figured that I should drive farther before walking. The road is really sporty and I wouldn't want to attempt it without four wheel drive. Orville says he gets his truck over it without that device, but I am sure he must gun it in compound to do it. I drove five miles and still had to walk for a half hour before reaching the place to leave the road and find the trail that George had marked on the Whitmore 7.5 minute quad map he had given me. He was right about which draw to go down but he put the place to leave the rim on the wrong side. It is really up from the bed a few yards to the east. This is at the first notch in the rim to the west of the big draw draining the valley to the west of peak 5045. The trail below the main cliff went north to the mouth of the big ravine I used last year to get down, and then I lost it under rockslides. Down in the bed of the fault valley I could follow it, and there were horse tracks along here.
When I was over halfway to the highest part of this valley, I started up towards Lone Mountain. If I had studied the Billingsley map better, I would have gone to see the dam and campsite less than a half mile north of Lone Mountain, but I simply scrambled over the easiest route to the top of this minor summit. It is a great viewpoint. I wondered whether I would ever penetrate the mess across the river that the Hualapai called Dr. Tommy Mountain.
There are quite a few cottontails over this part of the Esplanade, but I wasn't sure what made some very well used midget trails about four inches wide, perhaps mice. Walking was easy across the flat land out to the rim above the Colorado. I reached the rim a little west of where I should have for the shortest route, but I was glad to eat lunch and study the north side of the mesa across the river.
I soon reached the dike about one terrace lower than the broad Esplanade. The intrusive rocks here look quite dark while down lower in the Redwall and near the river they seem a lighter gray. The crack is impressively straight and narrow, here at the top only about ten feet wide. In just a few yards, I had to chimney down, and then a bit lower I came to a place where both sides of a big chockstone seemed too difficult for me. However, there was a break in the rim only about 100 yards to the east where I could scramble down the rockslides with no difficulty. The rest of the way down to the Redwall directly in line with the dike was no harder. There were a couple of places in the Redwall slot that made me look for the best route, but it wasn't too hard either. The gorge here has vertical walls, but they are more like 30 feet apart and no one chockstone ever blocks the entire width.
Just when I was wondering whether I should take the time to reach the place about 150 feet above the river where I had followed a bench to the east, I came to a place that stopped me. It is about halfway through the Devonian and I would estimate that I was still as high above the river as I was below the Redwall rim. A promontory split the ravine into two parts here. On either side I could get lower to the lip of a bare ledge. Billingsley must have led the student hikers to the west end of this ledge, but even the route over to the barely possible climb seemed most precarious to me. I was glad that it was now 2:00 p.m. and that I had resolved to turn back at that hour if not before. I am most happy that I elected not to try this way to the car last year. I would say that the way the Billingsley Party got to the river down the bed of Parashant Canyon from the mine road was easier than the way they returned using this dike (they used another dike farther east).
I would say that there would be a better chance for me to make it through the Redwall and Devonian cliffs father to the east, somewhere north of mile 196 (only a little farther east, I left the Esplanade correctly). There was still a little water in depressions in the rock near the top of the dike.
I got back to where I had left my canteen and day pack at the rim of the Esplanade in just under an hour. My route from there was more direct than it would have been if I had headed back toward Lone Mountain, but there were some tiring downs and ups. At one point I had to decide whether to go down a valley past the bottom of the trail through the rim, but I decided to go up and then down keeping somewhat north of the trail. I reached the rim above the big fault by 5:15, and the car by 5:45. I was gratified to find that I had no trouble with knees or hips hurting during my rather long day away from the Jimmy, from 7:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
I had intended to drive from here back to the fork and then south past Mount Dellenbaugh to get down to the Snyder Mine and see the old trail in Mile 214 Mile Canyon, but I found that the ten extra gallons of gas was still not quite enough. I had driven down the Parashant Road for 17 miles before I decided that I would have to go back to St. George for more gas. On the way back I was listening to the radio and heard that there would be a break in the mild weather and that they would have snow in Cedar City. By the time I heard some more weather news, that the storm might not be serious, I was already headed for home.
As usual, my accomplishments fell short of my ambitions, but I had followed another route from the rim to the river, and I had gotten through the Redwall in two more places. I had also climbed one more named Grand Canyon summit. It takes over nine hours to drive from Flagstaff to the volcano in Whitmore Valley, so I spent more time behind the steering wheel on this trip than I spent on foot.
From Saddle Canyon to Buck Farm Canyon
[April 3, 1976]
Two years ago in May Ron Mitchell showed me how to get down below the Coconino in Buck Farm Canyon. I figured that this route would be a good one to use when I ever tried to fill in the rest of the way below the rim from South Canyon to Saddle, the part that I still hadn't done to connect a route for me from Lee's Ferry to Nankoweap.
I would have to rappel down the Coconino in Saddle Canyon at the place I had used in December, 1969. If I had someone who could carry the rope back for me to the car, I figured that I could walk the Supai Rim around and come out at the head of Buck Farm in one day. Roma took me up on the idea of pulling our trailer up there and stopping at the Kane Ranch where there is lots of space to park 11 miles from the highway. We invited the Roths, and they were glad to bring their camper along. With Eldon along, it was my chance to have someone carry the rope back for me. He readily agreed to come down to the rappel site and to take the rope back after I had rappelled.
We left the trailer and camper before 7:00 a.m. but we wasted a few minutes while I started to show Eldon where I would be coming out at the end of the day. When I saw that this would delay my departure materially, I turned around and drove to the place on the Saddle Mountain Road that has a sign for the Saddle Mountain Trail. Roma and Maxine Roth came with us and it was rather slow getting across a small ravine and through the scrub timber. After several minutes we came to the corral at the east end of the old hunting camp. I realized then that it is better to drive into the parking at the camp. One could drive down the camp clearing and reach the corral.
We stayed together downhill near the rim of Saddle Canyon. When we had been walking about 30 minutes, Eldon and I said our farewells to the women and left the rim. It was rather slow walking below, and I realized that we should have stayed on top at least another five minutes. I got to the right level and followed the slight trail to the break that gives access to the bed of the canyon. It was easy to see a deer trail part of the time on the south side of the canyon and reach the landslide area beyond the big Coconino fall. I remembered the moves in getting down the slide and then east to the rappel site.
My recollection of the actual rappel site was off by a few yards horizontally, but because of the steep bank at the bottom, my rope wouldn't reach. I couldn't see the bottom, and I wasn't sure of this situation until I followed a suggestion of Eldon's and tried tying a rock to the end of the rope to see whether it would rest on the ground below. It wouldn't so I moved the rappel rope as far south as I could. Then I realized that this was where I had rappelled before. I used a stout clump of shrubbery as the anchor for the rope and went down without incident. When I got below the overhang, the rope twisted me around as before, and I shut my eyes before I became very dizzy. We had left the car before 8:00 a.m. and I was hiking away from the base of the Coconino about 10:30.
There is very little to say about the route along the Supai Rim. For some stretch it was quite easy. There were places where deer hoofs had left prints, and there were short bits of deer trails in some of the steep slopes of clay, but there were mainly places where the fallen rocks made progress quite slow. I ate lunch at noon in the bay above Triple Alcoves and by 2:20 p.m. I was getting around the point that projects toward President Harding Rapids. I had a fine view of the riverbank where I had walked to the Redwall break at Mile 49.9 and I could see the trail up into Saddle Canyon from the river.
I had no trouble recognizing the place to go up the Coconino at the head of Buck Farm Canyon, but I had just a bit of uncertainty about the break through the Kaibab. The one I tried came sooner than I had remembered, but it turned out to be the same. Dick Petty, the Buffalo Ranch manager, afterward told me that there are two ways through the rim (out at 5:30 p.m.).
Comanche Point Route to the Colorado River
[April 10, 1976]
When we climbed Espejo Butte, I looked toward Comanche Point and saw that the ravine coming down to the north from the base of Comanche might be a route through to the base of the Redwall, and from there to the river the way seemed sure. With the snow gone, and one day only available, the time seemed to be ripe for the investigation. I planned to go by myself, but Ken Walters looked in my office about something and I invited him.
We got started in the Jimmy at 6:00 a.m. since I needed to be back home by 6:00 p.m. In just two hours we were parked on the west side of Cedar Mountain just above the steep grade going down into Straight Canyon. We followed the road for about a mile on foot and left it where it swings to the east and starts downhill toward Goldhill. This is a little beyond where a fork leads to the west to the vicinity of a ruined hogan. It would have paid us to go higher to the west in the first place since we soon had to cross a valley. Sooner than I expected, we were on the high ridge with Comanche Point directly across the valley. We walked about 70 minutes to reach the top of the ravine going down north of Comanche Point.
On the top of a shoulder high rock at the rim there were a number of small rocks that might have been piled up as a cairn at some time. On my way out I rearranged them to form a cairn. Very near the top, I went to the west around a spur of rock and I observed a faint animal trail going down. There were some deer droppings and lower, a consistent trail of bighorn droppings. I didn't consider this a sure sign that I would be able to get clear through, because I have seen numerous places where deer or bighorns seem to jump down 15 feet or more.
We were leaving the rim in the lower Toroweap and very soon we were getting into the Coconino. Around Mile 19 the Coconino seems relatively thin, perhaps less than 100 feet, but here it is as deep as it ever gets, about the same as it is along the Tanner Trail. There were a few little problems in bypassing chockstones or extra steep ledges in the bed, but the first real problem was in the upper Supai. We left the bed to go to the west along a meager ledge with a low overhanging ceiling. I let Ken come back and take my pack across this place while I crept by on hands and knees. On the return we found that we could go along a higher ledge and get down beyond this uncomfortable place.
At one place we did a bypass consisting of going to the west along a shale slope that was a bit steep for comfort, but we stayed fairly consistently in the bed of the main ravine down into the top of the Redwall. Ken scouted ahead down a bare slope of Redwall and then was stopped by a big drop with smooth walls. We could see that a big slide had left a clay ramp against the wall to the west, so we climbed up the clay and rubble in that direction.
We could walk down the upper part of the slide, but then we came to a bare wall of limestone seemingly perpendicular for 150 feet or more. To the west of this talus a Redwall ravine went down at a gentle angle as far as we had been down the main bed. Before this dropped over a big fall, we could go to the right along a ledge from which we could get down by hand and toe holds to another meager ledge that continued down to the east. This narrowed in one place to mere toeholds, but there were good handholds above. This ramp led to a narrow alcove where one could climb vertically downward again using hands and toes. With more care in finding the right grips for fingers, one could go around a bulge and get to another narrow ledge going west to the head of the landslide rubble. Ken found this route while I waited rather impatiently on top calling down from time to time for him to be careful.
Finally, Ken came back up and we ate lunch together. Then he persuaded me to try the route, pointing out that he had found bighorn scat all the way down. He helped me find the grips and toeholds and we went clear down using the sheep trail to the west where the slide abuts the wall. This was my 144th Redwall route and just about the prize for exposure and face climbing without a rope.
Salt Trail Canyon
[April 23, 1976 to April 24, 1976]
For a one day trip I considered trying the Redwall at the head of Mineral Canyon, the way on the west side of Beaver Canyon that avoids the chockstone in Little Coyote Canyon to get down to the bed in the Redwall, but finally I decided that doing the Redwall on the east side of Salt Trail Canyon appealed to me the most. George Billingsley had said that this would be possible, and Bob Packard looked at it and had reported his opinion. Jack Galbreath had been to see me in my office and I asked him to come along.
We thought Tom Wahlquist might join us, but he had another engagement. We got away from Flagstaff at 6:00 a.m. and were turning away from the highway at Cedar Ridge after two hours of driving. I told Jack that I would be lucky if I made all the correct turns in getting to the head of Salt Trail Canyon. It might have been around ten years since I had been over this route, but I was lucky and avoided all mistakes. It is less than 20 miles from Cedar Ridge to the parking above the trailhead. We did this leg in about 50 minutes and I drove back even faster. One place to remember is the fork to the west just south of the point and east of The Tooth. Then one should avoid right forks until you see the valley that drains west into Salt Trail Canyon. Here you follow the main road to the southwest. It circles the broad valley and you take the next fork, a minor track, to the west again.
I wasn't absolutely sure of the trailhead until we saw the two cairns marking its head. The route down through the rim drops little less dramatic and severe than the head of the Eminence Break Route to President Harding Rapids, but they are rather similar. I was wondering how I could have gone down here using only one hand for balance 11 days after I had broken my left wrist. There may be more cairns now than when I first saw the route in 1956, but I recall that I saw quite a few then. Still there are places where it is easy to lose the right route in the jumble of big rocks. One might miss the way just below the top Supai cliff where it hugs the base of the cliff on the east.
Another questionable place is just after one crosses the bed of the canyon at the top of the Redwall. A dirt track leads up over a landslide and then one has to descend immediately after climbing 80 feet or so. This is what we did on the way down, but on the return we saw some small cairns pointing to a ledge along the cliff face at the lower level. In fact one can choose from two ledges only about 10 vertical feet apart.
We reached the river in just over two hours from the car and ate an early lunch beside a dirt floodwater. This is not the best time of the year to make our way along the banks with crossings. We wondered about taking a rubber boat downriver with this level. It might go all right.
On the way down, we had detoured to look at the Redwall across the way. The bed had an overhanging ledge that would prevent one from reaching a place where one could scramble all the way up. If there were a bypass, we figured that it would be via a talus slope near the river. We went up to the base of the cliff and then turned to the southeast to inspect a crack that might lead to the right level. The base of this crack looked promising although it involved some hand and toe climbing. This led to a smooth walled narrow crack topped by a chockstone. Jack didn't see this place, but he took my word for giving it up.
He could have followed the top of the talus along the base of the cliff into the bed, but we knew this wouldn't work either so we went home.
Reflection Canyon (Cottonwood Gulch)
[May 1, 1976]
Ever since 1968 when I was taking our 16 foot runabout around Lake Powell by myself, I had wanted to investigate the trail up Reflection Canyon. It was obvious that the east arm could be walked since there were several Indian ruins and signs that cows still used the gulch. I had never come back by myself and it seemed inhospitable to go off very long by myself when were entertaining guests. On the few occasions that Roma was with me alone, she never wanted to be left with a boat that she couldn't manage in case I never returned.
This time we had Anne Tinsley with us and Roma agreed that it would be all right for me to be absent for an hour and a half or two hours. Furthermore, there were quite a number of people camping at the end of the lake water. She could easily call for help in an emergency.
I moored the boat twice. When I first started walking, I soon realized that I could proceed by water for another 200 yards. There were some tricks in the channel in getting to the second mooring, but I tied to a root where there was deep enough water right to the bank.
There were still a number of occupied campsites north of the mooring, one of them being an established camp with seven picnic tables. It had a sign announcing that it belonged to Canyon Tours, Inc., and that it was there under an arrangement with the National Park Service.
The route from here on was fairly easy although one sometimes needed to push through cane beds and willows. There is a running stream which was intermittently above ground all the way. I walked the bed and for most of the way north, walking was easier up on the terrace on the east side of the bed. I passed a bull and a number of Hereford's shortly after I left the boat.
When I had been going about 20 minutes, at the end of a rather straight stretch of canyon, I happened to pause and look up at the east wall. About 15 feet above where I was walking and about 30 feet away were some pictographs, a bighorn sheep and a row of decorative diamond shapes in two shades of clay paint.
I was hoping to be able to walk up and out of the inner canyon before I would have to turn back according to my pledge to return in one and a half hours. I just did succeed in finding the place, a break to the northeast. I got up high enough for a fine view of the Kaiparowits, but I had to turn back before I could look around at the bare and round topped slick rock country. When I returned and studied the Navaho Mountain Quad map, I could pick out the place and see that there was still a long way to go to reach Fifty Mile Point, the farthest east extension of the Kaiparowits, or to reach the road to Hole In the Rock. With a day to hike, these objectives would be quite possible. I believe I'll try getting up on the Kaiparowits by this route before I go in from Dry Rock Creek again.
Buck Farm Canyon to South Canyon
[May 8, 1976 to May 9, 1976]
The work from Buck Farm Point in checking for a Marble Canyon Dam had turned up signs of Indian occupation along the Esplanade in the Saddle Canyon area, a mescal pit on the south side of the main bed and a storage bin below the top Supai cliff on the north side of that drainage. These discoveries had gotten me interested in finding ways down to their level even if it meant going in from Nankoweap or South Canyon. Ron Mitchell had formed the ambition to go all the way from Lee's Ferry to Nankoweap below the rim, and he had found ways to get off the rim into Buck Farm Canyon and Mile 36.8 Canyon. Allyn Cureton and I had found one way into the head of South Canyon and we also followed the example of Stanton and found a way to climb out on the north side of South Canyon. Later we found a way off the slump block into Bedrock Canyon and thence down to Vasey's. Mitchell and several companions had stitched together pieces of the route until Mitchell was finally the first man to connect all of Marble Canyon below the rim. Then Tom Wahlquist and Bob Dye, hiking independently, did the same. I decided to fill in my last leg, the part between Buck Farm Canyon and South Canyon.
Jim Ohlman joined me and we drove to the head of Buck Farm Canyon and slept in the Jimmy during three hours of hard rain in the middle of the night. I started over to the break in the rim that I knew best about 5:25 a.m. while Jim drove the car to the takeoff point at the head of South Canyon. I had the cairns to assure me I was at the right place, but when Jim came out on Sunday he found cairns at a second place, and he came up to the rim at a third place that isn't marked. Although I couldn't see the talus covering the Coconino from above, I went to the right place and got down to the bed in the Supai without much delay in just less than an hour from the car. The seep spring was flowing, and there was a lot of water from the rain in the night.
It took me a half hour to walk around to the south to the head of the Supai route that Bob Dye had found in the first tributary from the right. Bob Packard had assured me that I would have no real problem going down here, but I found that I had to study the route carefully to keep out of real difficulties. Coming up Jim wasn't that careful and he had to do a difficult climb at one place. I got down to the Redwall in about three hours from the Buck Farm Road, and I didn't spend any time trying to see what Ken Walters had done in trying to get down into the Redwall. I could hear a running stream below and when I looked down to the river, I could see brilliant red muddy water spreading tentacles into the clear Colorado.
The way along the Redwall rim upriver was easier than it usually is. I left the mouth of Buck Farm Canyon about 9:00 a.m. and arrived at the drainage from the north side of Buck Farm Point about 10:30. It may have been near the drop off in this streambed that I noticed a solution cavern mouth. I think I could see where it came out of the side of the cliff when I got farther north. In looking back I also saw a jug handle arch. These features were near a squatty tower standing out from the rim. This bay on the north side of Buck Farm Point has the only route through all of the Supai between Buck Farm Canyon and Mile 36.8 Canyon. It is up a talus formed by a landslide.
I ate an early lunch here and walked to the camper's cave at Mile 36.8 Canyon between 11:20 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Just as I was arriving, Jim Ohlman hailed me from across the Redwall gorge. We had a restful afternoon. I read through my Time magazine while Jim snoozed and reconnoitered the area. He found that one can get down into the narrow gorge to a two foot deep water hole.
I had been slightly cold in my winter weight bag in the Jimmy on top Friday night, but I slept soundly at the right temperature down at 3100 feet on my shorty air mattress. In fact I didn't get away as soon in the morning as I had intended. I found the walking rougher to the north with a lot of detours along the contour or else a climb down and back up. The notch immediately to the south of the one containing the Bridge of Sighs seemed easy to descend for a long way. Bob Euler told me that the Indian ruin where he got out of the chopper as it hovered with only one skid on the ledge is downriver from the Bridge of Sighs and is also on the right side. I went down this ravine to see whether it might lead to Euler's ruin. It ended about 150 feet above the river with no way to go laterally along a ledge. When I came to the next ravine where I was sure I should find the Bridge of Sighs, I went down it also. I was not mistaken and I got a good view through the bridge to the river although it would take some rappelling to get down under the bridge. A good climber might be able to climb down to the top of the bridge, but I didn't care to risk this, and anyway, I knew I would need to keep traveling if I were to come out to the car on time, before 4:30 preferably.
When I was approaching Redwall Cavern, I was back from the rim so that I couldn't see exactly where I was, but I began to hear voices. When I went down to the rim, I could see a three baloney boat party stopped to examine the cavern. I shouted down to them. The motors were shut off, and I suppose they heard me, but they couldn't see me and didn't wave. I noticed numerous surveyor's poles along here, guyed by three wires. I also had a good look at the fallen down shack on the other side of the river, and I saw where they had come down to the river with the aid of a long rope.
On Saturday I had noticed a lot of wires and trash left over from the more recent work on the Marble Canyon Damsite beneath Buck Farm Point. There were quite a few pieces of aluminum tubing that carried compressed air from the pump on the plateau down to the jackhammers at the drill sites. I suppose the other wires and cables supported the tubing, but a very long plastic cord had me guessing. It may have been the first line down, strung by unreeling from a helicopter. Then they could have pulled heavier wires and cables attached to the end of the cord.
I kept watching for ways to get through the Supai, but I think that the last way was the one out of sight on the north side of Mile 36.8 Canyon. There were several slides that would take one to the base of the top Supai cliff, but I couldn't see any that were sure to go clear through. At 11:15 a.m., I finally reached the Redwall gorge of South Canyon and soon thereafter I stopped beside a rather muddy rain pool and had lunch. I started on at 12:15 after filling my canteen with reddish water. As soon as I was able to get down in the bed, I found clear water and dumped my canteen for a refill.
Just below the junction with Bedrock Canyon there is a ledge with a simple bypass to the south. It is well marked now and has seen so much use that there is a clear trail along here. The route is at the height of the lip of the fall. I vaguely recall going higher than I should have when I first used this bypass. Another bypass farther west is also well marked. There were numerous water pockets and I wondered why I was carrying my canteen nearly full. Above the Supai I could see the way that Allyn and I had climbed out to the north to follow the route of Stanton. I would say that he was fairly sure to get out where he could see the way and the route at the end of the canyon was still not a sure thing.
In fact when I got to the route near the end, I was glad to see cairns. The way looked worse than I had remembered it. I probably missed the best way because I had to go up the steep landslide area holding to rocks that were protruding from the clay and a lot of the footing was bad. It was a relief to reach the bare exposure of Coconino where one can walk a ledge over to the rounded smooth gully. Above this place, I was ready to walk the clay slope to the south to go out the way Allyn and I had come down, but Jim was back already and was shouting that the best way was a little to the north. The climb was more of the precarious sort through the clay and boulders but we finally came to a good break in the rim where it was an easy walk up through a crack. We were quite close to the car by 4:15.
It had been a good trip even through I hadn't kept up a very good pace. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing, water was easy to find, and it was not too hot. I was tired but glad to have all of Marble Canyon connected.
Red and Mineral Canyons
[May 24, 1976]
From above, the Redwall descent at the head of Mineral Canyon seemed possible. I had been considering this as a possible one day hike for some time. I had done the Redwall rim from Red Canyon around into Mineral twice fairly recently, so I decided to use the Hance Trail and walk around into Mineral beneath the Redwall. In that way I would have a good hike even if the Redwall should prove impossible.
I didn't try to get anyone to go along and I got away at 5:45 a.m. I had told Roma that I would try to get home by 5:30 p.m. since we had accepted a dinner invitation with the Roths for 6:00. I drove the Toyota at a legal 55 mph and still arrived at the parking for the Hance Trail by 7:45. By now I have no difficulty finding the head of the trail. It gets a lot more use now than when I first began using it about 1951.
The day was clear and cool and the new leaves were just coming out on the aspens. May had been relatively wet and everything was beautiful and green. I was impressed once more by John Hance's choice for a tourist facility. His part of the canyon holds its own with any other for grandeur. Distant views are as inspiring as the nearer ones.
There are some alternate branches of the old trail, but with the increased traffic, one can find the best route. The way through the Supai first starts down between two ravines, then goes to the west, then to the east side of the wash, then west, and finally stays on the east side down to the Redwall. Now there would be no excuse for Dan Davis to spend two and a half hours looking for the right descent.
I wanted to review the Redwall descent that is nearer the head of the gorge. I vaguely recall having gone down it once and up on another occasion via routes that varied only slightly. I thought I had scrambled from ledge to ledge without getting into any ravines. This time I started down between two towers and then followed a ledge around to the south. There were signs that animals go this way. Then I got into a ravine and followed it halfway down. When it came to a drop, I went out to the north and had an easy scramble the rest of the way. There were fresh signs that burros use the water that is intermittently above ground through the shale of the bed clear below the lip of the Tapeats. I heard a burro bray while I was on my way out.
At the top Tapeats fall, it would be difficult to go along the shale slope to the east, but a very well defined trail proceeds west and up. It is good enough to be artificial, man built and burro maintained. It follows a natural ramp around into Mineral Canyon. A lesser burro trail continues to rise into the higher part of Mineral Canyon below the Redwall. I missed this and went down to the bed on my way in but I followed this slight trail on the way back.
When I came to the highest showing of Bright Angel Shale, I put down my day pack and climbed up several steep places. I had a good look at the impassible fall, a really striking chasm. When I was retreating, I noted the possibility of going up a talus to a higher bench on the west and walking around into the middle of the gorge. However, there seemed to be one more sheer wall, perhaps only 25 feet high, before one would reach the easy scramble from there to the top. One could use a rope here and get down all right.
I came from the car to the end of the trip from 7:45 to 11:20 a.m. and got back from 11:45 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Buck Farm Canyon from the river
[June 3, 1976 to June 5, 1976]
Others had told me about getting up Buck Farm Canyon from the river so I finally decided to do it too. Billingsley had told me that it is quite pretty in the Redwall gorge although not as striking as Saddle Canyon. Jim David had thought that one might be able to climb the Redwall, and Ken Walters had made the attempt and had learned that someone had left steel pegs in the cracks and a ladder in one place. When they were test drilling the Marble Canyon Damsite, someone must have worked out a rope descent.
I left Sun City quite early and had something done to the car at Flagstaff. I took the current fork, the right, just west of the cattle tank north of the Tooth, but I erred slightly after I had made the correct turn to the left about 1.3 miles farther toward Shinumo Altar. I took the well used track to a group of buildings instead of going straight south of them. The mistake wasn't serious, but I reached Blankspot Reservoir from the northeast instead of by the old main road from the east. It takes me about an hour to do the 21 miles from Cedar Ridge to the parking above the grade down the Eminence Break slope.
The Eminence Break Route is receiving quite a bit of hiker use and there are a lot more cairns and tracks than there used to be. The hard places seemed a little more hazardous than I had remembered them, but this is because I am getting older. I saw all the usual landmarks, the Fallen Tower Bridge, the big block of Coconino with the fine footprints, and the place to leave the wash to go along a ledge below the top Supai cliff. Just above the Supai, about 100 feet to the left out of the bed, I noticed for the first time, another block having fossil footprints on it. They are mere bulging pads and don't show the toe marks.
Hiker tracks have worn a trail in the clay over to the Redwall descent, and there are quite a few cairns to mark the route down through the Redwall south of President Harding Rapid. However, on the return I missed by going too high before turning north. Also on the return I spotted two bits of pottery, a piece of plain brown ware in the lower Redwall, and a bit with black stripes on brown near the top.
When I got to the vicinity of the Hansbrough grave, I met a river party led by Jake and Peggy Luck. Jake recognized me immediately from having heard me talk at the South Rim. I enjoyed a visit with some of his passengers after dinner.
In the morning I went upriver past the Indian ruin beneath the left wall and the Bridge of Poles on the right before I blew up my boat and crossed. The current was slack and I had no trouble going more directly than a 45 degree slant. Walking averaged quite a bit better on the right bank. There were deer trails and I followed a buck for 10 minutes on the way upriver and saw a doe later when I had come down in the afternoon.
The Royal Arches were impressive and so was the short canyon at Mile 41.3. I knew that Loper's boat was supposed to be nearby, but I didn't find it. A trail now leads into this alcove and there are a couple of strangely built tables in there. One is topped with some sort of hard composition sheeting and the other by the planking from some wooden boat. I could tell what these boards had been used for originally by the rows of nails that were no longer functional. I suspected that Loper's boat had been dismantled and used to build the table. There are springs and ferns and columbines in this short canyon, and I am not surprised that the boaters like to visit it.
The bouldery bed of Buck Farm Canyon leads up gradually from the river. There was no water at this time except for standing pools in the shale. I had to take obvious bypasses around chockstones and then I came to the real narrows filled with water. I followed a ledge on the south but it ended at a precarious place where a good climber could go up, but I didn't want to take the chance. I backtracked ready to give up when I came to a place where I could go up safely. In fact there was another place farther west where I could have gone safely up to the level that leads on to the bed above the Bright Angel Shale. When I came to where the canyon forks, I was really stopped. Here is where Jim David and Ken Walters almost climbed to a steep peg in the rock. I took my picture and left.
On the return, I inflated my boat and coasted downriver to the delta at Mile 41.3 where I got out to walk around a riffle. A boat party was parked here so that the dudes could go up and take a shower at the spring. One of the young boatman told me that he had heard the rumor that formerly a hermit had lived near where the tables are now. They also told me where to find Bert Loper's boat, so I went back and located it a little upriver from the mouth of the alcove. It is behind some willows and tamarisks and not very easily seen from the river. The bow and foredeck are still in good shape. After I talked to the manager of the party, he took me downriver to the vicinity of the Platform of Poles.
One of the two main projects of the trip was to climb up to this structure and record it in color slides. I didn't see it from below but a well traveled path led upwards. Then I reached a place where the climbing seemed quite a bit harder than I had remembered it and I thought I might be at the wrong place. I went downriver at that level and saw the doe, but I became convinced that the platform was not in that direction. Then I went upriver from the end of the path and got a glimpse of the poles from below. After choosing the safer of two rather difficult moves, I was up the hard place and came to the edge of the platform. I got my pictures, but when I was changing film back in Flagstaff, somehow I lost the 36 shot roll. The river was lower in the afternoon and I crossed right to where I had left my pack.
I felt that I had slowed down quite a bit, but I got from the rim to the river in two hours and 20 minutes, and I got back up the Eminence Break Route in three and a half hours including 25 minutes when I stopped to eat. I regarded it as one of my more successful trips except for losing the photographic record of the whole thing.
Hakatai Canyon, Modred Abyss
[June 7, 1976 to June 10, 1976]
I had wanted to visit the asbestos mines in Hakatai Canyon for a long time, and ever since Jerry Hassemer had told me about getting down to Abyss Cave via the route south from Elaine Saddle, I had wanted to do that too. I came back to Flagstaff after my Marble Canyon jaunt and was glad to hear that Bob Packard could go with me. He promised his wife to be home before midnight on Thursday. We got a fairly early start and were getting our permit at the North Rim Lodge before noon. We thought we would spend the night at the car on the rim at the junction of the Swamp Point and Point Sublime Roads before going down to Modred from Elaine Saddle on Tuesday. Then we got the idea that a trip to the top of Powell Plateau would be a good way to spend the rest of Monday p.m. On our way to Swamp Point we followed the logging road west from DeMotte Park and turned south on the road to Bear Lake, three miles. After about two miles along here, I turned west toward Quaking Aspen Spring and then south to the Fire Point Road. Here we turned east to the road that is marked Swamp Point. The gate to the park is unlocked. We took the simpler way out on Thursday, east on the Fire Point Road past the one mile spur to Bear Lake and back north to the big logging road.
When we got to Swamp Point, we got the idea that it would be a good thing to start down the North Bass Trail immediately and camp somewhere at water below the Redwall. Then we would be more sure of reaching out destinations. There has been a lot of hiker traffic down the trail and the route below the spring east of Muav Saddle was quite well marked by cairns. We looked around the spring at the base of the Coconino and located the rock ruin with the chimney and also noticed a metal bucket at the end of the trail to the spring. The trail detours east to another spring about two thirds of the way down the Hermit Shale and there was running water through much of the bed in the Supai. We both took pictures of the cave with an open top at the upper end of the Redwall gorge.
There were places where the trail was easy to follow over the ravines on top of the Redwall to the west, but we also lost the trail, especially when we were supposed to start down the Redwall. I believe this place is after you have crossed three ravines. After a quick look over the fourth ridge, I knew that we should backtrack. After a short walk in the bed below the Redwall, we came to running water in the shale. Where the trail went up to the west, we followed it and came to a fairly good Indian ruin, but soon I thought that it would be more bother to cross the ridges than to follow the bed. We got down to the bed again, but we would have been better off if we had stayed there in the first place.
I intended to stay on the east rim along the Tapeats, but there was a question as to whether we should stay above it or below where the bed was still broad. We guessed right that we should stay low until the narrower slope developed. When it opened the bottom dropped out, perhaps 100 feet down with no warning. There were two chockstones wedged between the walls high above the bottom. We could get down to the bed quite easily in the tributary ravine on the left side north of Redwall Canyon. I'll try to remember to show Bob the Kolb picture of the chockstone in the narrows which we took the time to enter. Flowing water started shortly and we found a good terrace where we camped. It had taken five hours to come down here from Swamp Point.
I created quite a bit of excitement when I set fire to toilet paper after dark and it caught the grass. It made quite a blaze as it went 15 feet up the wall and then started toward our beds. Even green bushes burned brightly and driftwood also caught. Bob was for picking up our stuff and getting out. The fire would stop at natural barriers where the bare walls reached the stream but he helped me fight it, and we put it out by beating the edge where the grass was lower. It was under control in 10 minutes but I attended to all the smoldering sticks for another 30. I threw the bigger ones in the water.
Walking down the bed of White Creek was fairly easy although not very fast over the rocks and along the gravel. We soon passed the mouth of Redwall Canyon which has an impossible drop in the Tapeats. We didn't notice it at the time, but on the return on Wednesday, we found bits of trail construction going up on the Tonto to the east at a minor alcove. The map shows only a slight nick in the wall here. A little less than halfway from the bed of Redwall Canyon to Shinumo Creek, there is a large gulch, bent like a shallow S whose boulder filled bed leads up through the Tapeats also. We didn't notice this access route until we were walking south along the Tonto on Wednesday. It took about 45 minutes to reach Shinumo Creek from our camp. There is a trail bypass for a 20 foot fall near the end of White Creek, and Bass must have installed the steel rod in the rock which was to hold the trail construction, now gone. Deer and burros must keep this trail clear, and now hikers are also helping. It took us another 45 minutes to go along Shinumo Creek to the Bass Camp. There are a few dry footed crossing sites, but I decided to wade in and accept wet feet. Bob was trying to hold out, but he got wet to his hips when he slipped on a slimy rock.
We observed the rock shelter under a huge overhanging rock on the right side of the creek that I had remembered and we were impressed with the amount of pioneer tools at the camp itself. We didn't recognize all of the items. An end of a wooden box was inscribed with the names W L Vaughan and Claude T. The same inscription is carved on the vertical side of a big rock beside the trail farther south. I didn't study it but Bob thinks there was a date, 1912. We also passed the stone chimney near the inscription rock.
The lower end of the trail to Burro Canyon was obscure, and for a few minutes I was wondering whether I had led Bob up the wrong place. It seemed hard to believe that a trail could pass the wall ahead, but it does, near the base of the hard place. Bass must have had a lot of guts to take his trails through some places. The new map doesn't show this trail at all, and the Matthes Evans map shows it stopping at the bed of Burro Canyon. I didn't recall for sure whether Donald Mattox had led his group up on the Tonto or along the base of the Tapeats and quartzite to enter Hakatai along the Archean, but I figured that the Tonto would give much easier walking. The quartzite is broken leading up to the base of Fan Island, so we started up. There were plenty of burro tracks on the lower slope and toward the top I found a constructed trail. Bob came out above me using a break in the crags to the south of the trail. There was a cairn to mark the top, and when I returned, I found another at the lower end. After some cross country walking we found a well defined burro trail contouring along into Hakatai Canyon.
I had the impression that Mattox had gotten through the Tapeats in the tributary from the east that is southwest of Fan Island. Bob led the way down and even found a cairn midway. We were getting very hopeful and then came to a 25 foot drop. There was a slight chance of chimneying down a slight crack on the left, but neither of us fancied trying to come back up that way. We found that the trail continued just as definitely to the north. But first we went back to the point overlooking the mouth of Hakatai. We could see that at the corresponding position west of the Hakatai bay, the Tapeats is broken, but there is no chance for a descent on the east side. In fact, we could see that moving along the Archean beneath the Tapeats would be most difficult. After some real soul searching, Bob and I agreed to go north and head the Tapeats gorge of Hakatai and come down where we could see a trail through the Tonto cliff across the way. We figured on using three hours if necessary for just getting to where we could start down.
Bob went ahead at his rate and waited for me when he came to a bay near where the Tapeats closes in to form the final narrows at the upper end of Hakatai. He couldn't see the trail crossing this gorge. While I rested, he went down to investigate the possibility of getting through the Tapeats here. It had the same 25 foot drop as the other tributary, but this time there was a ledge going to the right and leading to a talus which continued down to the bed. Bob came back to report using a burro trail. When we went down, we both saw unmistakable signs of a constructed trail complete with switchbacks and pieces of retaining wall. It was well defined clear down to the lower end of the Tapeats gorge of the main canyon. We dropped our packs and investigated this impressive narrows. We startled four burros in here including a foal. Just before we were stopped by a big chockstone, we found a seep spring where the burros drink. We could climb to a higher clean pool, but the water may be too mineralized for good drinking. We had plenty of Shinumo water left.
It was a long, easy walk along the bed down to the mines. They are above the bed on the left at the junction with the tributary southwest of Fan Island. There are two shafts, one about 10 feet deep and the other about 25 feet deep. They are only 50 yards apart, and there is another surface excavation close to the longer shaft. Nearby is trash from an old camp. A little way down canyon here the bed drops off into a fall through the igneous rock. A trail goes up to the west along the rim of the igneous intrusion and continues clear through to the Tonto leading to Waltenberg Canyon. About 200 yards along this trail, a spur takes off and goes down below the drops in the bed. There were several pools of fairly clean water here, and I supposed this to be the supply of the miner's camp. Bob and I handed down the packs at a couple of small drops in the bed, but we could have managed alone. After a fine bypass to the left, we arrived at the river. A channel with straight walls goes out into the river. We enjoyed standing in the shallow, quiet water over the sand bottom of this recess and cooling off. Bob then climbed around above the river and reached a sand beach then went up 100 feet or so and found the north end of the cable anchorage. He took me back up the trail out of the bed to this place. The north end of the cable was through a five foot hole clear through the bedrock.
After we had eaten an early dinner, Bob set off for a two hour exploration. We had needed about one and a half hours to go from our camp to Bass Camp at Shinumo Gardens and we had used eight hours to go from there to the Colorado at the mouth of Hakatai, and I was ready to rest on my bedroll. Bob found that there was no sign of a trail for loaded burros to take ore to the Hakatai cable. The slope west of where the trail comes down into the bed from the cable and anchorage is broken and could have allowed a trail. After beating his way up this slope, Bob reached the trail to the Tonto quite high. He followed it around into a little bay and found an Indian ruin just below the place to get through on top of the Tonto. The trail was going on clearly towards Waltenberg when he had to turn back (Mattox went on and got to the river in Waltenberg Canyon. No trail beyond Waltenberg Canyon). On the return he looked without success for more mines and then started down the bed where we had left it in the afternoon. He got down one fall and then was stopped cold by the next. It was difficult climbing back to use the trail.
On Wednesday Bob wanted to make time over to Shinumo Creek and be able to get to the Colorado via the old trail to the north end of the Bass Cable and also see where the ferry was. He got from our camp (we stayed together well past the mines) to Shinumo Creek in four hours. I came along in something over five, quite a lot faster than our eight of the previous day. I had not put river water in my canteen since I could get a supply farther up the canyon. What I didn't know until I was well away from the river is that the water from seeps tastes like dilute Epsom Salts. I held back from drinking any more than necessary on the hot day, but I must have taken in a quart in four and a half hours. I waited for Bob and ate lunch at Bass Camp. He had needed two hours to go to the boat crossing and then return via the loop that took in the mouth of Shinumo Creek. About 12:15 we started on up the creek. We wanted to get to the junction of Modred and Merlin on Wednesday and go out up to Elaine Saddle on Thursday.
We went up White Creek again and found the trail to the Tonto without going clear past Redwall Canyon, but we passed the other possibility and didn't see it until we were coming south along the Tonto. There is a good burro trail most of the way along the Tonto rim around into Shinumo to the mouth of Modred, but there are more detours across lateral ravines that I had remembered, and getting north to the mouth of Modred was slower than I had thought. We got down to the creek just south of the junction and then walked up Modred to find the campsite we had used in 1969. When we were prepared to wade into the water, there was no problem in getting up the creek from the junction. We had needed less than two hours to get from Bass Camp to the break we used in the Tapeats above White Creek, and about three to go from there to the camp site above the Tapeats narrows in Modred. In 1969, Nelson, Sears, and I had needed four to go from the same camp to Redwall Canyon.
On Thursday morning Bob and I got away at 5:15 a.m. but we soon saw that it would take two hours to go two miles. We tried the north side of the creek above the jungle, along the creek, up on the south side, and the north side again. In only a few places we had a deer trail or relatively open flats. We saw two mescal pits and the broken metate that I had seen seven years ago. Going up to Elaine Saddle was also slow traveling, but the chockstones or falls always had simple bypasses. Climbing up dirt slopes that slide is frustrating and laborious, however. The Supai averages steeper than the Redwall and then at the very top of the Supai a cliff is rather continuous. We could see only two or three places that gave a bit of hope.
Bob went to the most likely place, directly above where we had come up. He had to remove his pack and had to do a couple of moves that required some skill. The lower place required lying over the edge of a shelf and then sliding forward. The other forced one to use some meager hand and footholds that didn't give one much of a feeling of safety. We handed the packs up at both places and Bob came down to give me a bit of support at the upper slot (others have found a better way). Then I decided that it would be more direct to beat our way through the brush to South Big Springs Canyon and go up that creek to find the way through the Coconino and out north to the Swamp Point Road. We took longer to get from Elaine Saddle to the creek than Sears and I had, probably because Bob and I tried to go too high most of the way. Getting around log jams in the creek was bad too. The Coconino break on the north side seemed harder than I had thought, and it took us about 30 minutes through the woods on top to reach the road. It was quite cloudy and blowing a gale, and we were not always sure which was north, but we reached the road about 3:20. I got into my bag to keep warm while Bob put on his running shoes and jogged 5.6 miles to the car in 48 minutes. He reached me about 4:50 and we drove straight home to Flagstaff before 9:45.
Tent caterpillars seem to be swarming all over the Kaibab this summer and are killing a lot of the aspens and many other trees (leaves drop off, but the aspen puts out more). The ponderosa pines seem to be immune.
Marion Point and Huntoon and Tibbetts Routes
[July 16, 1976]
I left home about 6:00 a.m. in the Jimmy and got to Flagstaff before 9:00. I had a good visit with Dick Meyer and Bob Packard. The latter was elated that he had finally beaten Allyn Cureton in a 6.3 mile race and Bob's time was better than Cureton had ever done. Bob also told me about getting to the top of the highest point in Texas with little Keith, and also about a terrific day with Ken Walters when they not only climbed El Diente but about four other fine peaks too. They went along the ridge connecting El Diente to Mount Wilson. Their approach to El Diente was from the north.
It seemed a bit too early for dinner when I passed Cliff Dwellers so I drove on to the south end of the road in Houserock Valley and ate canned goods in my car. I was impressed by the evening light across the plain to the gorge of Marble Canyon and on to the Echo Cliffs with Navaho Mountain looming beyond. The old hunting camp would be a fine place for a vacation retreat.
I was awake at first light and started hiking at 5:15 a.m. I went down the trail to the bed of Saddle Canyon and upstream until the trail goes to the west of the bed. I was able to follow this better than ever before and I continued up the open slope beneath the pines when the trail gave out. This route reaches the trail coming down from the high country about 100 yards to the west of the place where the Nankoweap Trail goes down the top Supai Cliff, and it is about 50 feet higher than this low point on the saddle. I got over this best route in less time than it has ever taken me from the car to the saddle, one hour and ten minutes.
The trail as far as Marion Point seemed rougher than I had remembered it, and it took another hour and 10 minutes for me to cover this lap. I got back a bit faster, perhaps because I didn't stop for pictures. On the way out, I was interested in studying the Tibbetts and Huntoon Routes through the Redwall, at the very end of the canyon and east of here on the south side, respectively.
I started down through the Supai in the angle west of the Marion Point promontory and then went along the rim of the lowest Supai cliff until it gave out at the end of the promontory. On the return I chose the slightly better way up the end of the promontory with a detour to the west at the top near the trail.
There were footprints from several hikers going out on Marion Point, perhaps dating from the Steve Studebaker Party. They were there when the ground was soft with rain. Crossing the notch was surprisingly easy, a simple walk on the north side and an easy scramble with good holds on the south. There were a few small ledges farther on that required some route finding, but the trip is not a demanding climb. There were three cairns, two to mark the highest point and another to show how far along the ridge someone had gone. From the end, I could see the V of firs and Mystic Fall, but to tell that it had water, one would need binoculars. everything in the northeast section of the park is visible from the end of Marion Point. It is a grand detour off the Nankoweap Trail.
Without much determination, I checked for Redwall descents to the east at the notch and the narrow bridge farther south. A good climber could handle a wide chimney and go down a long way at the latter, and I could have gotten quite far down at the notch. I think these routes are impassible farther down.
Coconino route into the east arm of Clear Creek
[July 17, 1976]
Ever since Bob Dye told me about getting down through the Coconino and Supai on the east side of the Cheyava Falls arm of Clear Creek, I had been intending to try it. First I thought I should locate it the way he had, from the west rim of this arm. About 0.4 miles from the end of the fire road to Francois Matthes Point, the road goes close to the rim. I walked down through the trees until I could get a good view of the east side. I saw what I took to be Dye's route. His ravine slants to the north and the bed is invisible from across the canyon. The bottom of the Coconino appears to have at least a 30 foot bare fall, and I can't claim that I saw the fir tree he used to get down this cliff. I didn't feel a bit sure that I could handle this climb alone, especially after Packard assured me that I would need a rope to do Dye's route through the Redwall in Little Nankoweap.
I noticed that one could not get through the Kaibab directly above the Coconino route, but there are good ways both to the north and the south. To reach the south (nearer) one, I estimated that one should drive 4.2 miles south where the fire road forks. On the way back I saw the signs announcing the fire roads connecting these two forks, but there were no visible tracks to assure one that the routes are feasible. I would figure that they have steep grades to cross sizable valleys. I would want to drive clear back to the fork.
Tritle I and Tritle II
Near the rim on the ridge separating Kwagunt and Nankoweap Canyons are two large limestone towers. On the Matthes Evans Map, the longer of these two (and nearer the rim) was called Tritle Peak. On the 1962 map, the farther east tower bears the same name. Thus we can call these towers Tritle I and Tritle II.
On 10/24/70, Al Doty left my car at the viewpoint above Kwagunt and in an even hour got out to both towers and climbed them. I wanted some insight into what he had done, and I had the idea that perhaps I could climb the farther and lower tower which Al had said was the easier.
The way to them and along their bases was not too bad although there was some brush to break through. On the return, I used a deer trail that is nearly continuous along the north side of the closer tower. I saw that there is no easy and safe way up either. I climbed up about 25 feet on the far side of Tritle II, but for me to continue would have been suicide. I have seen Al do some tricky moves, but I have never seen him do anything as nearly impossible as these climbs. I would have had a fit if I had been watching him. I would have told him to postpone that sort of climbing until I would not be along.
I walked the ridge beyond Tritle II until it was dropping off. There is another smaller tower out here without a name, but it would seem as hopeless to climb as any.
I would like to see Lee Dexter and Scott Baxter climb these towers. They would go slower and play them safer than Al Doty, but I am sure they could do them. Tritle I and II have the advantage of being accessible. They may become popular with the experts.
Red Canyon and Redwall in Mineral Canyon
[October 3, 1976]
I had noted the possibility of a Redwall route down Mineral and I had investigated this from below and I had thought that a short rappel would be enough. Wanda Seglund wanted to write an article for the Republic so I agreed to take her along for as much of the hike as she cared to do. She brought her 14 year old daughter, Julia. Just a few days before the time, Allen Schauffler got in touch with me, and I agreed readily to take him too. Allyn Cureton was at the Grand Canyon Symposium and he decided to go with us also.
There had been some rain, but Sunday seemed fine. We picked up the Seglunds at the Visitors Center before 8:00 a.m. and we started down the Red Canyon Trail by 8:30. Frequent use has made the trail more distinct. Allyn told us that he had timed himself for speed down to the river and back on this trail. He had reached the river in one hour and 19 minutes and had come back to the rim, after a three minute rest, in one hour and 39 minutes. Our party got to the Redwall in a little more than an hour and took over an hour to walk the Redwall Rim around to the Redwall Gorge of Mineral Canyon. This sort of walking was new to Wanda and she said she was so busy watching her footing that she had no idea of the entire route. When Al, Allyn, and I prepared to go down the Redwall, she and Julia were content to stay on top.
As I had seen before, the top was easy, mere walking over rockslide material. Then there were several places where Allyn led the way and Al was able to go down without too much hesitation. However, they seemed risky to me, and I had to be encouraged by such remarks as "There is a good step just three inches lower." These places didn't seem hard on the way back.
Then we came to the drop. If we had rappelled at the main fall, it would have been almost twice as far down as it was above a bench to the left. Over here there was also a sturdy juniper that made a fine place to tie the rope. The rappel was about 40 feet but there were a couple of places where one could stand on ledges. The bottom 18 feet was slightly overhung, but you could touch the wall with the feet. We used a diaper sling and gave the rope three turns around a carabineer for friction. I went down first and, while the others were descending, I followed the bench to where one could walk down to the Tonto level.
When I was Jumaring back up the rope, I used the same nylon rope for holding the slings against my body. Halfway up, when I had put my weight on a ledge, the square knot came untied and the nylon rope dropped. I took no chances and had the others send it back up before I proceeded, this time with a better knot. I assumed that Al and Allyn had seen how the Jumars work and I went up to where I had left my lunch and took shelter under a rock.
Al came up next and Allyn put some tension on the rope so that the lower Jumar would slide up the rope as well as the upper one. When Allyn tried to come up, the rope was slack and neither he nor Al could see how to use the thumb to hold the lower ratchet clear away from the rope to slide the lower Jumar as I do routinely. Al had to instruct Allyn in tying a Prusik sling that would support him under the arms while he wrestled with the Jumar with both hands. From my position high up in the chute, I couldn't see what was taking them so long. I decided to go on when they assured me that the problem was solved.
I found the women waiting for me to lead them back up the trail. Al and Allyn caught up with us when we were on the trail through the Supai and we all reached the car just before a real downpour. Wanda thought our hike more exhausting than her climb of Pikes Peak.
Boucher Canyon
[October 4, 1976 to October 5, 1976]
Al Schauffler camped with me at the campground and we went down the Boucher Trail leaving the car by 8:30 a.m. I was startled by how clear the trail has become over the years of frequent use. There was really no chance to lose it. The place where it gets down the upper Supai cliff is still rather a rock scramble, but now there is no question about keeping on the trail below. It contours immediately over west into the main draw and switchbacks through the old rockslide. Without hurrying, we got to the old camp in five and a half hours, counting time out for lunch. This compares favorably with my five hours and ten minutes also including time for lunch. On the way out the next day, I was by myself while Al was following the Tonto for a two day trip out via Indian Gardens. I was a bit discouraged when I noted that it took me almost seven and a half hours compared to my best time of old, five hours and 20 minutes. On that former occasion, I had no pack but it was after I had gone down to Hermit Rapid and had followed the base of the Tapeats from Hermit to Boucher, the same day.
I was puzzled when I couldn't walk right to the old Boucher rock cabin. I thought it would be on the south side of the creekbed that comes down to the left of the trail. Actually, it is on the north side of this bed, and the mine shaft isn't as far from the cabin as I had remembered. The thing I call a chicken house has no roof now, but the walls are still good. It is a bit bigger than I had thought and it is as large as some Indian ruins. A short man could lie down in it.
After resting for 20 minutes, Al and I started the real project, going up Boucher Canyon to try to get through the Redwall. This had been declared possible by one of my correspondents. The creek was flowing quite well right by the campground. Most of the water comes from the top of the Tapeats, but there are places where it is running higher also. There were rainpools in the Redwall, and all along the bed one could see signs of a very recent small flood. I recognized the place where I had turned back before, where the shale forms a bedrock ledge clear across the bed. This is a long way below the real Redwall.
There were two or three places where chockstones or falls have to be bypassed in the Redwall. We found cairns at the bottom and tops of a couple of places and bighorn signs including tracks were evident. Near the top there were a couple of very narrow places where the bed would make a sharp turn. If we hadn't seen the bighorn tracks and were the discoverers of the route, we would have sworn that we would be stuck. Some of the climbing on the bypasses made me think twice and I didn't mind having Al tell me where to put my feet.
At the upper end of the Redwall Gorge, the canyon widens from a spectacular narrows into a steep sided cone rich with vegetation. All in all, it is a really intriguing trip. We took two hours and ten minutes to get from the camp to the top of the Redwall, but some of this time was spent route finding. We got back considerably faster, in time to make camp and cook by the last light. I was really ready to stop after nearly nine hours on the go.
The night was pleasant although there were a few mice. Al copes with this problem by hanging his pack a few feet above ground and spreading some grain around on the ground beneath. He thinks there were more than a dozen mice at once around him, but I didn't notice them. I hung my pack in a different place.
Comanche Creek
[October 7, 1976 to October 8, 1976]
Ken Walters and I had seen that bighorns and deer can come down the ravine northeast of Comanche Point through the Redwall. I wanted to complete this route from the rim to the river, which would make the 95th for me between Lee's Ferry and Pearce Ferry. Al Schauffler came to the campground rather late on Wednesday and we were at the permit desk early Thursday morning. He left his car at Moran Point since he wanted to fill in his gap along the river from Tanner to the Hance Trail and come out a day after me.
The weather was ideal and the trail is in fine shape. Al carries a monstrous pack but he never asked for a rest. With my 21 pounds or so, I had no trouble walking right down to the river in less than three and a half hours. The present sign calling the distance 14 miles is surely an exaggeration. Al had read Grand Canyon Treks rather carefully and he was interested in having me point out where one leaves the trail to take the Cardenas Unkar Route, where the old Tanner Trail comes in from Cedar Mountain, where the priest was killed, and where you can see the Cardenas Natural Bridge. I also pointed out where Treiber and Grubb climbed the tower below Comanche Point. There is a lot to see from the Tanner Trail including the towers to the north across the river.
We ate an early lunch at the overhang near the cliff at the bend in the river. It seems to be a popular campsite big enough to shelter a couple of beds. Al had used it quite recently on a trek when he encountered a bighorn sheep on the Tanner Trail. He also knew all about pack rats at this site.
We started on for the main project by 12:15 following a dim trail that hikers have made along a route about halfway to the top of the cliff upriver from the camp. When we were past the cliff section, we followed the other hikers and walked near the upper part of the vegetation. We started up the bed of Comanche Creek for a short way before I remembered to go back and fill my canteen in the river. This wasted perhaps 10 minutes, but I was glad to have a full canteen since the afternoon was quite warm.
At the place where the creekbed swings to the south, we left it and went up a minor bed that goes straight toward the narrows in the lava. This was a mistake. We could have gone down into the main bed again, but the temptation was to conserve our altitude and try to get along a bench below the top of the lava and come out at the top of the narrows. We not only passed by a place where we could have gone down into the main bed but we also passed a break where we could have gone to the top of the lava. Al was able to come down the basalt into the main bed right at the narrows but I had to back up and go through the break above. While I was doing this, he was walking up the bed. Here he got a fine view of a bighorn ram and an ewe leaping from stance to stance across the face of the cliff above him. They went out to a platform at the end of the promontory and then returned the same way, proving that bighorns don't have all their routes memorized. We saw fresh droppings all the way up the canyon.
We noted the landslide and mud slide areas that Phil Schafer had used for his talk at the symposium. They didn't impress me as being so unusual as he regarded them. I recalled where we should leave the main bed of Comanche Creek and follow the arm to the southwest. There were great drops in the shale and a couple of bypasses weren't easy, steep shale slopes with rocks showing in the mud. For a long way near the end, we were on a simple consolidated landslide to the west of the bed. We had to go clear to the base of the Redwall and descend there, but we made it.
Evans Butte
[October 11, 1976]
I already knew how to go from the Point Sublime Road to the Tuna Flint Saddle, so I figured that it wouldn't be too hard to reach the top of Evans Butte, rather a recent name for the highest end of the Sagittarius Ridge. I drove to the North Rim by myself Sunday afternoon while Roma was going back to Sun City.
After an early dinner at Jacob's Lake, I drove south into the park and found the Point Sublime Road open. Until then I hadn't decided whether to do the hike to Manu Temple or the one to Evans Butte first. The Point Sublime Road had a few puddles of standing water, but there was never any danger of getting stuck in the mud. All places are surfaced with broken rock, but there are some terrific bumps. When I stopped at the sign for Kanabownits Spring, I couldn't start the Jimmy. I raised the hood and put the battery back where it should be. It had been thrown off its stand and had been leaking acid. The motor started immediately and I tried to tie the battery in place since there was no clamp to hold it. I went on out to the old campsite near the end of the road and spent the night. In the morning I had no difficulty in starting, and I parked at the first space off the road where you enter the valley.
It took about 45 minutes for me to up down up and south to the place to leave the rim. There was a cairn of three large rocks at the head of a deer trail. When I came down to the Toroweap, I figured I should go still farther south to get through it. When I returned, I found a better break with a deer trail right above the simple way through the Coconino, but you do have to go quite a bit south of here to get through the Kaibab. The trail was clear to the top of the Supai and the bypasses of falls in the latter were simple, with alternatives. I reached the saddle in about two hours from the car.
The old cairn indicating a route towards Flint is still there. I proceeded along the ledges at this level without dropping down to the Redwall. There were some short stretches of easy progress, but mostly one walks around and between rocks and past brush. I was surprised to find two more cairns in the next half mile. When I finally reached the base of Evans Butte, I could see that there would be a slight problem in route finding. After taking a drink, I put down my lunch and canteen and went on with only the camera. There were no tough pitches. At the top I doubled back and went up the final pitch at the east end of the mesa. It is not a climber's challenge, but the views were exceptional. I took pictures in all directions, toward Arthur, the Holy Grail, Wheeler Point, and the South Rim. The sight of the river itself to the southwest was great.
I had no problems with my feet or physical condition, but on the way back I began to think that I should try harder to get a companion or two. The story of Pederson's sudden death of a heart attack was on my mind. A companion can't do you any good, but getting the body out is far simpler if there is a witness. Anyway, I seem to be getting less independent.
I had about decided to go home after this success in climbing my 76th Grand Canyon summit, and then the car decided the issue. The battery was shot. A friendly tourist got me started with jumper cables, and I drove straight to Jacob's Lake where I had to buy a new battery for such a price that I figured I had better come home before I went broke.
North Rim trip and Bundy tales
[November 10, 1976 to November 14, 1976]
I got away from Sun City so early that I didn't eat breakfast at home. It seemed just as easy to drive to Saint George, Utah, around the west of Lake Mead as through Page, so I went to the west on the way north and came back by the other route to see friends. The whole drive is most interesting. I was surprised when I first realized that Joshua Trees grow so close to Wickenberg. The new bridge across Burro Creek is a high one, but one is likely to cross it so fast that he doesn't see much of the canyon. The old winding road down and up was more scenic. The ranger at the Lake Mead Visitors Center advised going along the lake through Overton rather than through Las Vegas, and I was glad to see the lake and the rough country again. I stopped briefly at the picnic area called the Bowl of Fire, an outlier of Valley of Fire State Park. Another experience was the freeway through the Virgin River Canyon. The old highway went north around the range, but the freeway manages to follow the river right through the 1000 foot canyon.
It had taken eight hours to get from Sun City to Saint George. After a late lunch at a restaurant, I headed south. The road out of the Virgin Valley up the grade in Quail Canyon was a bit rocky and slow, and the entire route in Arizona was very dusty this time. About 48 miles south of Saint George, I took the road southwest at the fork to get to Mount Dellenbaugh. After opening and closing the two gates, about 35 miles past the fork, I was stopped by a padlocked gate and a No Trespassing sign. I drove back to a fork and started down a secondary road to the southwest with the idea that perhaps I could get to Mount Dellenbaugh and down on the Shivwits Plateau by a roundabout way. If I had the right maps, I would have continued, but after three miles of driving in this direction, I gave up for fear it was a wild goose chase and I would run out of gas without getting to do anything significant. I went back to the fork in the main road and continued the 12 miles to the Mount Trumbull schoolhouse, where I parked and got supper to stay all night.
Ed Bundy and another man came over from their ranch to investigate, and during our conversation, I learned that Pat Bundy was living about a mile to the east.
In the morning I drove over to Pat's place and had a two hour visit with him. I heard again the story of his trip with Chet Bundy and Floyd Iverson down the river to bury the body of Floyd's nephew who had drowned. A point that I had not remembered clearly from Chet's letter to Marston was that their boat hadn't got clear away from them at Separation Rapid, but it had been badly damaged when they had tried to float it through the rapid empty. They were also quite short of food. They stashed the boat and came out finally finding the arm of Separation Canyon that would go. They found Kelly Seep and Pat said that it was back in a tunnel. He indicated that it shouldn't be hidden by the present Castle Tank. He talked as if they were not as hard up for water as for food. After getting the word about a cabin with some jerky in it from two mounted ranchers, they missed the shack, but later they came to a ranch with no one around although there was a freshly baked pan of biscuits. They helped themselves and left a note and walked home on the plateau. This was in 1929 and in 1931 they went back to repair the boat and take it downriver and out. A rock had rolled down and punched a big hole in the metal boat, so they went home on foot. This time they walked down to 209 Mile Canyon along the river and came back the same way with minor variations.
Pat passed along someone's suspicion that the bride and groom had walked out Peach Springs Wash so that the groom's farther could collect a lot of insurance money.
A real goody from Pat was the information that one can climb the canyon wall almost directly opposite the Whitmore Trail and get out on the Esplanade to the Ridenour Mine. He and two other men got high up there and returned after shooting a bighorn sheep. The most exciting thing that happened to that party was that the boat sank just before it got to the north bank, a wetting for all. Pat also told me about getting a flock of sheep along the river from Parashant Canyon to the Whitmore Trail. In answer to my question, he expressed the belief that the trail from the river a mile below the Whitmore Trail up to Cane Spring was built by men working for old Nutter, who wanted to bring cattle across the river from the south. He figured that cattle could get down to the river from the south, perhaps through Mile 192 Canyon.
Pat also told me about driving a Jeep from the Whitmore Road over to Vulcan's Throne. The roads indicated on the new map don't join, but Pat got through. When another man tried to repeat the project, he tore up the transmission in his Jeep and John Riffy had to pull him out behind a bulldozer. Pat also told about getting down to the river upstream from the Lava Trail via the old mine west of Cove Canyon. He reported a pit or cave at the mine that seemed to have a lot of good ore showing. John Riffy didn't back up this report. Pat and a friend had gone downriver and out the Lava Trail. One of Pat's most interesting stories was about a gang who cut a lot of cordwood in the mountains north of the Cove. They packed the wood down and dropped it off the rim of the Esplanade. They wanted it to float down to Needles where they would bring it to shore and sell it. There was no indication how far this plan went, but Riffy confirmed that you can still find cordwood part way down the mountain.
After this I drove to the head of the Whitmore Trail, only 900 feet above the river. Pat had told me that there are some Indian ruins to the west of the base of the trail, and I wanted to find them. They tie in with what Powell said about his trip to the river with the human pickle as his guide. As I reread Powell, I figured that they took the horses from where the present road ends around to the west past the cirque. They couldn't get the horses past the narrow ledge above the cirque. Then they got down into the cirque by the light of their torches. In the morning they found the ruins over near the present trail and went up there. Pat said that before he and his friends had made it into a horse trail, this route had been an Indian path with rock piles for steps. I hiked down to the river all right and studied the wall across the way. I figured that I can repeat Pat's climb up to the Esplanade some day. I also found what is left of the ruins, very little, but I saw bits of potsherds and charcoal. I was going on downriver and out via the scramble on the south side of the cirque but some chest pain around my heart made me wonder. I went directly back to the car taking about 40 minutes to go up the trail. I quit worrying about a heart attack when I recalled a lurch I had taken while camping at the school house. I had banged my chest against the edge of the back seat and had bruised my chest.
On Friday I drove back up the road, in four wheel drive part of the way. I parked due east of the cinder cone and went up the lava flow to the Esplanade. Some of the walking was slow over rough lava blocks, but most of it was a lot easier then walking the usual Supai surface with so many little canyons to cross. I hadn't studied the map well enough to know where the road is, but I got well past the fence marking the park boundary. About the time I figured I should turn back, I went out on a point about the time I figured I should turn back. I was south of the promontory that bounds Tuweap Valley on the west. I should have used another half hour to go farther east, and then with what I did two days later, I would have connected a route from Tuweap Valley to Whitmore Canyon. When I was getting back near Whitmore on the return on Friday, I saw that I had a lot of extra time and I went out to the south on the long promontory overlooking the river just east of Whitmore. On the way I passed a shelter cave with bits of charcoal. On this hike I saw numerous bighorn tracks and droppings, but the only actual animals were cottontail rabbits, one jackrabbit, and one coyote. I noted the trail, not shown on the map, that connects a road high up in the Cove with the road going across the lava from the Whitmore Road.
I had a hard time deciding what I would do on Saturday. There were indications that the weather might be changing and I considered getting out of the area before the road got bad. But I decided to take a chance and try the thing I had most wanted to do, get down Billingsley's dike southeast of Lone Mountain. I had talked to Orville Bundy on the road south from Saint George and he had said that the road west from the cinder cone was now in worse shape than it was last March. Hence I parked just a bit beyond the line shack and began walking the road about 7:35 a.m. In an hour and seven minutes I had reached the improved water holes that have some plastic tubing nearby. This time I noticed that there are two of these with cement dams only about 100 yards apart. They both were holding water, the only supply that I saw all day. I had the relevant maps along and had no trouble finding the trail down the fault cliff, about a two and a quarter hour walk from the line shack. It took about two hours to go from there to the edge of the Esplanade at the volcanic dike. There are so many little canyons cutting down through the Supai that it pays to keep fairly well north and then cut south to the rim. I came to the rim a bit too far east but I soon found the impossible dike ravine and then the break in the Supai where I had gone down last March.
I had brought my overnight pack with the expectation of spending the night at the river, but it was only 1:00 p.m. when I finished eating at the rim, so I just went down with my canteen and camera. As Billingsley had told me, I turned east this time at the foot of the Supai break and got into the broader ravine there. There were about three places where chockstones or small drops in the bedrock of the bed forced me to look for a bypass. At a couple of these places I had to face in and look for toeholds, but they weren't too bad. Down where the east ravine I was in joined the one I tried last March, I would have had trouble getting down to the bed, but it was easy to go around a point to the east and walk down in a short ravine over there. I had overrun what I had figured would be my time allowance by 15 minutes when I reached the place I had been coming up from the river last March. I came back to the rim in slightly less time than it had taken me to get down. By this time I knew that I couldn't count on getting to the road much before dark, and my canteen was so nearly empty that I would have a bad night if I didn't reach the water holes. At one point along the way back, it started to rain when I was near an overhang. I spread out my plastic sheet to catch water and began smoothing a place to sleep under the shelter. It didn't rain enough to mean anything and I went on. I was walking in the dark from the rim to the road. I used my flashlight sparingly for fear that it might give out, but I got to the water just 12 hours after I had left the car.
I had a good dinner and slept an hour or so. Then I woke up because of the bumps under my ensolite pad. Furthermore, a mouse and a mosquito combined to keep me awake. About 12:30 a.m., I got up and walked to the car where I got some good sleep in the Jimmy on my air mattress.
On Sunday I stopped the car and shaved at a metal cattle tank fed by clean water from a pipe and then drove on out of Paw's Pocket to have another short visit with Pat Bundy. I was pleased by the interesting drive up past the Hurricane Fault and through the forest south of Mount Trumbull and down into Toroweap Valley. After lunch at the last fork in the road out to the Toroweap Overlook, I took a hike to where I had slept along the road to Cove Canyon and a loop hike when I couldn't make up my mind about the weather. When it seemed to be getting settled for a fairly dry afternoon, I hiked to the top of Vulcan's Throne to reach my 77th Grand Canyon named Summit and then set out to go west to where I had been two days before. I turned back about 20 minutes short of this goal. It was a good thing too, because for the last 15 minutes before reaching the car, I was feeling sickish from having eaten too much tuna for lunch. A couple of Tums fixed me up, and I was soon able to eat a modest dinner.
After dark I went to the Riffys. They invited me in and we enjoyed a visit of two and a half hours. John and Mary Beth are nice people. About 9:00 p.m. I left and in less than five minutes I was driving through a pelting rain and snowstorm. Before long there were puddles but no deep mud. By 10:30 I was ten miles south of the paved highway and the sky was clear. The night was cold and I was glad to get into both sleeping bags.
On Monday morning I turned off the Kanab Page road at Glen Canyon City and drove the 13 miles to the Warm Creek arm. The last four miles of road go down the bed of a canyon and the route is very scenic. I took a bath in the lake with no one around. Then I went to Page and found where the Dotys live. Alan and Jane were in Flagstaff for the day to check on Alan's eye which was infected. After dinner at the Empire House Restaurant, I looked up the Finicums and had a fine evening visiting with them. In the morning I heard from Al Doty about his first ascent of Hancock Butte after giving up the ascent of Sullivan Peak.
I visited some more friends in Flagstaff on the way home, especially George Billingsley who showed me color slides he had taken from a helicopter in the western Grand Canyon.
I left out all mention of a minor loop hike that I took Thursday afternoon. It was from the parking at the head of the Whitmore Trail west to the canyon coming down from the cinder cone. I saw the cowpath across this gulch and then went up the canyon and climbed up the Redwall at its contact with the lava on the east side. The return from the highest point of the Redwall here was mostly on the road.
During my four days of walking I had done two more Redwall routes, another way from the rim to the river, and one more Grand Canyon named summit.
Western Grand Canyon
[January 24, 1977 to January 29, 1977]
Steve Fulmer went with me leaving about 7:30 a.m. We had some worry about the Jimmy 25 miles from Kingman. The motor bucked and surged and then would stop even while idling. We finally got to town and saw a Toyota GMC garage from the off ramp. The foreman knew at once what was wrong, a clogged filter in the fuel pump. He had it done by the time we were eating at the nearby Denny's.
As soon as we approached the lake, I could see that the level is up at least 10 feet since last year. The lake showed a slow current in the canyon, but the water was clear as far up as we got, to Jackson Canyon at Mile 257. One could plane along without thinking about the mud bars we ran into last year.
I decided to moor the boat at the mouth of Pearce Canyon so that I would have the experience of walking up the bed all the way from the lake. We reached the place to tie up early enough to take nearly an hour for an inspection of the old Pearce Ferry Road. Snap Canyon Wash is only a little farther west, and the road follows the high ground between the two washes. We saw wheel tracks showing that it still gets some use. Another old road that is used more now than some years ago is the one coming to the lake from the west just south of Iceberg Canyon. When we came back down the lake on Friday, there were a number of recreational vehicles parked at its end.
On Tuesday Steve and I got out and started up the wash by 7:40 a.m. In 15 minutes I realized that the day might turn wet, and I had left my poncho in the boat. I went back for it while Steve walked on slowly. I left the boat the second time a little after 8:00 and caught up with Steve before we were even with the impressive butte of red sandstone on the south side above the bed. Jorgen and Ed had thought that it is just as easy to walk from the lake up the bed as it is to come from the cove over the hills down into the bed, but from our timing, it seemed longer the way Steve and I were doing it. However, this may have been because I was slowing down for Steve. I thought we might be at the place in the bed where we had reached it two years ago before we came to the actual place, but when we did come to the right place, I recognized it for sure.
There was water as before in the holes on the bare rocks about 10 minutes of walking time east of the mouth of the big tributary from the south, the one that drains the mysterious bowl. There were also lots of burro droppings in the bed this time, and we saw six or more but were not close enough to make a good picture. We ate our lunch a bit early when we came to the fork in the main canyon where there is a shelter cave. The weather had not become worse and we even had some sunshine on us as we ate.
After lunch, Steve excused himself from going further while I started up the north fork. Two years ago, Visbak, Herrman, and Belknap had gone up here and had come down into the main canyon by going south over a saddle. I immediately had to do a bit of climbing to get past a smooth fall. Very soon I saw the waterholes that the others had reported. They are deep enough to hold water for the entire cool season. To pass one of these, I arched my back with my feet on one wall and my hands on the other. There was a chockstone where I might have crawled up somehow after putting my pack and canteen up ahead, but I preferred using a bypass to the north where the Redwall was broken and rough.
I didn't feel sure about where I should leave the bed to go up and down into the main south fork. Passing by one ravine up to the south, I started up when I had been away from the lunch site nearly an hour. For a time I wondered whether it would be easy to get up the last cliff to the top of the Supai, but I found two good ways. I got out on top to the north of the saddle. It would be easy to walk from here to the road going to Fort Garrett, but I preferred to climb to the top of the mesa south of the saddle. There was also no problem at all in going down the open slope from the saddle to the bed of the main fork of Pearce Canyon via the open tributary south of the bed which is in line with the route I was using. I regretted not having time to get out on top of the Sanup Plateau to the east of the great sinkhole bowl. Grist for another trip. Going up the main bed and then going north or south using these fault valleys is the most efficient way to climb out of Pearce. I found bighorn droppings to the north of the saddle. Perhaps they go down to water in the north fork because this seems to be the best supply in all of Pearce.
I needed just under three hours to go from the lunch site up the north fork, over into the main fork, and then back to the lunch site. It took me about three hours to walk from there to the boat, arriving just after 6:00 p.m.
In getting away Wednesday morning, I started the motor too soon and hit a rock ledge with the prop. Fortunately, it wasn't bad and there was no new vibration. We followed the landmarks fairly well as we cruised up the canyon. I showed Steve Rampart Cave, Columbine Falls, and Muav Cave. He was able to keep us straight on the mileages with the Belknap Guide. I looked into Tincanebitts and then turned back to tie up at the mouth of Dry Canyon. I didn't have any strong hopes of getting up through the Redwall in it, but I thought that a canyon that big should be checked.
Steve and I left the boat about 8:45 a.m. We had a terrible time getting past the tamarisk jungle growing on the silted delta. The slope on the east of the mud flat is steep and hard to walk on. We tried the edge of the jungle for short stretches and then went up on the slope again. It took us 45 minutes to reach the open wash above the jungle, but I did this in 35 minutes when I returned by myself. We ate lunch where the main canyon goes to the east and then north. Again Steve had walked as far as he wanted to while I went on up the canyon about the same distance that we had been together. I saw no animal footprints. The absence of deer and bighorn gave me the idea that there is no way out, so I wasn't surprised when I was stopped by a big chockstone at the top of a dry fall. It was a little surprising that I had been able to get this high, into the upper fourth of the Redwall.
I got back quite early. At the upper end of the mud flat, I walked up on the terrace to the east and found the only evidence of Indian occupation I had seen all day, a large and well built mescal pit.
After two good days of walking, I figured I would take it easy on Thursday and stay with Steve. I thought he would like to see the evidence of gardening at Quartermaster Spring. I should have tied the boat west of the mouth where one can walk up the slope and get into the bed above the big fall, but I saw a clean place to moor on the east side of the delta. Getting south there was rough and when we went higher, it was still rougher. Steve was afraid that the knee which has had surgery might give out, and we returned to the boat without reaching my destination.
After lunch we cruised past Burnt Canyon. We were intrigued by the picture taken from Triumphal Arch that appears in the Belknap Guide. I thought it might be visible if we went into Jackson Canyon. When we moored at the west edge of the tamarisk jungle delta, we soon saw that we should have to do some cliff scaling. We moved downriver to a minor ravine where we could land and easily pass the jungle and walk up to where we could look into Jackson Canyon. We spent about two hours going up here and back but we didn't see the hundred foot high arch. Perhaps it is on the other side of the river. We moved the boat to Burnt Canyon and had time to kill.
Thursday was special in that a boat came buzzing along up the canyon. The four sightseers didn't camp because we saw them returning in the afternoon.
Friday was supposed to be my biggest day. Last year Bruce Braly and I had proved that we could go up the west arm of Burnt Canyon and get out above the Redwall. I got the impression from something that George Beck had said that there would be a still better chance of getting up on the plateau through the east fork. Steve agreed that he wouldn't try to keep up, and I would start early. Steve was intrigued with the stone shack, or the two room apartment as he called it, counting the ramada as the second room.
We had a peculiar accident about 11:00 p.m. Thursday night while we were tied to shore with two ropes and had our anchor out on the other side as well. Both of us were awakened out of a deep sleep by a big thump that shook the whole boat. The next day we tried to explain it as caused by a convulsive kick that one of us had done in his sleep, but when I got the boat out of the water, I found a new dent in the hull. Perhaps the boat had been resting on some mud that was covering a rock ledge. The mud may have slipped away letting the hull down hard on the rock.
I got started before it was fully light, about 6:50 a.m., and found that the walking past the tamarisk jungle is very easy in Burnt Canyon. In fact there is a vague trail along the not so steep slope above the jungle all the way back to the open wash. It took me 130 minutes to reach the fork in the canyon. I stopped long enough to inspect the seep spring and I saw that someone had built a clay dam to catch the water. There was only a small rim of clay left, and the water wasn't flowing well enough to fill such a pool anyway. There was a small pool back in a little cave where the seep comes out. I checked the terrace with a lot of charcoal mixed with the soil and the mescal pit on a higher terrace just north of here.
The map I carried in my hand kept me fairly well oriented as I walked up the east fork. Tributaries were interesting, but they offered no egress. This east arm forks again as one reaches the Redwall. These branches are actually impressive with very narrow spooky channels. I followed the north branch first and succeeded in getting past a couple of head high chockstones before coming to a big fall that was impossible for me. It was the same story in the other branch except that there was a little water running out of the sand into a small pool. South of this junction, on the east side was a small seep with some fern. I also went up to inspect a vertical, overhanging slot on the left a few hundred yards south of this junction. I was back so soon, in three hours, that we moved the boat to Sandy Point for camping. On the road up from the launching ramp, Steve called my attention to two bighorn ewes. They were the first I have seen from a car in the US.
Western Grand Canyon
[March 12, 1977 to March 19, 1977]
Jorgen Visbak met me a little after noon at the turnoff to Dolan Springs and we proceeded to Meadview. He left his car near the ranger's home. We talked to Mrs. Heddin since her husband was away. She told us that the lake had fallen a couple of feet to 1191 and that they would stabilize it at about 1189. I also learned from a man near the ranger office that the level fluctuates a lot at the mouth of Separation according to the volume coming down the river. The motor worked fine and we got from South Cove to Separation in less than two hours. We had time enough to do some scouting for a route up on the Tonto to the east of Separation. Jorgen showed more nerve than I in climbing the cliff right near the river, but he didn't make the top, and he agreed that he wouldn't want to carry his pack up the way he had climbed. I gave up this effort and went farther upstream along the bed of Separation. About a third of a mile from the river, I noted a talus and a broken area above. There was a notch in the Tapeats at the top and I thought from what I could see that the route was about 99% sure.
The water rose a lot Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I fastened the boat by three ropes, one at the bow and two attached to the stern to hold it a right angles to the shore. I thought that at least a considerable portion of the hull would remain in the water.
We found my route to the Tonto quite feasible even with packs although we did have to do some switching back and forth. Immediately we needed to go over a ridge and across quite a deep draw. It was not much of a detour, but going down and up again was tiring. Not long afterwards we came to something very much like a cairn and a faint trail. Jorgen soon spotted the site of Bridge Canyon City and we noted several places where one could descend to the river on the south side. There also seemed to be more water in the ravines over there.
We had the seven and a half minute quad maps and kept our bearings very well. When we were on the rim of the tributary opposite 237 Mile Canyon we found about a hundred feet of half inch steel cable. There were also some boards and wire that had formed survey markers. Jorgen spotted an old trail switching down to the river in the west arm of the canyon at Mile 237, on our side of the river. The trail starts down midway between the two arms and the first few yards are hard to recognize. The faint trail continued along the edge of the Tonto only a little farther. We soon came to another split canyon where the western arm seemed to offer a good way to the river, but we didn't want to stop and investigate it at this time. We hoped to camp at the river considerably past Gneiss so that it would be possible to reach Mile 225 the following evening.
We at a late lunch on the rim above the big north side canyon opposite Gneiss. Jorgen pointed to where their boat had lodged near the south shore just above the rapid. The river level seemed to be fairly high Sunday forenoon. Mile 237 Rapid didn't seem like much and the rock near the middle of the river in the next rapid upstream was covered. Gneiss Rapid still seemed impressive. From where we ate, we observed a route down to the lower part of Gneiss Canyon North that would probably bypass any fall in the bed. We couldn't see the lowest part of this route. We went back about a half mile from the river to get to the bed of Gneiss Canyon North and then we could get up the other side quite handily although with a lot of effort. Our packs contained food for six days and the descent must have been around 500 feet. When we reached the canyon opposite Bridge, our side of the river was cut up and rougher than it had ever been, and the walking that we could see ahead would be slow and precarious along a steep slope. We had a feeling that there would be few ways to the river for hours. We both felt it smart to retreat and get to the south of Gneiss Canyon North for the night. The way down was harder to find when we were looking straight down on it and near the bottom it was quite a puzzle. However, we were able to get to the bed, and we were lucky that it got us down right below the foot of a fall in the bed that had no obvious bypass. Before we went on to the river, I noted a chute that seemed to go up to the west rim of Gneiss Canyon North, if only we could get up the first 80 feet where there were some falls. I used some hand and toe climbing and checked this place before we went on to the river.
I recall that in June, 1966, I tried to land and walk past Gneiss Rapid but I couldn't get to the north shore in time. The curving rapid still looked impressive and I was not surprised that in 1966 I lost my zeal to float on down the river indefinitely. I didn't relish another rapid in that cold water and I got out on the left at the first beach below Gneiss.
When we were walking the Tonto on Sunday, Jorgen not only pointed to Bridge Canyon City, but he showed me the bridge in Bridge Canyon. It looked better from a distance than it did close up. I showed him the place I had waited for 24 hours on the south bank and we noted the trail system there and the terrace for a tent.
Jorgen and I had fine campfires every night except for the rainy Wednesday evening that we spent in the boat. The beach at Gneiss Rapid was especially fine for that and we thought that the Granite Gorge along here is second to none for scenery. Our morning starts ranged from 7:35 to 8:00 a.m. We were starting away from camp on Monday about 7:45. The chute up to the west rim of Gneiss Canyon North was a simple scramble after the hand and toe hold bypass near the bottom. We left our gear except for canteens and lunch on the Tonto at the head of the chute and proceeded to explore upper Gneiss North. Separation Canyon really doesn't fit Powell's description of the place where the Howlands and Dunn left the party, and we wondered whether it would be possible to walk out of Gneiss North. We got into the bed at the first deep draw going in from the west. For a long way the grade was minor and walking was easy. At the contact of the shale and the Muav, we found a spring which had several drips and one steady stream about as big as a drinking straw.
At what may have been the lowest of the Devonian Limestone, we were stopped by a narrow slot with a deep waterhole. One could swim this and crawl out at the other end, but we didn't care for the cold water. We tried crawling along a narrow ledge on the east wall. We spent a long time here trying to decide what to do. Jorgen went farther along the ledge, but I climbed up using some poor holds and looked around the next corner. There was positively no future in this because of another fall crowned by a chockstone. Then when I tried to come back the way I had gone up, I found it hard and dangerous. Even after Jorgen took my pack, I didn't care to come down the way I had gone up. Finally, I disrobed and prepared to swim while I was handing my shoes to Jorgen, we got the idea that he could pull me up one place and I would be able to do the rest, and this is how I got back without wetting. Then we found a fairly good and simple hand and toe climb on the east to bypass this narrow gorge. Bighorn sheep droppings along here encouraged us to think that the canyon might allow us up through the Redwall. After another one and a half hours of steeper scrambling over large rocks in the bed, we came to a fork and chose the west side which seemed to offer the best chance of further progress. Here we were finally stopped dead by a high sheer fall near the base of the Redwall. Then we checked the other arm and it stopped us even sooner. We concluded that Gneiss North is not a canyon where anyone has gone out to the North Rim. On the return, we filled our containers at the swimming hole in the narrows and slept on the Tonto where we had first come up. That night I was glad to have my down bag supplemented by quilted Dacron underwear.
On Tuesday we felt that we could set a leisurely pace and do a couple of side trips on our way back to the mouth of Separation Canyon. The chute we figured we could descend comes to the river at Mile 236.8. We had had some difficulty in getting past a steep rubble ridge in the west fork of this canyon, and now that we wanted to go down it to the river, we carried our packs down below the hard place. Bedrock showed in a few places in this canyon, but the bypasses were easy and obvious. The river was low by Tuesday afternoon and the rock that had been covered when we passed on Sunday was now three feet out of the water. Rocks were visible on the south side of the river fairly near the surface, so the best channel is north of the central rock. This nameless rapid was much more impressive than Mile 237 Rapid farther downstream.
Shortly after we got back on the Tonto we found the trace of a trail. We soon recognized the trail below the Tapeats that goes down to Mile 237 Rapid, but we had a bit of doubt as to where to leave the rim. There must have been a trail here good enough for pack burros, but now you just scramble down among the cracks in the rim until you find the real trail at the bottom of the Tapeats. By careful attention we could follow the trail to where the wash leveled out near the river, and then the trail seemed to stay to the west of the bed. When we started back we missed the part of the trail where it leaves the bed to ascend the west facing slope, but we caught it higher up and no time was lost.
We had no trouble identifying the break in the Tapeats rim above Separation Canyon but I suppose we should have built a cairn to mark it. I became confused about the best way down after turning to the north as we both remembered it. Jorgen got ahead here by keeping to our original route.
When we came in sight of the boat, we saw that the river had fallen so far that the boat was perched at a 35 degree angle high and dry except that about two feet of the stern was still in the water. A ski rope that I had used to tie the bow to a stout tamarisk had broken and the boat had slide a foot or two until the skeg had jabbed into the mud and sand where the bottom leveled out somewhat. We assumed that the water would rise in the morning and that the boat would float properly. Fortunately, the river did not rise in the night, and I had plenty of time to consider what would happen when the water rose again. There were three orifices below the deck line near the stern and I began to worry that the water would fill the lower part of the hull through these holes before it would float the boat. I stopped up the gas tank overflow, the bilge pump hole, and the large vent for the bilge blower exhaust with adhesive tape. then when the river began to show signs of rising about 4:00 p.m., I dug sand and mud from beneath the forward part of the keel. Between us, Jorgen and I slid and pushed the boat down into the water long before the river rose appreciably. I noted that my adhesive tape was quite wet, and the bilge pump took out quite a lot of water even though we had needed only a few minutes to shove the boat into the water. I have the feeling if we had stayed away for the full six days, that we would have returned to find the boat more than half under water.
We were glad to get away from the small sandy beach at Separation. The day had become windy and we had sand in everything. We dropped down to the mouth of Spencer Canyon and found a good place to tie up. We could see by the waterlines on the sand that the fluctuation here is only about 18 inches. We could walk the wet sand over to a trail up into the tamarisk jungle and the trail took us over to the open streambed. We gathered wood for a campfire, but we didn't use it when the evening became rainy. Both of us slept on board.
When we were getting breakfast Thursday morning, a couple of small oar powered inflatables came by. We hadn't seen the others, but there were six of these boats in the party that was led by Kenton Grua.
It took us just less than two hours to carry our packs up past the flowing water in the bed of Spencer. Jorgen saw an overhang that would be some help in case of rain. When we walked up to it on the east side behind a thicket of mesquite, we saw smoke stains on the ceiling and an old tobacco can.
We left our gear except for food and water here and proceeded up the dry bed. Both of us had forgotten how much farther it is to the travertine promontory with the springs above on the west side. It took us about 15 minutes to reach this landmark. There was some water beneath the travertine cliff in two places. In the square numbered 2 in the Spencer Canyon Quad, a canyon comes in from the west. This looks from a distance as it if might be a route to the plateau above.
Billingsley had told me that they had come down to the bed of Spencer by a route between Hindu and Milkweed Canyons. This cliff looked so bad to Jorgen and me that we didn't think we could be at the junction yet and we didn't recognize Milkweed Canyon. The map indicates that Spencer continues upstream to the southeast and we proceeded in that direction.
We were coming close to our time to turn back but we could see the canyon changing character ahead. There was a big deposit of travertine on the south wall and soon we encountered fine vegetation and springs with the best pools we had seen in all of Spencer. When we came to the next fork we could see two impossible falls where Hindu comes over the Devonian Limestone. The other fork, probably called Spencer still, goes up more steeply in a narrow canyon. We would guess that this arm is blocked too. We got back to our packs and slept in the open after enjoying a fine fire.
On Friday we walked to the boat and then proceeded to the mooring at Mile 257.1 where Steve Fulmer and I had stopped and climbed to the Tonto. While we were going up the ravine, I came to a handkerchief that had caught on a catclaw and had been jerked out of my pocket on the previous occasion. Quite soon after we started west along the Tonto, we came to a faint trail. Burro signs were quite rare in this area. We wondered whether this was a man made trail. In the Triumphal Arch Canyon, the trail turned toward the arch, but we lost it before we got close to the actual climb.
From across the valley, I couldn't feel sure that we could get up all the lower cliffs below the arch, so I led Jorgen up the main stream bed and we climbed past the lower three cliffs before following the bench to the north. Well past the arch, there is a ravine that allows access to the upper bench. Then we had to jog south of the arch and do some climbing that seemed harder to me than to Jorgen. In fact, I might have balked if Jorgen hadn't been with me. The arch is quite high in the Devonian and you get a wonderful view over the whole area.
On the way down we saw several cairns besides the one at the back of the arch. They guided us to the short cuts in the lower cliff. We got to the boat and camped at Sandy Point.
Ninety four Mile Canyon and Redwall near Set
[April 25, 1977 to April 27, 1977]
Ever since I had seen a window in the Redwall rim southeast of the Tower of Set and had heard from Mike and Barbara Martin that the Redwall could be climbed from the south just east of Set, I had been eager to try reaching this area. It had been a long drag to get across the river to Bright Angel Creek and then walk to Trinity and beyond, so I was pleased to learn that one could get down from the Tonto Trail to the Colorado opposite 94 Mile Canyon. then I could cross the river on my small inflatable and proceed up through the Tapeats where I had spotted the break just east of the mouth of 94 Mile Canyon.
When I called Chuck Wider about this latest trip with Shafer in the Superstitions, I mentioned my ambitions in this region. He realized that I hadn't invited him, but he talked me into taking him. The idea was that he would come down to the campsite by the river at Mile 94 and then he should spend the day as he saw fit while I crossed the river to do my thing.
We left at 6:30 a.m. on Monday and stopped briefly in Flagstaff. I missed seeing Jim Ohlman and Bob Packard, but I visited with George Billingsley who told me of a recent helicopter trip with Jan Jensen to Separation Canyon. They found an Indian ruin, a mescal pit, and a reliable water hole in the tributary of the east arm above the Redwall.
After lunch at the Red Feather Lodge, we had to stall a bit waiting for the permit window to open at 1:00 p.m. Then Tim Manns got me interested in an amazing bit of Grand Canyon lore, the proposal to connect the two rims of the Grand Canyon by a series of aerial tramways. They would have stations on Hopi Point, Dana Butte, Tower of Set, Hours, and Osiris. According to a long account from Ed. K. Thodon who worked for the survey team in 1919, they had a camp on the top of the Redwall near the point to the southeast of the Tower of Set and quite a lot of their working time was spent in getting supplies to that isolated place. This was accomplished by mules to the south rim of the Inner gorge, and then they used a temporary tram system down to the river and up to the camp.
Chuck and I got started down the trail by 2:15 p.m. and made such slow time to the junction with the Waldron Trail that I got excited. I gave the map to Chuck suggesting that he camp at Hermit Campground or at Santa Maria Spring that night. Then he could go down and see Hermit Rapid the next day and get to the car on the third day. I doubled my pace as soon as I was alone. Before I came to the Cathedral Stairs, I overtook a group of young people who had volunteered to work on the trail from Hermit Camp to the river for two weeks. Their leader seemed to be a member of their organization, Bill Valentine, and a seasonal ranger, Bryan Culhane. They were all familiar with Grand Canyon Treks and seemed pleased to meet the author.
At the difficult place at the base of the Tapeats in the ravine to Mile 94, I stayed in the middle of the bed and had a bit of trouble finding safe hand and toe holds. I went down with my pack off, but on the return I came up with it on. I spent four hours on the descent from the head of the Hermit Trail. There were a few drops of rain, but not enough to get anything wet.
The fire under my soup was Sterno and I put the fireplace close to a large rock to cut the wind. There was some very short, sparse grass nearby, but I had no idea that the fire might spread. When I was going down to the river to wash up, I glanced back and saw that the fire had ignited the grass and had gone like a streak up into quite a thicket of mesquite including some large trees. There were so many dead limbs on the ground that the whole thing went up like a blast furnace. All I could think about doing was to pull my own gear out of danger from sparks and go around the area to see that the fire didn't follow the grass away from the area and up the canyon side. It took some lively work on my part to bat the flames out to keep them from crossing a natural fire break in the sand. I was quite sweaty when I saw that there was no danger of further spreading, so I enjoyed my dunking in the river. However, I was in a state of depression until I finally got to sleep at quite a late hour because of my carelessness in causing the needless destruction.
I woke up early, at 5:00 a.m., and by 5:45 I was off for the day. Everyone had said that the river was exceptionally low and I could see that they were right. I could paddle my little inflatable right across without having it drift downstream at all. Going up the first rocks above the river was about the hardest climb for the day, and it wasn't really hard either. I got about 100 feet above the river and then went slightly down until I was in the ravine with the Tapeats break at the top. There is no virtue in staying near the rim of the Tonto along here nor around into 94 Mile Canyon either since there is one ridge after another. I left my pack with the lunch on a saddle north of a rocky outcrop and went up the Redwall break with my canteen and camera. From a distance the way up looked sure fire until near the top of the Redwall. Then there seemed to be a sheer face with only a narrow vertical crack near the middle. I knew that the Martins are very good climbers, so I was prepared to be turned back at this place. However, when I saw a lot of bighorn sheep tracks and droppings, I was reassured. When I found a very rusty five gallon square oil can I was very sure that I would succeed. The crack in the cliff turned out to be a yard wide at the bottom and sloped back at an easy grade. There was even some trail construction near the top.
To look for the natural bridge, I knew that I didn't need to go out on the promontory next to the Redwall break. I climbed over a low saddle and hit the rim going east to the point above Trinity. It was disturbing that I couldn't find my bridge in going all the way to the point. Then I cut back staying farther from the edge where the walking was smooth. Very soon I came to an old camp marked by a rectangular row of rocks, an old rusty shovel, and a metal funnel for collecting smoke above a fire. There were also a couple of smooth boards that I took to be some sort of surveyor's equipment. When I got back to where I first encountered the rim, I went close again and was rewarded with finding the bridge, about 25 by 25 feet with a rather shallow and narrow rim of rocks over the top. I got pictures of all these points of interest including a close up of Set itself. I had been informed over the phone that recently someone climbed the Tower of Set, and I assume that they approached using the Redwall break I had. As I was getting back to my pack, I came on four hoofs and a few bones, all that was left of a small deer. I couldn't tell whether the predator was a cougar. Bighorn and deer droppings indicated plenty of use in this corridor and there was a good game trail along the Tonto around to the head of 94 Mile Canyon. I ate an early lunch where I had left my pack.
One needs to stay high, following the trail, to get to the head of the Tapeats gorge. As I went along, however, I did check the possibility of getting down to the bottom of 94 Mile Canyon through a couple of east side tributaries. They were impossible, but when I was going along the bed later, I saw a couple of places where the walls were broken and one could descend. I also noted, while going north to the head, that there were three places where broken slopes occur on the west side.
Not far above the bed of the minor, eastern fork near the head of the gorge, I noticed a small but deep mescal pit. When I went close for a better look, I saw a rock shelter beneath a thin projecting slab.
I went along the west rim until I was reasonably sure that there would be no drops in the bed of the Tapeats section. Walking was obvious and easy until I got into the igneous rock. Springs occur when the bed is mostly black and weathers with a rounded appearance. Soon thereafter I came to deep dry falls. The bypasses required some care and use of the hands, and I felt lucky that I didn't have to go back over my route up from the boat. I spent one and a half hours in the bed of 94 Mile Canyon by the time I reached the river. It was no trick to go east to where I had cached the boat and I got across to my duffel well before 4:00 p.m. with plenty of time to rest and read.
There were a few more raindrops a few times, but by bedtime the sky was clear and I slept well. It took me about 50 minutes to get up to the Tonto Trail and about five and a half hours to get to the car. This included a detour to look for inscribed names near the spring north of the trail at the base of the Coconino. I had thought that Roy Carpenter had said that there were two very old names, possibly about 1890, but the only one I saw was the name Al Rohrer and it had no date but looked rather fresh.
I hailed Chuck Wider when I was five minutes walking time behind him. He had spent the night above the junction of the Hermit Trail with the Tonto Trail. Strangely he didn't wait for me and walk out together. I was closing up and then I missed him. He said that he had gotten off the trail, but he joined me at the car while I was finishing my lunch.
The nine hours of walking on Tuesday seemed most rewarding since I connected two more places at the river with a route to the rim and had gone through the Redwall at my 151st break. I had reached another natural bridge and had found the evidence that they were really surveying for the cross canyon tram. Furthermore, I had seen another ruin and mescal pit and had found water and a route down through 94 Mile Canyon.
Ninety four Mile Creek to Crystal Creek
[May 19, 1977 to May 21, 1977]
On my way to the South Rim, I checked and found that Bob Packard was not at home but I had a short visit with George Billingsley at the museum. He surprised me by not seeming a bit sure that there was a route through the Redwall to the south side of the Ra Osiris Saddle. I had planned the trip on the basis that he had told me on April 25 that it would go.
I gave two hitch hiking couples a ride to the canyon from Flagstaff. They were surprised, and so was I, to learn that all four were from France. Two could talk passable English, but I didn't understand much of the lively conversation.
After lunch at the Red Feather and some conversation with the permit rangers, I took the shuttle bus to Hermit Rest. It was 3:00 p.m. when I started down the trail. I noticed that I walked the first 1.3 miles in 35 minutes instead of the 55 with Chuck Wider. I met several geology students from Western Washington S.C. coming out while I was going down. I felt like hurrying again and I missed seeing the old Four Mile Spring that has been dry ever since I have been along the Hermit Trail. Tom Davison confessed that he has never been able to find any trace of it. I usually see it plainly when I am coming out. The way to watch for it is to go around the shallow bay immediately north of Lookout Point. It is just around the corner beyond this bay and is marked by a bucket rammed down over the metal post that used to hold the sign for this spring. Since it has been dry for at least 30 years, they should have taken it off the map. On the return I noticed something along the Cathedral Stairs that I had never seen before, an old rusty strip of iron fastened to the rock that borders the trail. I couldn't guess the purpose.
In the Bright Angel Shale I was tempted to cut across to the pass where the Tonto Trail gives a view to the river, but I decided that the rough little ravines made it better to use the trail. In the ravine to mile 94 at the river, I changed my mind again about the difficulty at the bottom of the Tapeats. This time I went out of the bed to the west and followed the narrow ledge. I believe I'll do this consistently in the future. On the return I tried something new, going up beside the cliff to the west but closer to the bed than the regular way. After pushing my pack ahead in a bushy place, I gave up and used the regular way. This has the support of deer according to the droppings.
The girl at the permit window had warned me that the river might be a lot higher than I had seen it in April, and when I arrived a little before 7:00 p.m., I was impressed. It was up four or five inches from what it had been in April and if I wanted to cross I would have to go quite far upstream to avoid being swept into the rapid. However, in the morning it was down again to almost no current and I crossed as easily as on April 26th. I was expecting it to be high again by evening, but it didn't rise again.
There had been a little rain recently and I found a few places with water even before I came to the narrows where one needs to climb around the barrier falls. I also came to a place where I could climb out to the west just before this narrow place in the Archean rock. The bed turns east into the narrow place and a spur of schist juts out from the west wall here. A place or two near the top of the Tapeats were hard enough to make me build a couple of cairns so that I wouldn't miss them on the return.
At the top of the Tapeats I took a good look at the south side of the Ra Osiris Saddle and decided that I couldn't go up at either fault. I don't have a similar mental picture of the possible break southeast of Osiris, but I assume that it wouldn't go either. As an alternate hike, I decided to go along the Tonto and see whether I could reach the place I had been in 1966 along the rim of Crystal Creek. In doing this I found two mescal pits, one being very nearly obliterated. I didn't notice them on the return and I am not perfectly sure that they were near the crossing of the first side canyon west of 94 Mile Creek, but I think they were there rather than at the crossing of the one nearer Crystal. It took me four and a half hour to reach the rim of Crystal Creek from where I had cached the boat at 94 Mile Creek, and I had time to go out and look down at Hermit and Boucher Rapids. I duplicated Stanton's picture taken from right at the angle above the mouth of Crystal Creek, but I needed two 35 mm slides to cover his field. I had my lunch just before noon at the rim above Crystal and I was glad I had carried a gallon of water before I got back to the mouth of 94 Mile Creek.
There had been no breath of wind in the morning, but towards 2:00 p.m. the wind began to blow in real gusts so hard that I had to brace against it. I had not deflated the boat but had weighted it down with a couple of rocks. I worried some that the wind might be able to tip the boat over and then blow it away. When I got to where I had left it, it was safe, and there was also a surprise. Some boatman from O.A.R.S. Inc. had left a business card and a couple cans of beer. It was unfortunate that I don't drink beer or anything alcoholic. However, I wrote them a note when I got home thanking them for the sediment and the good wishes.
There was nothing exceptional about my walk out on Saturday. The day was not too hot, but I took six and a half hours to get to Hermit's Rest. This included time to visit with some of the hikers and eat for 25 minutes at Santa Maria Spring. I had come away from the river with only one quart of water and was glad to get a refill. When I was starting up the switchbacks west of Cope Butte, I saw a young couple closing the gap between us below me. I was thinking how I would excuse myself from keeping their pace on account of my age, but before long I saw that they were resting enough so that I was pulling away from them. I saw them about twice later, but after that they were so far behind that I never saw them again.
Lower Hance Canyon and Sockdolager Rapids
[May 22, 1977 to May 23, 1977]
I wanted to go out to Fossil Bay and see whether I could get down through the Supai in Specter and at the head of Fossil Creek, but the rangers told me that the Indians don't allow walking out on Great Thumb Mesa and I didn't feel like walking the Esplanade from Apache Point. I'll wait until they soften this rule. As an alternate, I decided to go down to the foot of Sockdolager Rapid and try to make my way along the wall to the mouth of Hance Canyon as Jon Thomas had done. I got my permit on Saturday and started early on Sunday.
Something that occurred to me was that the new part of the Grandview Trail is a little scary. I feel sure that a loaded pack horse couldn't get by a couple of narrow places. The rangers who get nervous about letting hikers go to remote areas should remember that they let anyone go down this rather risky trail. I met several backpackers coming up the trail. They had spent the night on Horseshoe Mesa and had carried water up from the spring. They were from Tuba City and knew Doug Shough.
I got down to Horseshoe Mesa in about the usual time, but when I started up a slight grade north of the rock shack, I felt so tired that I thought it inadvisable to continue. I actually started back for 100 yards and then reconsidered this decision. With my determination restored, I proceeded north to the west prong of the horseshoe and went down the old trail to the Tonto. It seems to be fairly well used now and had quite a few Vibram footprints. It had been an even 20 years since I was down here to get below the Tapeats, but I recalled that there was some constructed trail off the Tonto. Over near the rim of Hance Canyon there is a depression in the rim and a couple of large cairns locate the beginning of the trail. It isn't very clear in the gentle slope, but where the Tapeats breaks off one can easily find it and follow it east at the base of the cliff. It is not so well defined as it goes down to a saddle just west of a knoll in the schist. Here I should have gone down to the river to the foot of Sockdolager, but an arrow made of pieces of white quartz directed me toward Hance Canyon. Cairns almost all the way down guide one to one of the two ways to the bed of Hance. There was water making a few fairly good pools in this stretch of the bed. I would swear that in 1957 we were not blocked by any barrier below here and could walk right down to the river, but now, perhaps only 150 yards back from the river, there is a chockstone and a 15 foot drop. Al Doty later told me that he had bypassed this place by climbing up along the wall to the west, but I lacked ambition. I shouldn't have felt this way since my main purpose had been to go along the wall above Sockdolager. Now I just walked up the bed again to the familiar barrier fall there and didn't even use my time to see how the bypass looked for this barrier. This bypass is now marked by a cairn and a trail is defined across a sandy slope. After eating my lunch, I climbed back up the way I had come down and then didn't consider seriously going down the slope t the foot of Sockdolager.
Up on the Tonto again, I followed the very well defined trail around to the spring on the east side of the neck to Horseshoe Mesa. This time I came up the bed of the wash to the spring and only climbed out to the south at the very end. This works quite well. I met a couple resting at the spring with not too much on. Without asking them whether they had just had a bath in the basin, I dipped my canteen in because I was a little pressed for water. I went on and camped in front of the mine. When it looked as if it might rain, I spread my bed in the shaft and then moved out again in the night when I was bothered by mice. The varmints ate a small fistful of my bread, but they didn't gnaw through the pack to get to it fortunately. I won't sleep there again.
The couple I met at the spring came by while I was loafing on my air mattress from 4:00 p.m. on. They had gone down the Hance Trail to Hance Rapid the previous day and were going out on the Grandview Trail their second day. I could have carried my pack out with them showing that the trek to the river and back is still a possibility for me in one day, but I wanted to reach the campground in the forenoon to be sure to have a place.
After cleaning up, I had a good visit with Tom Davison. He offered to help me get up Vishnu Temple next October. Then I had quite a visit with Bob Euler. He has looked over the Esplanade both east and west of Supai that the present Indians call their traditional use areas. He found plenty of signs that Indians different from the Supais used those areas too. The most interesting thing that he told me about Vishnu Canyon was that there is a ruin of a white prospector's cabin in a sort of bowl to the east of the streambed.
Tim Manns had signed out Shankland's Life of Stephen Mather for me and I read it clear through on Monday and Tuesday. After returning it, I drove to Lee's Ferry to connect with Bob Dye. He thought he would be along about Wednesday or Thursday.
On Tuesday evening the Patrick Conleys had me to their trailer house at Vermilion cliffs for dinner. I met three river boatmen: Clair Quist, Roger Murphy, and another man. We had a delicious meal and a good evening of river talk.
On Wednesday I hiked up Paria Canyon for four and a half hours. This got me 15 minutes past the first west side canyon that comes in at river level. I was able to find stepping stones almost everywhere that I needed to cross the stream. Some backpackers that I met about ready to break camp said that they had wet feet all the time that they were coming through the canyon. I found that it was even easier to keep my feet dry northwest of where I met them than it had been below that place. In fact for a long way a trail goes high above the stream to the west. At some places this trail has to penetrate huge rockslides where a few cairns are the only sign that you are on the approved route. The streambed below is also cluttered with rocks so that this trail is a help. Pat Conley told me that the canyon upstream from where I got stopped is still more exciting, but the walk I took was through inspiring scenery. Years ago I was on the verge of walking through the Paria Gorge, and maybe I'll carry it out yet.
On Thursday I gave Bob Dye up and decided that I had done enough hiking for one time. I went to Page early enough to catch Al and Jane Doty before they went to their jobs. They gave me the run of their house and on Friday morning Al took me for the long promised flight over Lake Powell. I understood what I was looking down on much better this time than I had before. We flew over the Dry Rock Creek arm and then over the Kaiparowits Plateau. We saw a little of the Escalante and the mouth of the San Juan. I recognized the Emerton Arch Cove and the airport and the area where I had found the way from Dougi Cove over into Oak Canyon. I looked for a way from the region of the airport down into Anasazi canyon, but from our altitude I couldn't tell what would go. The white rock ridges on the northwest side of Navaho Mountain showed up in a spectacular manner.
On Thursday evening Al and I took his 150 foot rope over to Jim David's route down to the river near where the tunnel road reaches the rim. There is a good place to tie behind a big rock right on the brink of the hard part. I got down a little way holding on the rope and then lost my nerve. Al went on down to where Packard and I had come up from the river. He said that the narrow crack was so narrow that there is very little room to move. He didn't see any Moki steps that made it easy to ascend as David had said. He used the rope constantly in getting back up. I believe that the next time I get here I would keep up my nerve and be able to do this climb. It would be preferable to use two ropes, one for the top 15 feet and the other to hang straight down the crack over at the west side.
On the way home I had another bout of chess with Dick Hart, until 2:00 a.m. and then until 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. He won the last four games so he finally agreed that I could go.
Paria Canyon
[June 27, 1977 to June 29, 1977]
I visited with the men at the Alpiner Store and with the math department on my way north. At the Lee's Ferry Store I asked whether it would be safe to walk through the canyon at this time of year. Clouds were beginning to build up for the summer rainy season and they had had one good rain in Flagstaff. I could see that the Paria was about nine inches deeper than it had been at the end of May. Then you could see the Paria water as nearly clear, but now it looked like dark gray paint. The girl clerk assured me that plenty of people were still walking through.
When I left the Jimmy it was 3:30 p.m. The gate was locked but it was easy to walk around the east end of the fence by the irrigation ditch. I was carrying quite a bit more food than was necessary, but I suppose I would have appreciated it if I had been ledged up somewhere by a flood. I took an empty plastic gallon milk container so that I could carry extra water if at any time I saw the need. I had played with the idea of pouring water on my shirt from time to time to beat the heat. The temperature was about the hottest of the year, 114 ?F in Phoenix on Wednesday. I passed by two seeps just west of the trail that are not much more than four miles from the start. I figured I would at least walk until 6:00 p.m. and take my chances on finding more water for camping.
Pat Reilly had briefed me on the location of several rocks decorated with petroglyphs. His log, which I read very hastily the night before I left home, mentions the mushroom rock marker 50 feet to the east. I had noticed this rock when I was here on May 25, but at that time I had overlooked the petroglyphs. This time I realized that I might be getting close to Mile 6.2, Reilly's estimated position and I looked a bit and saw the pictures. I didn't notice another picture rock until I was returning on Wednesday. This is about 100 feet farther north, but still just south of a low, stubby mushroom rock. One might guess that the Indian artists were influenced by these two landmarks in picking the site for their pictures. They don't seem to be close to any trail end or water source. I had already noticed, at about Mile 3.0, the sandslide or Domínguez Trail. This must be the way used by the supplier for the second Powell river expedition when he tried to reach Lee's Ferry by going to the north of the Paria Plateau. Neither going north or coming south could I see the supports for the power line that used to come down to Lee's Ferry from the east. Perhaps they have removed it and use power coming from downriver. I meant to ask about this change, but I got to the car too late Wednesday evening and I left too early Thursday morning. A good loop hike would be up the sandslide trail and down the Spencer Trail.
About a quarter of a mile south of where the trail leaves the flat as it ends near the shale wash out, I camped for the night. I figure I had come about seven miles from the car in two and a half hours. There were lots of cow chips around but I saw only one cow on my way in and none on the return. I had seen a couple of calves and about three cows in May. Perhaps someone has moved them to higher and greener pastures for the summer. There were fresh deer tracks everywhere along the creek and also plenty of fresh cow tracks. I noted one big mule deer out in the open at perhaps Mile 5.0 on the way out. In spite of the heat, it left in great bounds. The two quarts of water I had carried from the car didn't suffice for my soup or my breakfast. I doped the creek diluted mud with iodine and drank it as sparingly as possible as well as using it for my Lipton's soup. When I ate the latter it looked like mud pie, but it tasted like soup. I didn't seem to feel the worse for the mud in my diet, but it had a definite effect on my excrement.
When I had gone a short way on Tuesday morning I discovered that in May I had missed the best trail through the rock slides and above the steep clay cliff. I had been on the trail part of the way, but I went too high before coming down on the flat near the F. T. Johnson inscription. When I got it right, I saw the Johnson inscription of May 30, 1912. I wonder how soon someone is going to get an attack of conscience and remove this the way G. M. Wright was treated. In May again I failed to find his name where it used to be near the sunken steamboat. I looked across the creek but I couldn't decide which big rock had petroglyphs on it. It would have involved two creek crossings, and I didn't consider this effort worth while. On Wednesday I saw a rock that may have been decorated, but I couldn't prove this without binoculars or going across to it. Within two hours after Al had started on about 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, I found a seep spring just downriver from the mouth of the side canyon at Mile 10.5. I was glad to empty the dark gray emulsion out of my canteen. In May I had walked 15 minutes beyond here. It would be interesting to see how far one could go up this side canyon. If you were willing to climb in sand, it might be quite high. The entire Paria Canyon looks very difficult to escape from, but Reilly has marked on his map a way called the Adams Trail at Mile 13.25 and the Old Stock Trail at Mile 19.8.
By a strange coincidence, when I met some people near Mile 12, I was addressed by name. Two young men I had known in Flagstaff were conducting a group of colored boys, ages about 12 through 15, through the Paria Canyon. Lee Haines had been through before. Bill Williams I knew from the Sierra club committee meeting in Flagstaff. They were worried because one of the boys had gotten away from the rest when the others went up to see Wrather Arch. He must have come out safely at the lower end before I started in at 3:30 on Monday. There was no search going on late on Tuesday or on Wednesday, so I am sure he was all right. Close to Mile 13 I met a couple with two girls. Their names were Bruce and Mary Perkin. They were from California and had met my old friend Jerry Foote who had gotten them interested in the Paria. They were on their second trip through. They told me about the Shower Bath Spring at Mile 14.5 and that there is a good campsite, high above flood danger, inside the mouth of Buckskin Gulch. I passed another young man and woman hiking downriver, but they were across the creek and I only exchanged a greeting. They hadn't noticed the special nature of the Shower Bath Spring. When I asked about it, they didn't seem to have noticed it but they had found plenty of seeps on both sides of the creek. I was afraid that I might have passed the Show Bath without noticing it either, but when I came to the end of a short stretch of the river running due west, I saw the water falling several feet in much greater volume than anywhere else.
As Reilly points out, the bed is different as the river is going through the Kayenta bedrock about Mile 12. I also noticed the high sand dune far up on the south side of the stream.
I had been told that there is now no BLM sign announcing Wrather Canyon, but that I could recognize it from the cottonwoods and extensive flat terrace on the north side of the river. I had been keeping my position quite well by following the bends shown on the topo map, and I walked right into the entrance. The beaten down tracks in the sand made me sure. I was quite impressed with the beauty of the vegetation and ruggedness of the side canyon as I was by the arch itself. Haines and Williams had assured me that I would need only 15 minutes to get in to see the arch but I suspect that they didn't time themselves. It took me a little over a half hour to get up to the high position needed for the best picture. I was on the detour for more than an hour. No water was flowing out of the side canyon, as I have heard sometimes is true, but there was a good gurgling sound of a running steam directly below the arch. One could go on up the bed for some distance past the arch.
I wondered what would merit the name, The Hole, but I wasn't surprised to find that it is a deep alcove something like the old Cathedral of the Desert in the Escalante up Clear Creek. Lots of maidenhair ferns festoon the walls and seeping water keeps a shallow pool well supplied. It is surely worth crossing the creek to walk into.
I was identifying the bends in the canyon and I figured that I could identify Judd Hollow, but still I didn't notice the pump and pipe that I knew about. I was looking for them on the east side of a big promontory that splits the bottom of Judd Hollow. When I didn't see the machinery I thought I might have mistaken the identify of Judd Hollow and I walked on. The short stretches and the abrupt turns in the canyon made me think of the map beyond Judd Hollow. About 4:00 p.m. I stopped to study the map and assess the condition of my feet and ankles. I was dismayed to find that I had left the small amount of adhesive tape back at a rest stop two or three miles downriver. When I saw the well developed mat burns I decided that the smart things to do would be to retreat. This was at about Mile 19 and I turned back around 4:15.
I soon got back to what I had thought to be Judd Hollow, and this time the pump and pipe were in plain sight, just upriver from where I had been looking. I also noticed a wooden ladder leaning against the wall. I wonder whether the men putting in the pump could climb out using that ladder.
I continued my retreat until I came to some seep springs and I camped on the north side of the river at about Mile 17. On the right side of the bed there is a spring that would be flooded with every rise of the river. Still there is a good enough pool of clear cool water to be home to hundreds of tiny fish. At a couple of places the tiny pool springs keep the sand churning in the bottom.
On Wednesday morning I got started about 5:20 a.m. and reached the good seep at about Mile 10.4 in five hours. I made myself comfortable in the shade of a cottonwood on the cool moist clay near the river and read Time and had a very leisurely lunch. When I finished all the reading, I began to get bored and I decided to go on out starting on at 1:00 p.m. It was plenty hot, the hottest June 29th on record in Phoenix, and I carried about three quarts of water for what had taken me four and a half hours to walk on the way in. I got to my first campsite in only one and three quarters hours which I had remembered as having taken two hours on the way in. I needed an hour longer for the next and last leg to the car than I had used coming in. I had a cloud cover for most of the afternoon, but still I was in poor shape from dehydration towards the end. I finished with water in the canteen, but I seemed not to want to drink enough. I did take some salt and also snacked on salted peanuts about an hour before getting to the car.
There were some disagreeable features, like raw spots on feet and ankles, bites from flies, and the heat, but still I am enthusiastic about going back to do the rest of the Paria and study the possible trails down from the rims. The next time I think I'll wear bread wrappers over my feet inside the socks to try to prevent chafing.
Little Dragon and Lawes MacRae Route
[October 8, 1977 to October 12, 1977]
I had formed quite a program for four days of actual hiking at the North Rim. Three of the days would involve going off Grama Point down the Lawes MacRae Route to the Tonto in Tuna, then off the Tonto west of the Tuna inner gorge and then via the Royce Fletcher Route down the river cliff to the mouth of Tuna. Then we would go along the river to Crystal and come up to the Tonto just west of the mouth of Tuna by the route on the west side of the Crystal Creek Gorge. We would return via the Grama Point Route. Then on the fourth day we would go off the rim toward the Colonnade and get down the Redwall into Haunted Canyon.
Jim Ohlman met me in Flagstaff and encouraged me at various times, but our accomplishments were far less than my plans, something that is quite common.
Alan and Jane Doty pulled into the Jacob Lake gas station right beside us and we had quite a visit. Just the week before he had climbed Little Dragon and he was headed for Monument Point and Bridgers Knoll this time. Jim and I got our permit at the North Rim Lodge and met Ira Estin, a caver friend of Ken Walters, and a companion. They were going into Dragon Creek via the Shiva Saddle and they asked a few questions about that route. They intended to follow us out the fire road, but they missed us somehow. I wasn't an expert in finding the road W1 any more because I started up right on a road that goes to the exit highway and has to back up some yards to get on the road that goes near the dump. Jim and I had the map along and tried to work out the right position for the car for the most direct route to the Little Dragon. We may have gone a little farther west than necessary, but we got out and back in good shape. We found that Al had not built any cairn on the lower north summit of the Little Dragon but he had built a good one over a foot high very near the summit of the real high point. When we had walked away from the car we had gone past a couple of sinkholes quite near the road. As we came back through the woods, we had to keep our course by guess, and we tried staying on the high ground until that seemed to be going too far east. When we went down and up on the high ground to the west, we may have come quite close to the right sinkhole again. On reaching the road, we turned west, but in just a few minutes both of us agreed that this was wrong. The car was only a few minutes east of where we had reached the road.
On Sunday morning we drove to a place that seemed closest to Grama Point. In the walk through the woods we had a tendency to go too far to the east, but finally we reached the rim of Crystal Creek Bay rather close to the rise toward Grama and then we went southwest to the rim above the east arm of Tuna. We were looking down into the fork that is just east of the high point 6273. Ginger Harmon had said that the Redwall break was a little north of this point on the west side of the canyon, and we could see that the wall there was impossible.
Jim and I went down to the Toroweap at the head of this canyon through some really bad brush and worked our way towards the end of Grama at this level. The going got easier than it had been at the head of the draw, but the slight deer trail wasn't easy to follow. I got discouraged and we headed back for the rim. When we were half way to the road, both of us got the idea that it would be good to go to the end of Grama and look down. We did this and decided that with the rise toward the end of Grama, it might be counted as a Grand Canyon summit a bit like Comanche and Fossil Mountain. The view down gave me the conviction that Ginger was wrong in putting the Redwall break over near the 6273 location. The way through the Hermit and Coconino would be no real problem. There would be some difficulty in the Kaibab between the main end of Gram and the next headland to the west, but we could play that safe by going down where we had before, through the brush and then along the deer trail. The Supai was more of a problem, but the best place seemed to be right at the bed of the wash going down to the head of the minor canyon right next to the wall toward Confucius and Mencius. We could see the place along the wall beneath the saddle to Confucius that was proposed by the airmen to Lawes and MacRae because a talus covers more than half the Redwall, but I still wonder why they would have preferred this to the route down from the Tuna Flint Saddle. On the west rim of the Redwall gorge, slightly to the north of a spire in the Supai on that side, I could see a depression that might be the head of a ravine going down obliquely into the canyon. It reminded me of the head of the cut through the Redwall on the Enfilade Point Route and it would have been my choice for the first try.
By now Jim and I thought it was too late to start down. We were not sure that we would find water in the Tapeats in Tuna Creek since this had been a dry year. I thought it would be better to wait until the next day and use the known route via the Tuna Flint Saddle and get down soon enough to reach the river if necessary for camping.
We next parked at a place which would be a logical departure point for the Tuna Flint Saddle and then noticed that there were many plastic colored ribbons tied to tree limbs here. A Jeep track led up the hill to the east and more ribbons indicated something of interest. I concluded that they have marked the route to the Indian ruins below the Kaibab. We were going to spend some time just wandering in the woods to the west, but we decided to see these ruins the second time for me and a new experience for Jim. The Jeep track was faint and the ribbons were rather far apart but there was a good cairn built at the head of the Scramblers Trail off the rim. We went down below the bare Kaibab cliff and then followed the trail to the west, getting lower than I had remembered. Then we went up into a small bay and saw the familiar ruins, a row of eight granaries on one level and a small dwelling on the level just below. To the west on a ledge beneath an overhang and up about 15 feet from where you stand, there is a crude wall that might serve as a defense rampart in case of attack. Jim tried climbing a juniper tree and getting up the wall, but this was out without a good ladder. Someone had carried a heavy six foot plank down here, but we didn't see how that would help. A 16 foot two by four with cleats would be the thing.
Before we started toward Grama Point the first time, we had driven to Point Sublime for the view. Here we met Jeff Ingram, the former Southwest Secretary of the Sierra Club. He recognized me and we had a short visit. Now we decided to go back to Point Sublime to spend tonight before starting down the Tuna Flint Route. During wakeful spells in the night I decided that it would be better to go down the Lawes MacRae Route and come up Crystal Creek with a half day spent in going along the river from the mouth of Crystal to the mouth of Tuna to investigate the way to get from the mouth of Tuna to the top of the Tonto west of Tuna.
We started away from the car just before 7:00 a.m. and needed more than 30 minutes, with some fumbling to find the place, to reach the rim at the west base of Grama Point. Our way through the brush to the Toroweap was just as bad as it had been when we went down the previous day and worse than the way we had come up. Right after we passed the farthest place reached on Sunday, the deer trail cleared up a lot and we needed about 35 minutes to go from the woods on top to the place where we headed down through the Coconino and Hermit. There must have been a lot of ways to get down this broad slope of slide material overgrown by junipers, but we did have to zigzag a bit to avoid minor drop offs. Jim scouted ahead to look the Supai over and he came to the conclusion that we had better try it right at the center of the wash. The hardest place was a 15 foot wall where we had to go to the west and look for the best place. There was a steep crack wide enough for one's shoe. I used a light rope looped around a bush for a hand line, but Jim came down with no help except that we lowered both packs with a rope. There was another barrier where we might have gone far to the east across the draw but Jim got a more direct way where he pulled out some loose rock and made new steps for me. The rest of the Supai merely required routine care not to stumble on loose rocks or slide on shale exposures.
Jim spotted the sole of the rubber shoe near the top of the Redwall ravine before I told him that it had been seen by Olin and Harmon. Then I alerted him to watch for the two ropes down in the break. He saw both before I did. In fact I think my bifocals limit me a lot in spotting things. The way down the Redwall in this ravine is beautiful. It must really have amazed Lawes and MacRae to find so fine a way down. It could be seen from the top of Confucius, but it doesn't seem logical to be where it is. It would rank very high among my 151 routes through the Redwall. There was one place near the bottom of the route where we got out of the bed to the right, but Jim thought that he could have climbed down here directly. He waited for me in the main canyon bed and pointed to a rain pocket that is over a foot deep. There had been some recent rain on the rim that had put muddy pools across the point Sublime Road, but this rain pool was six inches down from its overflow but it was still about eight inches deep. I was glad to get a refill for my two quart canteen. The afternoon got quite hot and we didn't get to Crystal Creek until 4:15 p.m.
Walking the bed was routine with a few big boulders to get around. We left the rain pool after our early lunch about 11:30 and were leaving the bed above the junction with the west arm in less than two hours. The way along the Tonto on the east side of the lower Tuna gorge is time consuming with hills and long detours into side ravines. I went over to the Tapeats rim and checked that the spring is still flowing down into the granite from the lower Tapeats. We finally got over the saddle just south of the elongated shale butte I call Scylla Major and went southeast to find the break in the Tapeats near the mouth of Crystal. We located it with help from a cairn that must have been two feet in diameter and several feet high before it fell in a heap. There were a couple of small cairns 40 or so yards below the rim, but beyond that we were on our own. We made hard going of this descent by getting off the right ridge to the south. The footing on the chips of shiny schist was precarious and the steep but jagged ridge to the north of the draw would have been far better.
We had a pleasant rest beside Crystal Creek from 4:15 on, camping about five minutes walk from the river. On Tuesday morning we carried just our canteens and a snack along the river toward Tuna. I had the erroneous idea that this would be simple walking over blocks beside the river all the way. When we had to climb along cracks in the polished rock and step along ledges around corners in a cliff, I got discouraged. Where I decided to turn back we would have had to follow some cairns and go 200 feet above the river. I decided that it would take too long to really see the Fletcher Route up to the Tonto and still move our packs up Crystal to the highest water. We got back to our packs and started up Crystal about 8:30 a.m. It seemed longer than I had remembered to the junction of Crystal and Dragon, about two hours and ten minutes. As before, a lot more water was coming from Dragon than from Crystal. There was one place in Crystal below the junction where big chockstones made a bypass necessary. There may have been lodged here by the great flood in December, 1966. I don't recall the obstruction from my trip up the creek in late May, 1966, but I recorded the fact that I took two hours and ten minutes to go to the junction of Crystal and Dragon at that time without a pack on my back, and Jim and I carried out backpacks over the same distance in only five more minutes. I showed Jim the prospect hole near the junction and we noted that the flood devastation over the terrace south of the junction is not nearly so noticeable as it was in 1967.
The Tapeats narrows in Crystal is farther north than I had remembered, I warned Jim that it was a deadend for me even though the fall at the upper end is not very high. I took the deer bypass to the east. Jim wanted to see what I had seen on my first trip, and he also wanted to try the climb out at the upper end. The bypass is also longer than I remembered. Jim did succeed in climbing the wall to the east of the water and then he pulled his pack up after him. It swung into the fall but it didn't get soaked. Our progress to the head of the water was hindered by the amount of growth in the bed. Finally, we came to the place where the water was above ground, but I recalled that there was some on the surface higher. We found this to be true and camped beside a seep pool. The springs I had seen at the feet of the cottonwoods on the west side of the channel were not flowing. We had come here from near the mouth of Crystal between 8:30 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. I didn't feel much ambition and I spent the afternoon reading the Readers Digest. There were lots of flies here but they didn't bite.
On Wednesday morning we got going a few minutes before seven and took about two hours to reach the foot of the Redwall break. The brush in the Redwall route was worse than I had remembered and it took us 35 minutes to reach the top. Getting through the manzanita to the fine walking up the wash in the Supai was also rather slow and we reached the good walking in just about one hour from the bottom of the Redwall. There were a few pools of clay red water through this stretch. Many of the maples were past their prime but some had scarlet leaves and this was about the nicest walking we had on the entire trip.
Where the going got steep near the top of the Supai we saw muddy paw prints on some rocks that looked very much like a cat. They weren't big enough to be made by a full grown lion.
The worst brush of the entire trip made getting through the Hermit and Coconino a real fight. We could find some thin places where progress was relatively good, and then we would come to a wall of interlacing brush much of which had thorns. About 1:40 p.m. we came out on top with a good deer trail for the last quarter mile.
We walked about 35 minutes through the woods to reach the road and then a like time to reach the Point Sublime Road. It took 50 minutes of walking on the road to reach the car. The car odometer told us that this was just under four miles to pick up our packs where we had came out of the woods.
We used W1 to reach park headquarters where we met a young climber, Earl Cram, who has designs on Mount Hayden. I dropped Jim at the NAU campus about 9:30 and got to Sun City about 12:30.
Boucher Creek and Hermit Camp
[December 9, 1977 to December 10, 1977]
My original plans for a nine day hiking period were thrown away when I got a light case of the flu. Finally, on Thursday I drove north and visited at the Alpineer store and the math department where I picked up my trail logs that Jim Ohlman had had. I got to the permit counter at the South Rim in time to get a plan signed for five days of good hiking. I was going to go to Clear Creek in one day, then see Bob Dye's route through the Supai and Coconino, then walk back and up into Haunted Canyon in one day, walk the loop up Sturdevant Canyon and come down Haunted using a rope at the top of the Redwall, and then walk out from there the fifth day. Mary Langdon was loath to permit me sleeping privileges in Haunted Canyon since she had been making others agree to camp up on the top of the Redwall in the Phantom Canyon area.
While I was at the permit window I ran into Brian Culhane. We had met on the Hermit Trail last year. Now he invited me to have dinner with Trinkle Jines and him at the girls dorm, a former caretaker's house in the southwest part of the village. We had a pleasant evening of talk and then I was invited to sleep on the davenport at the men's dorm. I spent an uncomfortable night of little sleep because the room couldn't be cooled off. I realize that with the bad night and my cold still a bother, I would rather take on a less ambitious project than to start down the trail with food for five days. I went back to the permit window and got a two day permit to go down the Boucher Trail expecting to see the Supai and Redwall routes in the upper Boucher Canyon.
As I was hiking along the Boucher Trail before it reaches upper Travertine Canyon, I began to wonder how difficult the Supai in Boucher might be. I realize that Packard, Walters, and Ohlman can do climbs that I wouldn't undertake alone. In order not to get in a jam, I decided to go down the trail to the Redwall rim and then follow it around to the head of the Boucher Gorge. I could then use whatever time I had left for seeing the Supai route and have plenty of daylight for going down the Redwall to water in Boucher Canyon.
This was a good idea except that it was getting along in the day when I left the trail to follow the Redwall rim. When I had been breaking this new ground for about 30 minutes, much slower going after the rim changes from a platform to a steep slope, I got discouraged and turned back to the trail. I had spent almost an hour on this deadend and in just one more hour I got down to Boucher Camp about 4:15. I was feeling low because I had had to give up the purpose of the trip, and besides my feet hurt and one knee was feeling bad from breaking the shock of coming downhill. I had fallen in the trail when a rock rolled underfoot and I had put my hand on a cactus. I lay around on my mattress reading Time until supper and thought that I would let the younger men have the big time exploring to themselves. It was an unpleasant decision.
One mistake in packing my groceries was that I left behind the meat I had planned on eating for the two days. Another poor decision was to sleep in the mine shaft for warmth. I was wakeful again by being too warm, but I got a much better night of sleep then I had in the living room of the ranger dorm. Twice that night I was startled when rocks fell from the roof of the shaft to the floor about five feet from where I was lying. While I was eating in bed before daylight, I heard an awesome rumble of a lot of rocks falling and sliding somewhere.
I went back on Saturday along the Tonto to Hermit Creek in three hours and it took five and three quarter hours to reach the car from Hermit.
Pearce, Spencer, and Milkweed Canyons
[January 22, 1978 to January 28, 1978]
Bob Marley, an electrical engineer with a lot of hiking experience, went with me. We pulled my boat from Sun City to South Cove with lunch in Kingman. We got there shortly after two, but we found that I had left a switch turned on and the boat battery was down. After some inquiries, we took it to Frenchy's where we could get a quick charge in an hour. At Bob's suggestion, we disconnected the battery at each long stop and had no trouble starting it.
Since it was late when we finally got away from South Cove, we merely went to the north side of the promontory of Sandy Point for the night. We were glad we were in the cabin that night because it rained hard with some hail. It was blowing from the northwest in the morning when we wanted to start and we had a hard time getting going since the motor refused to run in reverse gear.
From here to Pearce Ferry we had to watch for driftwood but we managed to dodge it and we tied up at the north end of the cove where burro trails lead over the hill and down into Pearce Canyon Wash. By 9:30, we were ready to put on our packs and start up the 1000 foot climb over the ridge into Pearce Canyon. This time there were quite a few pools of water in the bed left from the recent rain. They subside into the gravel quite fast, but the water in the grooves in the bedrock on the north side seems to last well into the winter. This is about ten minutes walk upstream from the first major side canyon coming into Pearce from the south.
Three years ago Jorgen, Bill Belknap, and Ed Herrman had gone up this side canyon and had been stopped by a very high fall. We now had the time since we only wanted to get to the cave near the junction of the main arm and the north arm. It is an impressive bay with very high walls going to the top of the Redwall. There is a split in the rock where the fall has carved its notch, but it is still around 100 feet up to the lip. We went up a talus to inspect a slight shelf at the foot of the cliff on the west side of the fall, but we could see no signs of use by Indians. Bob noted that one could climb rather high on the east wall about a quarter mile north of the fall and an expert might have the nerve to go on up using the roughness of the wall for holds. We spent something more than an hour on this detour.
At the shelter cave north of the mouth of the north arm of Pearce, we were able to follow burro trails up to the cave. It seemed that someone has been digging into the bed for artifacts because there were two or three shallow pits in the floor. We noted a crude metate and mano, but the blackened roof was the only other sign of former occupation. We were able to scrape level places for our beds and we had a good night here. There had been a threat of showers but it cleared up and got quite cool before morning.
In the morning we got away about 8:00 and went through the Redwall narrow of the main arm where we found quite a bit of water but no running stream. My project was to go out on top using the third side canyon from the south. It lines up with one from the north that I used last year to get from the north arm to the main arm. Visbak, Belknap, and Herrman had done this three years ago, but no one that I knew had been up the continuation on the south. Bob agreed from the start that we could get out on the Sanup Plateau from here, and we were not disappointed. In fact it would be grist for another hiker to check all the ways.
Just as we were passing an arm of this tributary that comes from the east, Bob pointed to six splendid bighorn rams that were about 50 yards away on a ledge leading into the east arm. All six watched us for a couple of minutes and then left in a leisurely, orderly manner around the corner into the side canyon. We had time for several pictures, but there was little contrast with their background.
Near the top we veered to the west where the way to the rim seemed the surest. We had come from the cave up here in about two and a quarter hours. Bob ate a snack and took some pictures and then we headed southwest to see the broad valley that forms a sort of bowl in the surface of the plateau and that drains down into the canyon we had entered before reaching our campsite at the cave. Billingsley had gotten me interested in this area by suggesting that it might be some type of sinkhole, but from our position on the slope east of the valley, it didn't seem so different from quite a few desert type drainages such as go into the Little Colorado. We got back to our packs at the junction of the main and north arms of Pearce in time for a late lunch. We walked down to the boat in less than three hours. The day was still warm enough for us to shave and take sponge baths. We enjoyed our reading by gasoline lantern light before retiring.
On Wednesday we boated up to Spencer with no trouble from mudbanks. The lake was high enough so that one could get a boat to the foot of Columbine Falls and there was enough water in the river above the lake level. The lake level was 1184 feet and the river survey puts the height of the bed at Separation Rapids as 1175 feet, but the daily fluctuations of the flow are up to three feet at Spencer and from the swift current and dirty water, we figured that there was also a flood coming out of the Little Colorado River. We moored the boat at the extreme north end of the silt bank but we should have tied it still farther upriver at the last flooded tamarisk.
When we left the boat we soon found that the trail over to the running stream was flooded by the high water from the river and we had a little difficulty in getting up on the highest silt terrace to go west and get down to the clear streambed. We needed about two hours to reach the mouth of Meriwitica Canyon which is recognizable by the detached tower of brown granite standing away from the wall. The flow in the creek varied considerably along here. Once the bed was dry for a short distance. Finally the bed did go dry just before we reached the wooded terrace on the left bank where Jorgen and I camped last year. Floods had buried the water holes where Jorgen and I dipped our canteens. The first surface water is now at least 100 yards farther downstream. It was still early and I was sure that we should find more water at the big travertine terrace about a mile upstream from where the map places Spencer Springs. When we approached this travertine cliff on the west side of the bed, I entered the mesquite thicket looking for water and Bob went up the open bed. He soon reached the place where water can be heard falling down the face of the cliff with just a little dropping over the edge of the bank into the gravel of the wash. We put our beds on some level ground across on the east side of the wash from here. The secondary stream channel just a couple of feet below my bed was still muddy from the last flood.
We had taken about three hours to get here from the boat so there was time to see the interesting features on top of the travertine terrace. We followed a burro trail up on the south end and then went along the rim to the north. The marshy tangle of greenery was hard to cross without getting wet feet. We soon came to the rock wall and concluded that its main purpose was to get rocks out of the way of a garden bed. Something that I hadn't noticed when I was here with Homer Morgan was that there is a petrified irrigation ditch here, much like those at Quartermaster Canyon. All the former soil near them has been washed away and now the former ditch is a ridge of travertine with a groove along the top. Farther to the north and back from the rim of the terrace where there is still quite a bit of soil and there are evenly spaced rock piles where someone has tried to clear the ground.
We went up on the highest part of the travertine deposit near the springs and then came down to the south and doubled back to find the rock cabin. It is just below this higher slope and a few yards south of the greenery formed by the spring water. Since there are no timbers around to support a roof or form the door, we wondered whether the building was ever finished. I have noted that the Boucher cabin had a small fireplace but there is no hint of one at this rock house. The walls are well done, everywhere at least two stones thick and fairly impervious to the wind even without mud for mortar. About 20 yards away there is a little shelter cave in the travertine, and the ground appears to have been smoothed for good sleeping. A frying pan and another pan are still there. We even found a shoe which may have shrunk some. It didn't seem big enough for an adult. Parts of two more rotten shoes were in the mud. We thought that the man who cleared the field and built the rock cabin must have lived here for some time. About the first thing that we saw when we walked north along the rim of the terrace were two rusty tin cans which seemed too large for consumption of the contents by one man. The shelter under the travertine projection was only big enough to sleep two comfortably.
We broke camp on Thursday morning about eight as usual and needed about two hours to get to the junction of Milkweed and Spencer. On the way we looked rather carefully at two places where one might have a good chance of climbing up on the plateau west of Spencer but we had other things to keep us busy. We walked about 50 minutes up Spencer before we came to a good flow of water and we camped on the south side of the creek. We would have enjoyed more sunlight if we had been on the other side. There was ice on most of the pools and the ground thawed into mud near our campfire that evening.
After an early lunch we headed up canyon to find what we could about upper Spencer and the possibility of climbing to the top of the plateau. First I wanted to see what was up Spencer beyond where Jorgen and I had been last year. The burros have a bypass of a fall quite close to the junction of Spencer and Hindu Canyon. Then the walls close in above the rough bed until, less than a mile above the junction, there is a big pool that would have to be waded and only yards beyond there is a spectacular fall. So we went back to the vicinity of the mouth of Hindu where a lot of travertine on the left side of Spencer can be climbed.
Bob preceded me here and checked around a corner of the next cliff above and soon I heard the encouraging call, "it goes." There is just one angle where the rock is broken into stepsand one can go up even with a pack on his back. Bob built a cairn to mark this place from above and then we walked up a short valley with a bit more hand and foot work at the top. From there is was just a walk to the east of a Redwall promontory and up to the west to a saddle and so to the top. We were higher than most of the plateau in any direction. On the return to camp, Bob tried going down off the travertine into Spencer west of the junction with Hindu and he was in camp for some time before I got there. I went down near where we had gone up, but I found an old horseshoe. We theorized that some Indian packhorse had gone wild and had come in here without his master.
On Friday we walked down to the junction of Spencer and Milkweed. Bob had something wrong with his digestion so he stayed by our packs while I went up Milkweed to see what I could before 11:45. There is the way to get to the top where Billingsley and his companions came down, but from a distant view, we thought that his way is not unique. The way that looked the easiest to me leaves the bed in the upper right corner of block 26 of the Milkweed Canyon NW Quad and goes southeast past the C of the word Canyon.
The first water appears near the bottom third of the same block 26 and there is a running stream above ground most of the time from here on up as far as I went, to the upper corner of block three where you come out of a fine narrows through the granite. The geology of Milkweed is most interesting. All the way up Spencer, the Tapeats seems to be tilted up to the south until it is higher above the bed near the junction with Milkweed than it is down by the travertine terrace. Then a little way up Milkweed, on the west side, you can see a break where the granite comes up suddenly about 600 feet higher than on the other side of the break. Where I turned around at the end of the granite narrows, it was still 300 or 400 feet above the bed. The promontory to the south at 4600 feet elevation may not have been Redwall at all. There is clear cut Redwall above the junction of Spencer and Milkweed, but farther south where the slope forms the access route, something else like red sandstone is just north of the broken area. It weathers into smooth bulbous knobs. A geologist would have problems cataloging all these irregularities.
A fine landmark was a travertine fall on the west side in a tributary. I believe it is in the branch from the west about two fifths of the way from the bottom of Block 34. Another landmark is the tower on the east side of the bed near the top of block 35.
Even at the end of January these canyons have birds, junkos, canyon wrens, and others. I saw an ouzel and a slate gray bird that had the shape of a cardinal including the crest. There were herons and ducks on the river.
In spite of Bob's indisposition, we made better time down to our former campsite across from the travertine terrace than we had on the upgrade on Thursday. There was a big ring around the sun and the sky became overcast to the extent that we moved our beds under the nearby overhang. This was the reason I saw the Indian pictographs painted on the wall and ceiling in red clay. There were a couple of human figures and some geometric doodles and some mere smudges. There was no rain and the morning dawned clear.
We continued to make fast time down to the boat in the morning. The river had dropped about three feet and the bow was on the rocks. Bob didn't have to strain after he untied and pushed it into the water. We made good time downstream. I recognized Surprise Canyon, Triumphal Arch, Burnt Canyon, Quartermaster, Tincanebitts, Dry Canyon, Bat Cave, Muav Cave, and Columbine Falls. We put the boat in close to Columbine Falls for Bob to get a picture.
I had no trouble getting the boat on the trailer since there was no wind. For the return to Kingman, I tried the gravel road that goes through the foothills and reaches the highway a block east of Terrible Herbst. We reached home about 6:30 p.m.
Phantom and Sturdevant Canyons
[February 24, 1978 to February 26, 1978]
I had talked to Jim Ohlman about climbing Manu Temple and coming down at the head of Haunted Canyon with the aid of a rope. When he discovered that they have named a minor butte on the promontory between Sturdevant and Haunted for Louis Schellback, Jim had another reason for wanting to go up here. He called me and we agreed to meet at the permit desk at 3:00 p.m. on Friday. I left home early on Friday and played chess with Dick Hart in Sedona for a couple of hours on my way to the canyon. I got there a couple of minutes after three and I was visiting with Tom Davision when I got a phone call from Flagstaff from Jim Kirschvink saying that they were delayed but that they would meet me down at the Bright Angel Campground some time in the evening.
The Kaibab Trail was snowy and slick at the top and muddy in places down to the upper Supai and I carried a heavier than usual pack since I had my climbing rope. I got down to the campground in two and a half hours. I happened to fall in with a seasonal ranger, Brad Jones, and I ate my dinner in his cabin near the bridge across Bright Angel Creek. We had quite a visit mostly talking about climbing Zoro and Brahma. The ranger party packed a lot of water up to the saddle between Zoro and Brahma and the party of three or four spent two nights there. Brad was able to climb Brahma in one and a half hours from this saddle. Don Suthers climbed Zoro solo and Tom Davison got almost to the top before time ran out. At the ranger dorm on Sunday evening, Tom showed us the slides he took of the trip. A major part of the route is up a vertical crack where one can get only a foot into the space. It is aid climbing.
In talking about the Brahma climb, Brad didn't remember any part where one had to walk across a steep smooth exposure of Coconino with shoe friction only. When I told him about how Donald Davis and Doc Ellis had done it, he figured that he had taken someone's suggestion and gone up directly at this place instead of walking across the friction pitch. He said that a woman who worked at Phantom Ranch, Terri Meche, had also climbed Brahma. This was the trip using three days instead of going up and back in one long day from Bright Angel Creek as Davis, Ellis, and Doty had.
Ohlman and Kirschvink came along about 9:00 p.m. and we got off on our hike up from the north end of the campground about 7:00 a.m. on Saturday. The trail up to the Tonto is very well defined. The trouble is that the clear track leads to a 12 foot pitch that is rather difficult with a full pack. I had done this before, but we were delayed in getting a detour to avoid this little cliff. The best way seems to be south of here close to the base of the main cliff. The track through the Tapeats break is also well used now, but it goes where the scramble over rough blocks is harder than the walk up a talus south of the center of the ravine.
Ohlman was enough of a geologist to clear me up on why the Tapeats looks so different on the Tonto here. He explained that it was formed in a quiet bay between Shinumo Quartzite islands and had a lot more organic material in it than the Tapeats which was formed in the open sea.
I led the way up to the saddle just east of Cheops and we found the Indian ruin on the high ledge as we got down toward the creek. I came to what is left of the trail just a little below the ruin, but on the way out on Sunday I found that the trail continues farther east below the ruin to a rocky ridge where it seems to end. Someone has built a cairn here but it is not noticeable from a distance. I had probably remembered it wrong when I thought that I had followed this trail clear up to the pass east of Cheops. I must have passed beneath the Indian ruin numerous times before I noticed it. Ohlman and Kirschvink probably would have missed seeing it if I hadn't pointed it out. I had remembered the lower end of the trail not exactly as it is either. I thought I had walked up a not very steep grassy slope from the bed of the creek just above the Tapeats fall, but I found that this is much steeper, practically a small cliff. Rather than go down here and lose altitude unnecessarily, we went west and got down through a narrow break in the little cliff. Ohlman had come up the bed of Phantom Creek just the week before and he and Kirschvink had gone back through Trinity and down from the Tonto to the Bright Angel Campground. Ohlman prefers the route up the creek to the way over the Tonto. I haven't done the creek for about 25 years, but the overland route along the Tonto appeals to me. It took me just under three hours to go back this way from the overhang campsite to Bright Angel Creek and I think it would take me at least that long to go down the creek and use the Kaibab Trail.
After a rest and a snack near the overhang about 10 minutes walk from the Tapeats fall, we scrambled up the steep and skiddy route to the shale slope toward Sturdevant Canyon. I made the mistake of going down to the bed of Sturdevant instead of keeping most of my altitude at the pass. The walking in the bed isn't that much better. Ohlman and Kirschvink started later, but they got ahead of me and had to wait. At the place where they reached the bed, we had a discussion and agreed to split up. I left Phantom Creek with only two quarts of water while they each carried one and a half gallons. They were prepared to spend the night on the Redwall. I had figured on sleeping up there too, but I had thought that I would find rain pools. The boys would leave their big packs at the top of the Redwall and go up and climb the newly named Schellback Butte. I would come to the top of the Redwall and pick up a 50 foot rope that Ohlman would put out for me and head around on the Redwall rim to reach the head of Haunted where I would get down to water for camping.
I got close enough to talk to the boys when they came to the barrier near the bottom of the Redwall. I had followed the example of the deer and had bypassed this to the east, but the two Jims climbed up right in the bed. I had forgotten how rough the going is in Sturdevant. It is a mess of broken, angular blocks, and I needed 45 minutes to go up through the Redwall. When I got up, I couldn't find the packs and the 50 foot rope that I was to use to get down at the head of Haunted. Walking the Redwall rim back south and then north to the head of Haunted looked rough and long and I lost heart and started down Sturdevant. When I had used another 45 minutes to get to the bottom of the Redwall, the two Jims shouted for me to wait down there. Both of them came down in surprisingly quick time and Ohlman tried to persuade me to go back up with them and go through with our projects. I insisted on going on down where I could sleep warm with plenty of water. I agreed to go up Haunted in the morning and meet them coming down after they had had a crack at Manu.
After a very warm and comfortable night under the overhang, I started up Phantom toward Haunted Canyon, but the sky was completely overcast. It seemed to be getting more threatening all the time, so I changed my mind again and started to go out. After a three hour trip to Bright Angel, I ate an early lunch and reported to Andy Banta that he could tell Ohlman and Kirschvink what I was doing, going home starting up just before noon. I needed five and a half hours to go from the river to the rim, and I ended feeling pretty discouraged. I will have to plan less ambitious trips with people that are my speed.
I spotted one bit of cow or calf droppings more than halfway from the creek to the saddle.
Boucher Canyon
[March 27, 1978 to March 29, 1978]
In the fall of 76, after Royce Fletcher had told me about the possibility of getting up the Redwall in Boucher Canyon, I had done it with Al Shaufler. Then last fall Bob Packard and Jim Ohlman told me that they could also get up the Supai in this canyon. I had tried to do this last December, but I had allowed only two days for the trip and I didn't have time. This time I went by myself with a double purpose, first to have a short visit with Dock Marston and then to take my three day trip.
On the way north I stopped for a bit of chess with Dick Hart in Sedona and I had my dinner at Tusayan before going to the El Tovar to look for Dock. I was lucky since his party of five wasn't called to their table at the dining room for nearly an hour after I arrived. I also renewed my acquaintance with Art Gallenson and met the local minister, Fred Dodge, and the man in charge of the Campus Religious Center at NAU.
At the permit booth on Monday morning I had a good visit with Gale Burak, a volunteer ranger. Just about all the places allowed at the usual camping areas were taken, but they allowed me to go to Boucher Camp. I met a 48 year old Canadian, Pete Walter, who also was given a permit for Boucher. He felt that he had to wait until 9:00 a.m. to see whether a man would show with whom he had been planning a hike the night before. I could give him transportation to Hermit Rest since he had arrived by bus. No one showed, so we took off and went first to the Bright Angel Lodge where Pete wanted to check his tent. Here he met Ken Kehn, the man he had talked to and Pete learned that Ken was the one I had brought with me from Flagstaff as a hitchhiker.
Pete and I finally started down the Hermit Trail at 9:55 and passed two parties also heading for Boucher. The first couple was having heavy going. The girl was carrying two gallons of water because she thought the rangers had told her to. She was interested in meeting Pete since both of them had come from England. We didn't see them at the campground. Perhaps they settled for going to Dripping Springs. Pete had talked about his 20 mile hikes in the Canadian Rockies, so I didn't hesitate to walk at my normal rate. However, when we were nearing the bend away from Hermit Gorge along the Esplanade, Pete said that he was nearly burnt out. He blamed the heat, but I'll bet it wasn't over 78. When I had eaten an early lunch I suggested that he walk with some of the people we had passed and I went ahead with a 16 year old, Brian Cord, who was the leader of the group from Los Alamos. He is a good hiker and seemed to hike my rate. He finally said that the others were carrying his lunch, so he let me go on about 12:30 while he waited for the party consisting of the Cords and Talberts to catch up. I had needed to tape only one toe and I had no aches in knees or hips as I sometimes do. I just kept on going without feeling very tired and got to the creek in four hours and 40 minutes, faster than in 76 and even than 20 years ago. On Wednesday I came up the Boucher Trail considerably faster than in 76, six hours and 40 minutes, and considerably slower than in 1958 without a pack.
After a rest of 35 minutes, I walked up Topaz Canyon to the Shale Muav contact. Gail Burak had told me that one can't get through the Redwall and I was close enough to see that she was right. There was quite a bit of water here and there all the way.
When I got back to camp taking nearly three hours for the whole trip, the sky looked threatening so I moved my gear into the mine shaft. There were a few drops of rain and one clap of thunder, but the other campers needed their tents more for privacy than for shelter. I got acquainted with the Talberts and Cords from Los Alamos. They had me over for desert the second night I was there. My lighter weight down bag was just right and I wasn't bothered by any mice. The threat of rain passed and the moon was bright both nights.
On Tuesday I started up Boucher Canyon at 6:30 a.m. Most of the water comes from a spring near the upper fourth of the Tapeats, but there was more running water higher too with more of the bed dry than wet. There was even a small flow over a fall in the upper Redwall coming from a tributary from the east. I reached the first major bypass in the Redwall in 95 minutes from camp. It is well marked by cairns at both ends and even along the bighorn trail connecting. One has to look carefully for the holds at the steepest place, but I carried my nearly empty pack up here. At the second major bypass, more than halfway through the formation, there were no cairns. The grips were much more meager and I preferred leaving my pack at the bottom of the crucial place. I could see that the steep rock face was whitened by bighorn hoofs. When I got back into the bed, I marked the place with a small cairn but a big flood would sweep this cairn away. On the return I overshot the place to get down and had to come back up a slope. I was glad that I could see my pack indicating the possible but rather precarious descent. Fortunately, the smooth chutes near the top of the Redwall narrows had no water beneath them.
Where the Redwall opens out of the narrows into the cone shaped valley, I noted a large cairn that indicated a route to the east. I went up this talus filled ravine until I could go over above a fall in the highest part of the Redwall to the south arm of upper Boucher Canyon. Here I could walk up slides of rocks of all sizes with here and there some vegetation. As I approached the walled alcove at the head of this talus, I looked where I heard some sliding rocks and saw tow bighorn ewes running around a corner to the southeast. This seemed like the only logical route to go higher. When I got there I found a wall, nearly perpendicular, with rather meager holds for hands and feet, I chickened out. It seemed a little harder than the worst place on the route up Siegfried, and I hadn't liked that one either when I was alone. The bighorn tracks and droppings came right to this place as well as appearing all along the base of the cliff. I certainly wish I had been in sight of this ascent when the ewes were going up. It would be a sight worth remembering. It is this sort of route that I thought would be strictly a way that bighorns can jump down, but I wouldn't have thought that they could get up it. There was no other way for the ewes to disappear. I went back to camp nursing my injured pride with the thought that Packard must have had Ken Walters with him when he did this climb. Jim Ohlman may have done it alone. Jim Ohlman told me that he tried going up the Supai directly to the Vesta Saddle but that he couldn't make it. He said that the south arm was a walk up. This makes me wonder whether he has actually done it. The part that stopped me is at the base of the top fourth of the Supai.
I spent most of Tuesday afternoon finishing the March Reader's Digest and visiting with the other campers. On Wednesday I started out at 6:00 a.m. with two quarts of water. I had an empty gallon container in my pack, but I finished the walk out with water to spare at the end of my six hours and 40 minute trip. Four young men started later and finished the route in about an hour less time, but this is slower than my best in 1958 without a pack. It was a good time of year when the weather was not hot and the flowers were beginning to show.
Supai rim in Boucher Canyon
[May 3, 1978 to May 4, 1978]
I had been wanting to see for myself the way to get through the Supai near the head of Boucher Canyon ever since Packard and Ohlman had told me that one could do it (cf., the logs for 12/9/77 and 3/27/78). This time I decided to approach the area from above by following the Supai rim on from where the Boucher Trail cuts down into Travertine Canyon. Bob Packard had done this when he climbed Vesta. He carried an overnight pack to the saddle south of Vesta and got back to it from the top of Vesta in one day from Hermit's Rest.
After playing eight games of chess on the way north (5 to 3 favor of Dick Hart) I reached the Visitor's Center just in time to get my permit for the next day. Sleeping was good in the Jimmy parked at the campground and I enjoyed the evening naturalist lecture. The new displays at Yavapai Point are also interesting and Peter _att the ranger there, let me use his binox to see Cheyava Falls. It has been flowing well this month.
On the way to the Hermit Rest parking I stopped at a viewpoint and ate breakfast as the sun rose. There I overheard a young couple talking about being careless. The girl, Cathy Ausa, had dropped her sleeping bag over the cliff. While I was coming out on Thursday, Cathy recognized me while she was on her way for a solo hike to Dripping Springs. It was 6:30 a.m. when I got started walking down the trail.
Spring flowers were in fine bloom. There must have been at least 12 kinds as well as shrubs covered with white flowers. I recognized Indian paint brush and mountain phlox and one solitary Mariposa tulip. There were several that looked like sweet peas and one looked like a light blue daisy. I also had a visit with a group of hikers whom I overtook. They had camped along the way and were pleasantly surprised to meet the author of Grand Canyon Treks. I reached the place where the trail cuts down into the Supai near the head of Travertine Canyon at 8:35 and then continued along the Supai rim into Boucher Canyon with my pack until around 11:15. In Travertine and around the point into Boucher the walking was rather easy, but after that scrambling through the rocks and brush and along the steep shale slopes was difficult and a bit hazardous. I really appreciated the work that Packard had done to carry his pack to the Vesta Saddle before putting it down. I ate an early lunch and left my pack at a small flat place in the shale across from the north end of the Coconino in Vesta. There was a gallon of water in the pack which made it unusually heavy. After lunch I went on without putting more water in my half gallon canteen. It was good that I could get a little more from rain pools and seeps. It had rained a little only two days before.
When I was nearing the head of the gorge I began inspecting the ravines for possible routes. The view from an overlook convinced me that the first is a no go. The next one seemed definitely promising. I went down far enough to decide that a nine foot wall was the only difficulty between me and where I had been in March. Furthermore, there was a pinyon pine growing at the edge of the shelf and a limb, mostly dead, hung down quite far. I might have held onto this limb and let myself down, but I didn't want to chance any real problem in getting back when I was by myself. The next big ravine was also quite promising. There is a way down a chimney about 12 feet high. The crack is about two and a half feet wide and I have been up and down places that hard, but I decided against doing it too in order to have plenty of time to get back to my pack.
It would have taken me another half hour to walk around to where Packard had come up west of the head of the canyon. His break seemed like a very unusual break in the cliff and although I couldn't look directly into it, I could see that it is quite steep. I decided against taking the time and effort to see it right. Bob said that he had to strain some to get up and I would guess that my way involving the twelve foot chimney is the easier. To use it, one would go up the talus in the center ravine of Boucher and then follow the base of the top cliff to the northeast. I seem to recall that the place where I would need to hang on the sagging pine has a slope going clear to the rim of the Redwall.
As it was, I got back to the pack by 4:30 and could have carried it for an hour or more toward home, but by this time I was tired enough to enjoy loafing with my Reader's Digest. The night was so windy and my perch was so exposed that I didn't sleep too well. I put a rock on my pack to make sure it wouldn't blow away and I looked several times to see whether my plastic gallon jug was still there. I expected it to die down a couple of hours after sunset, but it was strong all night. Strangely it got quiet by 7:30 in the morning.
With the additional quart of water I had picked up along the way toward the head of the gorge, I had more than enough. Before I left the bivouac site, I dumped almost two quarts to empty my gallon jug. I got back to the trail in about 105 minutes between 5:10 and 6:55 a.m. On the way out, I stopped three times for some food and rest and I reached the car by 11:30. I met a few more people coming down the Hermit Trail. Some had my book and seemed really thrilled to meet the author out in the wilds.
It was a fine trip with lots of flowers and birds singing. I haven't seen a rattlesnake for quite some time, but I made a close approach to a harmless one. It was very slender, over two feet long but only about three quarters of an inch in diameter at the thickest place.
I felt that some of my weariness in getting out was due to the bad sleep, less than four hours by my guess. I felt that it had been a fairly good trip since I had learned quite a bit about the Supai above Boucher Canyon even though I hadn't covered the whole route.
Upper Paria Canyon
[May 10, 1978 to May 11, 1978]
Virginia Ward, her son Leeland Dickerman, Roma and I left Flagstaff a little before seven and reached the campground at the head of Paria Canyon Trail just before 10:30. This is 35 miles from Page. The BLM has a trailer for a ranger station near the highway, but no one was in it. At the trailhead there is a registration box with the instruction that you should get a permit by phone to Kanab if necessary. Roma and Virginia Ward drove back to Page and got a permit for themselves and also for us by phone. They were to spend the night at the Page Boy Motel and then hike down the Paria on Thursday.
I had been able to get the USGS Quad map Paria at the Glen Canyon Visitor's Center, but I didn't try very hard to keep track of where we were on the map. As soon as we came to the first creek crossing, I took off my trousers and walked in my tennis shoes and swim trunks. We had to cross in a few inches of water that was nearly opaque. As we went farther the flow decreased and what water was left seemed to clear up. It must be getting filtered in the sand and gravel. I didn't notice the White House Ruins, but I saw an old metal tank on the west side of the river. At one crossing we saw a lizard about nine inches long swimming. It paddled fast and carried its head quite high. Another thing that surprised us was to find wheel tracks going down canyon for several miles about to the beginning of the narrows. The only sign warning one about getting through the narrows appeared at the very beginning of the trail. There is a similar sign facing down river at the lower end of the narrows, but this one is more appropriate since it is only about 50 yards to the actual narrows instead of about four miles at the upper end.
At noon we stopped and ate until 12:30. Relatively close to the beginning we passed fretwork caves in the walls. A striking feature down in the narrows was an archway beneath a huge block of sandstone that had slipped down and had the small end resting in the middle of the bed. It was 1:40 when we reached the mouth of Buckskin Gulch so our walking time from the trailhead to Buckskin was two hours and fifty minutes. The distance is 6.8 miles so we were doing a little more than two miles per hour along here. On the return, when I was tired because of five hours of walking in the morning, I took three hours to do the same leg.
When we had walked another hour, to 2:50, we came to where a young couple were camping. They called out attention to a spring, the first one we had seen. This must be close to nine miles from the beginning of the trail. There are terraces for camping on both sides of the stream. Around the bend about five minutes walk downstream is a big cottonwood, the first one we had seen. We put our packs down and draped plastic sheets over them since there seemed to be a possibility of rain. I figured that I could reach my former highest point of last summer's trip in less than one and a half hours. About 40 minutes from camp we came to a break in the left wall where someone had installed a short tree trunk as an aid in climbing. Only a little farther there was a ravine coming down from the left. On Thursday morning Leeland went up the first opening and came down the second. It seems to be a former meander of the stream that has been cut off. A little farther we came to a gateway behind a column of rock that may have slipped down from the right. When we had been going a little over an hour, Leeland seemed to be slowing down so I suggested that he let me go ahead alone. I turned back at the end of 90 minutes still not sure that I had seen anything that was familiar from last year. On the return, when I wasn't taking any pictures, I needed only 75 minutes to reach the campsite. After talking with a couple of young men who were hiking past our camp, and after consulting with the BLM map they carried, I couldn't feel so sure that I had completed the route through the entire canyon. During the night I decided to go down river again and go almost twice as far. It rained a few drops Wednesday afternoon but the night was fine and there was no threat of rain on Thursday.
As I often do, I woke up at first light and ate breakfast in bed. Leeland was wide awake before I wanted to leave at 5:45 and I explained my decision to go down river quite a bit farther. He was agreeable to a lesser effort on his part. In covering the same territory I had been over the previous day, I of course recognized a number of features, but I wasn't sure where I had turned back. I had the topo map along, but I hadn't kept the bends in agreement with the map and I didn't know where our camp should be located on the map. After I had come out of the short, close bends, I was sure that I was past where I had turned back last summer. To clinch this recognition, I came to the place on the map where big and straight ravines come down to the bed from both the north and south sides. I was positive that this is where Pat Reilly had marked the location of the Adams Trail, a climber's route down from the plateau to the south.
Only 15 minutes of the 150 I had allowed for the down river trip remained. Rather than continue until I had to turn back, now that I realized that I had already overlapped my upriver trip by two miles, I spent the rest of my time going up the ravine. Other hikers had done this rather recently to judge by the footprints in the sand. It was routine walking between and scrambling over big rocks until I came to a vertical pile of chockstones stopping up the narrow canyon. There is an obvious bypass to the west, but the route has some risk. One would have to be careful on some exposed ledges. I had run out of time so I turned back without going up this most interesting part of the trail.
On the return I kept the map in my hand and followed all the bends in the river right back to our camp. With every turn agreeing with the map, I was sure I had located the Adams Trail. On the way back I met Leeland walking down river to meet me and we got back to camp by 10:45, just five hours since I had left in the early morning. The day had been cool and there were no flies to bother us. I had noticed a few mosquitoes in the night, but there were no ticks as there had been in Boucher Canyon. There were deer hoof prints along the bed but no signs of bighorn sheep.
After a restful lunch we got going about 11:30 and reached the car by 3:30. Roma and Virginia had gotten back from their hike down to the beginning of the narrows about 20 minutes before.
Lower Kanab Canyon and vicinity
[May 30, 1978 to June 4, 1978]
When I drove to the North Rim on Monday, May 29, I detoured over to Lee's Ferry to see Pat Conley and also to get the Rusho Crampton book. Pat was no longer working at the store and was on the Green River with one of his own boat expeditions. I must have been talking to Susan Hucheson. I wish I had learned her name and had referred to Roy Carpenter. I have found the book most interesting and well worth the price.
At the North Rim I had time for a good visit with rangers Fritts and Thorum. Rich Thorum is a seasonal and still an ambitious hiker. He has climbed Shiva twice and was more than willing to go with me the following Tuesday, June 6, when I would be back from my first expedition. I had to discard my first objective which involved driving out the Tiyo Point Road. There is still too much snow and mud through the woods in this area. I got one six day permit and then took a walk out toward Uncle Jim's Point. While so engaged I got a hankering for a different way to spend the six days and returned to the permit desk. By good luck I engaged some strangers in conversation about their hike to Thunder River and discovered that they were Jeff Preston and his party. Jeff had been on the phone with me from Boston.
I chose to drive the road not passing by Bee Spring since I seemed to recall that it is rather narrow and primitive. I followed the logging road west from the pavement north of the park through Dry Park and on north until you can leave it to go southwest down the main road that swings around to Big Saddle. Two or three miles before you reach Big Saddle I followed the sign toward Sowats point. There were a couple of forks that gave me doubts but I arrived close to the head of the Sowats Point Trail with nothing worse than some bad bumps over the bedrock beyond the cabin where the USFS sign says not recommended for passenger cars.
This trail sign into Kwagunt Hollow was familiar to me from my trip several years ago. It is well maintained and I was down to the grove of trees in less than an hour in spite of the fact that my pack contained, besides many other things, a three and a half pound boat and four and a half pounds of bread. I was feeling fit and I carried the pack for almost three hours without a break to rest my shoulders. The water situation was about as before, none at the grove, but some below for a hundred yards or more. Between Tuesday and Friday it seemed to have lessened and the highest pool in the Supai bedrock had no inflow. There was still plenty of water at several places lower in the canyon. I took about an hour to get from the car to the beginning of the narrow Supai canyon and one and a half hours from there to the bed of Jumpup Canyon. During the latter period, I must never have been more than 20 minutes away from water. However, these springs and all that I saw along the Esplanade and in Kanab Creek leave a white deposit on rocks and mud as the water evaporates. Worse, by the end of my time using that water, I was thoroughly miserable with watery BMs. I put Halazone in the Colorado River water I used and it was a big relief. I don't remember having this trouble when I was down and back overnight, so it may be cumulative. A quick overnight trip is all right.
It was interesting to review the route through the Supai in Kwagunt Hollow Canyon. This time I followed the main bed below the grove. About half way through there are some drops that give pause. For the highest one the route seems to require hand and toeholds for eight or ten feet. At the next place there is a good bypass to the left for a big fall and the same deer trail takes one past the smaller drop just below. The scenery through here is appropriately gorgeous. as I had remembered the fine narrows of Jumpup, but I didn't recall that it would take me about two hours to walk from the mouth of Kwagunt Hallow to the mouth of Jumpup. There is a lot of loose gravel and sand. I was so intent on the footing that I missed seeing the recessed plunge pool on the right. On Friday I was watching and noted that it is about two fifths of the way from Kanab Canyon to the mouth of Kwagunt Hollow. It takes me about 20 minutes to walk from the latter to the mouth of Indian Hollow. There is another landmark along here, a fine overhang where the floods have undercut. In early June this year water was dripping.
When I reached the bed of Kanab Canyon, I got out the topographic map and kept track of my position around all bends. I reached the main bed at 11:25 and the next tributary from the left in 25 more minutes. A six minute detour up here assured me that there is still water in a plunge pool. These stagnant plunge pools probably have better rain water than the mineralized water in the springs. Water begins in the main bed about where on the Kanab Point Quad is printed the first "C" of the name Coconino County. There are springs right in the bed that keep sand dancing and also some water coming in from the left side wall a foot or two up. I also explored up the next side canyon from the left, and one that comes down from close to the first "N" of National Forest. There was some running water at a couple of places before I got stopped by big blocks of rock. the best Shower Bath Spring is located on the left wall at the beginning of the name "Kanab" about three quarters of a mile up canyon from the striking pinnacle that is pictured in Powell's and Dutton's books. The water in the shower comes from ferns that completely hide a mass of travertine projecting ten or more feet from the wall.
There are two pinnacles that make striking landmarks but the northern one is the better tower. The southern one is only a half mile in an air line from the other and it is more like a broken ridge than the northern one, a true tower. I would think that both deserve names and they should be real challenges to expert climbers. They are not smooth rock but instead have a lot of cracks and rough spots. The bed has reached the bottom of the Redwall here and the towers go through the entire formation. It was 4:15 when I reached Hillers Pinnacle, the northern one, so I decided to make this locale my first night's stop. This is also where the main west side tributary comes in. Unlike the other side canyons, this one has a nice flow of water all along the bed clear down to its junction with Kanab Creek. When I was thoroughly rested, I went downstream in the main canyon to inspect an overhang behind the catclaws on the right side. It would be a good shelter in a storm since it is high enough for safety and I was thrilled to find an Indian ruin here. The walls are pretty badly fallen since they were constructed of water rounded boulders, but there is part of the mud and wattle roof showing. A metate with a 12 rowed corncob lying on it is further evidence of its age. The position of the metate and little five inch corncob would indicate that some white person had examined the site and shifted them.
Royce Fletcher and Donald Mattox of Albuquerque had told me that they can get clear through the Redwall in the pinnacle tributary from the bay northwest of Kanab Point. On Friday morning I tried doing this. It is a really spectacular side canyon with high walls above striking narrows. I had to muscle up using handholds several times. When I came to a pool that would require deep wading or perhaps a swim, I left my shirt and trousers behind and put my watch in my mouth. About the hardest place where I wasn't turned back was a chimney climb in a wedge shaped crack where it was difficult to keep from sliding out. Finally, when I was nearing the top of the Redwall, I came to a chockstone where I would have to pull up with a poor grip and slide against the face of the stone. If I had had a boost I could have made it, but by myself I had to turn back. The trip up and back took about two and a quarter hours.
Another feature that is interesting about the Hillers Pinnacle area is a steep part of the main bed on the south side of the pinnacle. Huge blocks have fallen into the bed making it difficult to pass. When I was here in 1957, I am sure that we got by without seeing the bypass, but now I noticed that I could scramble up to the right and pass the bad place on the high talus. When I got there I recognized that this had been a constructed horse trail probably dating to the time when Powell was met by a pack train in 1872. There were a couple of other places where trails formed from footprints would parallel the stream cutting across a terrace. I saw tracks of mule deer and possibly of bighorns along here as well as hiker's footprints.
I went up two more side canyons until they became too hard. One was from the west heading near the word "Boundary" of the name National Forest Boundary and the other was about a mile downstream on the east side. I believe this was the one where I stopped in front of a high chute carrying a small amount of water over a 50 foot cliff. This gulch drains the south half of Fishtail Mesa. I had also gone up the tributary that drains the north half of Fishtail. I don't recall the appearance of the canyon where I was stopped, but I believe it was a jumble of huge rocks. I was taking pictures through here, or so I thought. On my next to last day, the exposure counter was going on way past the 22 mark, so I opened the camera and found that I hadn't threaded the film properly and that I hadn't any pictorial record until I was on the way to climb Racetrack Knoll.
There are a couple of interesting features in the main canyon due east of the map name Forest. At a swing to the east, there is a huge overhang where the stream has undercut, and water was dripping from the outside edge of this roof. A few hundred yards farther, at a swing to the west, the wall is covered with a large sheet of travertine which is brightened with ferns and wild grapevines.
The river was at a relatively low stage and I could walk down southwest from the mouth of Kanab Canyon on rocks that would be covered by the river later in the day. Although the footing in Kanab Canyon had averaged a lot worse than the walking in the Paria, walking the bank of the Colorado was slower than either. I suppose that a mile an hour would be all that I could do. When I looked across the river from the mouth of Kanab, I was amazed that Kenton Grua could even get by without going a long way up. Perhaps he did. My plan was to walk down opposite Olo and camp. Then in the morning I would cross without my pack and go down to the mouth of Matka on the left bank. A nameless side canyon from the right at Mile 144.8 accounted for a rapid with bigger waves than those below Kanab Creek. At Mile 145.1, I had to step on a ledge that was only a few inches above the water. I could see that the river had been much higher. I found a campsite and then I began to think about getting cut off by a rise of the river. It wouldn't be bad if I could be sure that it would drop again at the same time of day, but there was also the chance that I was getting through on the low water from the previous Sunday. To play it safe, I went back upstream beyond this place and camped. Within the hour the river started to rise and the rapid at Mile 144.8 had extended to where I was. By the middle of the night the river was up four or five feet. By morning I could see that it was falling again, but it still looked rough for my boat. I decided to skip the plan of crossing and reaching the mouth of Matkat. However, when I had walked back to Mile 144.3 the current was quiet enough to make me think about crossing. To keep my hand in, I blew the boat up and crossed, drifting downstream about twice the width of the river. Cross currents were strong enough to put about a quart of water inside the boat, but there was no danger of flipping over. I got back just as easily and gave some thought to the idea of Matkat. I figured, however, that this would mean that I wouldn't get to climb Racetrack Knoll, and I might find it hard to get back to this quiet section of the river before the new rise would occur about 3:30 p.m. On my way back to the same campsite at the mouth of Hillers tributary, I inspected a couple of side canyons and still had several hours to loaf. I could have come up the side canyon that afternoon, but I was lazy and tired. By this time I had finished the Reader's Digest and was starting some of the articles over.
After my nearly successful trip up through the Redwall in Hillers Creek, I headed on back without keeping such a precise check with the map at all times. I had quite a chat with a young couple, the only hikers I met on this trip. The man, Eric Holly, said he had been in the Grand Canyon a total of 180 days and said he had been wondering whether he would ever run into me. His friend, Allen Claver, was carrying binoculars but he even had a banjo along strapped to his pack.
I had been thinking that I was somewhat overdue about seeing a rattlesnake. When I was walking in vines over the rough rocks to the horse bypass, I flinched and got away quickly when I heard the buzz and saw that I had stepped within a foot or less of a four foot rattler. While it was getting away, I had a good look at it, a diamond back. Two days later, on the open trail not far from the grove, I saw another only about eight feet ahead. It proceeded to crawl up the slope out of my way. Only when it was gone did I think of my camera. However, this was before I had rethreaded the film and I wouldn't have gotten a picture anyway.
When I was going up Kwagunt Hollow through the Supai, I figured that I could camp at the highest water which I remembered as being at the top showing of Supai bedrock. When I got there Friday evening, it wasn't flowing, but there was still plenty in a small pond and I stopped about 3:30 after a 5:00 a.m. start that day. I got away almost as early on Saturday south from the grove along a horse trail. I cached my boat and extra food, trash, etc. and proceeded in the cool of the morning at a good pace. In about an hour, I came on a fine grove of big cottonwoods hidden in a deep ravine. This is the farthest north fork of Indian Hollow Canyon. There was a little water on the surface even at the upper end of the grove. It seems strange that they shouldn't show water sources on the topographic maps. The Forest Service maps show a few springs, but the one in Fishtail above the Redwall is out of place by a half mile, and Indian Hollow Spring is shown so that one might not know whether it is below the Coconino or above. I knew where to look for it from George Billingsley's description. As I approached the arm of Indian Hollow just north of the main one, I could see the grove of greenery. Instead of heading up toward it I figured that I would see more if I got to the bed directly south of where I was. Incidentally, the horse trail is very sketchy south of that water in the north fork. I immediately found some good pools in the bedrock with a little water running into them. Strangely there was none on the surface most of the way up to the cottonwoods, but when I investigated, I found a good enough flow immediately below the trees.
It was still only about 7:30 a.m. so I put down most of my gear and proceeded with only my canteen, camera, and lunch. I found a place where I could cross the main arm of Indian Hollow without going far up toward Fishtail Pass. Something that intrigued me was to see a barbwire fence near the arm with the spring. In fact it was still in shape where it crossed this wash. The walking along the north side of Fishtail Mesa was particularly slow and rough. Above the bare bedrock of the upper Supai, the Blackbrush was thick and the ravines through the detrital slopes were frequent. I was expecting a horse trail higher, but the best bits of trail that I ran into were more likely to be down at the level of the flat surface of the highest exposure of Supai rock. Also, at this level I ran into small flows of water in two ravines. Toward the northwest corner of Fishtail, I climbed up to follow the nearly level surface out to Racetrack Knoll. When I got to the base, it was still too early for lunch and I went to the top with only my canteen and camera. The summit is about 800 feet above the Esplanade and the views down into the canyons were superb. My cairn was the first. The return to my campsite was routine but as I ran into one difficulty. When I reached the arm of Indian Hollow where I thought the spring should be, I couldn't see the grove up canyon where I thought it should be, and the bed where I crossed was completely dry. I concluded that I had been mistaken about the location of the spring and that it must be in some ravine farther north. Just before as I got over the rise north of here, I looked back and could see the grove. It was higher than I had thought. Then I went back down into this draw and walked downstream until I found my cached bedroll. In the shade of a big rock at a flat rock terrace on the south side, I kept very cool and had no ants. After resting an hour, I walked up the bed to the grove and found that this took 13 minutes one way. The bed was dry most of the way. It would be most interesting to explore the various side canyons that make up all of the net of Indian Hollow in the Supai. Perhaps one could shorten the trip from the north arm crossing over to Racetrack Knoll by going down the bed and then up the south arm and find a way out.
On this trip I saw plenty of lizards, the two rattlesnakes, an unusual number of birds including one raven, many wrens, many doves, and one ouzel. On a Supai terrace north of Fishtail Mesa, I came on a fine mule deer buck. Years ago Paul Martin of the U. of A. faculty was interested in the lower limit for junipers and was surprised to find them near the river in Marble Canyon. I found just two maverick junipers in the bed of Kanab Creek at a still lower elevation.
On Sunday it took me two hours to get from Indian Hollow Spring over to Kwagunt Hollow Grove and then I was feeling so poorly that it took two hours more to go up the trail to the car. I rested five minutes out of every half hour. I showered and shaved at the North Rim and after reporting at the permit desk, headed for home. Even with a break for a meal at Flagstaff and a long phone call to Bob Packard, I got to Sun City about 10:00 p.m. Bob reported great climbing accomplishments for Ohlman, Kirschvink, Walters, and himself. Ohlman now knows three ways to climb out of Little Nankoweap to the top of the Redwall, and three of that foursome climbed Ehrenberg Point as well as Alsap and Novinger.
Twilight, Music Temple, and Navaho Valley
[June 24, 1978 to June 28, 1978]
Roma and I couldn't get anyone to go to Lake Powell with us so we had a nice trip alone. We got away early Saturday and started gaily across the Wahweap Bay towards Warm Creek where we intended to stay Saturday Evening. I happened to notice the dashboard thermometer just as Roma smelled smoking oil. The water pump had failed and we were helpless in a rather rough sea that tossed the boat around in a rather alarming manner. Fortunately, we were in the boat lane and the second boat to pass took us in tow back to the pier. Finally we got our turn to put the boat on the trailer and show it to the repairmen. When I tested it for starting in the Lakeview Lake, I couldn't back the trailer in deep enough and part of the intake holes were out of water with the result that I had burned out the rubber impeller. They had that fixed before 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, but the mechanic noticed that there was water in the lower unit mixed with the oil and he suggested putting in new seals. We agreed and came back late on Sunday when they were through working the motor over.
We slept in the campground and on Sunday morning drove over dirt road 277 from Glen Canyon City to Escalante. At first I didn't think we were supposed to follow the road that leads to Warm Creek and Padre Bay but after following the old paving north and west until it had deteriorated to a mere track that crossed the creek twice, we came back to Glen Canyon City and got the right instructions. It was 78 miles by the way we went to Escalante and we met only two cars in all that way. The first appeared to be returning from Warm Creek and the other was only a couple miles from Escalante, so we set some sort of record for my driving by going over 50 miles with no other car. We wondered about ever getting help if we broke down. The experience of going up the switchbacks to the top of the Kaiparowits Plateau is really outstanding and we were impressed by the views. With a few picture and other stops and all the grades to cross washes, we only averaged 19 mph for the 78 miles. The BLM mileage signs didn't check, but it was probably because the 90 miles from the fork to Warm Creek must have included the road going to the Hole in the Rock Road and then to Escalante. We followed a new road for the last 34 miles that gets into town on the west side at right angles to the paved highway. We followed the paving back to Wahweap, three times as far but still quicker and easier to drive.
On Sunday evening we slept in the boat on the trailer parked near the State Line Ramp and then got an early start shortly after 6:30. The lake stood at 3647 and we could take all the usual shortcuts. We could go from the harbor area to Hippie Harbor across the west of the Rainbow Junction in 89 minutes. We looked at the camping sites there and then proceeded to inspect Twilight Canyon. Pat Reilly had told us that one can hike clear out past 50 mile Point and wanted to see what sort of boating it would take to reach the end of the water. It did get rather narrow but there was very little driftwood and we could tie in shallow water and walk to land. I walked up the bed for 17 minutes but I had told Roma that I would be gone for no more than 30, so I had to turn back when the walls were getting low. I jogged some of the way back and made it in the limit.
Next we went to Emmerton Arch Canyon (Music Temple) and found a good campsite rather close to a place that was taken by a party who were away for the day. I hoped to take an eight hour hike on Tuesday over the country I had seen in May, 1975, when we were with the Wards. Right after lunch I started on a short hike that would take me up the drainage to the east beyond the barrier falls. Much to my dismay I was stopped by a climbing move up the first crack only about 100 yards from camp. I couldn't seem to find the right hole that I had used in 1975 or perhaps I am just not as brave. We played scrabble and laid in the water the rest of the day.
Early Tuesday morning we moved down the lake to Hippie Harbor and tied up rather close to a sailboat whose occupants were still asleep. After eating breakfast here, I was still able to get away for my hike by 6:30 a.m. At this lake level there was no problem in walking around to the crack near Cascade Canyon and I had no qualms about climbing where I had been before. It is fairly clear how to proceed until you are turning toward the tower extending out from Navaho Point. From a distance I thought that my old route leading up a ravine to a stubby tower was hazardous and I continued to the left along the slope above the water filled canyon. I was able to work my way along and hop here, but on the return I used the old way. It was easier to locate and I am rather sure that it is no more risky. There was one more easily climbed rock slope before I came to the black brush flats to get around into Navaho Valley.
I should have hit the cow path and stayed with it until I could get down into the bed right in the main valley (the descent to the narrow inner canyon is on the east side). Actually I tried going lower and cut across several side drainages, but I couldn't get down into the main bed where I had been on Monday. These experiments slowed me and by 11:00 a.m., I seemed to have only one more steep sided gulch to cross, but since I had told Roma that I would be back by 3:00 p.m., I stopped and used a half hour for an early lunch. By 11:30 I was heading back and I used the cowpath most of the way back. I took only three and a half hours to get clear to the boat, so if I had used the trail on the way out, I would have made the main bed. In a 12 or 14 hour day, I think I could walk from Hippie Harbor up Navaho Valley to the top of the Kaiparowits and come down to water in Dry Rock Creek. Just as easily one could come back to the lake through Reflection Canyon or down to Hole in the Rock Road and also the descent via the old gauger's route down Davis Gulch.
I saw no surface water in Navaho Valley except for the lake in the narrows. At wet times of the year there are some seeps in the washes that drain the west side of the valley. I noticed a patch of cane just above the cowpath and there is a deposit of white mineral on the rocks of the bed. This may run for over half the year.
Something else worth mentioning is the great slide of shale forming a talus in the third bay from the south. There are spectacular narrow shale towers capped by a flat rock forming "hoodoos." One could go up two thirds of the way from the valley to the top of the Kaiparowits on this talus. I also photographed a mushroom rock down in the slickrock area nearer the bed of Twilight Canyon.
Horse hoof prints and cow droppings show that this valley still gets some use. It furnishes an awkwardly long access route to the steps going down to Klondike Bar.
Upper Boucher Canyon
[September 29, 1978 to October 1, 1978]
Paul Schafer was already parked at Denny's, Dunlap (or Olive) and Black Canyon, when I came to pick him up at 6:30 a.m. We proceeded to the South Rim with only a gas stop in Flagstaff. He surprised me with the information that he can get to the South Rim faster (four hours and 10 minutes) by turning off to Prescott and going through Ashfork and Williams than he can via Flagstaff. We took four hours and 20 minutes via Flagstaff. After getting the permit and eating an early lunch in the car, we got started down the Hermit Trail at 11:55 a.m. There were surprisingly few hikers in the basin this time, but we met a young couple coming back from Dripping Springs.
At the base of the Coconino we went over to the spring where there is a rock shelter, almost certainly post Columbian. The cement tank is empty and dry, but about 20 feet farther near the rock cabin, the little spring was running well enough to fill a small pool. Paul showed me the inscription the wall of Rohrer and Harry Kisslingbury, '89. 1 must have seen these names before when I was inspecting the rock cabin, but I had forgotten them. On our return on Sunday I photographed these names. The date precedes by many years the 1911 construction of the Hermit Trail, so it is clear that there were routes to this spring much earlier.
Traffic along the Boucher Trail may have fallen off because there were places where it is indistinct in the blackbrush flats above Hermit Gorge. Still we didn't waste time looking for it. I was having a little problem with toenails jamming into the end of the shoe and I also had to stop to put some tape on a heel, but we got down to Boucher Camp faster than I ever had before, in four hours and 20 minutes. Last March I had come down in four hours and 40 minutes, but this included a lunch stop. That was with cooler weather. This time the prediction was for 102 degrees at the bottom of the canyon. Since we were down by 4:15, 1 had a good rest and read Time while Paul looked around.
Along the Supai rim above Hermit Gorge, I missed seeing a rattlesnake until it buzzed. It was coiled but had its head down as if trying to escape notice. When we were going up Boucher Canyon on Saturday, Paul pointed out a rattlesnake I had just stepped near, only two or three inches away. It didn't rattle and seemed to lethargic to try to get away. These were my third and fourth for 78.
Mice or bigger rodents were a bother again. Something got into my pack and ate some of my bread. In the middle of the night I put the pack up in a little tree. This seems to be futile since something was in my pack up the tree during the second night.
On Saturday Paul and I started walking up Boucher Canyon a little before seven. I noticed the mescal pit with charcoal at the north end of the flat open area of Boucher Camp. There was a little less water in the stream than there had been last spring, but it appeared above ground at the same places. No water was coming over the fall from the east near the upper end of the Redwall Gorge, but there was a large plunge pool at the end of the western arm. I had left camp with two quarts of water and Paul had three. He gave me some when mine was gone after lunch.
The lower one of the two Redwall bypasses was still well marked by cairns. There is no problem here, but we walked right past the beginning of the second bypass, the one that impressed me last spring and where I left my large but nearly empty pack below the hard part. Paul and I went on to a big chockstone with a steep ramp beneath it. I must have looked at this in the fall of 76 when Al Schauffler and I had used the bypass. I couldn't remember going up such a tricky place, but now I thought that it had to be the only way. Paul and I studied it for some time. I finally gave my canteen to Paul and tried worming my way up the outward sloping ramp to where I could get a poor grip on a rock wedged beneath the big chockstone. I was just able to make this climb. Then Paul came up with his day pack on his back and his camera and my canteen hanging beside him, and he was able to do it faster than I had. There was some minor scrambling above the Chockstone. Before we went on up the canyon, we looked and found a clear bighorn trail bypassing this place.
We proceeded up through several minor chutes until we could turn east and get up past the top of the Redwall in a ravine filled with broken rocks. As I had done before, we then went southwest across a slope and down to the head of a fall at the top of the Redwall in the main arm from the south. It is simple to scramble over broken rock slides in the main arm until one is about 200 feet from the top of the Supai. There was no possibility of going either to the east or west at this level.
The places I had seen as possible alternates from the Supai rim last spring would have to be reached by going up other ravines from the top of the Redwall. I am sure that Packard came up the way I had in the main arm. Ohlman had gone through the Supai farther east using a different ravine. In due time we arrived at the cliff where the bighorn ewes must have gone up, where I chickened out and came down last spring. This time, with Paul watching and able to direct me in coming down, I was able to get up the courage to proceed. Paul wasn't too sure that he could get down first, so he waited below while I finished the climb to the top of the Supai. After this 20 feet the rest of the climb was no sweat for me. It goes just as Bob said, over to the right to the one break in a small cliff and then back into the main ravine. In getting back I mistakenly got too high for the best crossing, but there was little delay. Near the base of the final Supai cliff in the main arm I found a neat little spring. There was a pint of water in a little pool, but this could be enlarged. It would be a real help for a person who wanted to travel the Supai rim from the Boucher Trail to Vesta. It was easy to go up the main south arm at the top. There were bighorn droppings all along this route.
It had taken two and a half hours for Paul and me to get from camp to the top 200 feet of Supai, but then I used one and a half hours to get up the last part of the Supai and back to Paul. Paul directed me to the best holds for the bad place near the bottom of this cliff. I went down all but the last 20 feet facing outwards. About 15 feet above the bottom, I had a bad moment before I found a meager hold to keep from falling. We ate lunch just across from this place. While I was finishing he went up and down the hairy place without any help from me.
We got back to camp about 2:35 and had a restful afternoon. On Sunday morning we got started by 6:40. I got to the top of the Redwall at White's Butte Saddle in one hour and 23 minutes and from there to the top of the Supai in an hour and 20 minutes. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to reach the Hermit Trail. The whole trip took seven hours and 23 minutes.
Alternate Version of Previous Description:
The lower one of the two Redwall bypasses was still well marked by cairns. There is no problem here, but we passed right by the beginning of the second bypass, the one that impressed me last spring enough to get me to leave my large but nearly empty pack below the hard part. Paul and I walked on to where we were stopped by a chockstone that leaves a steep ramp beside it. I must have looked at this in the fall of 76 when Al Schauffler and I used the bypass. I couldn't remember having gone up such a tacky place, but now I thought that it must be the only way. Paul and I studied it for some time. I finally gave my canteen to Paul and tried working my way up on the outward sloping ramp to where I could finally reach a poor grip on a rock wedged beneath the big chockstone. I just was able to make this climb. Then Paul came up with his day pack on his back, his camera and my canteen hanging beside him, and he was able to do it faster than I did. There were some minor scrambles above the chockstone. Before we went on up canyon, we looked and saw a clear bighorn trail bypassing this place.
We proceeded up through several minor chutes in the bedrock until we came out where we could turn east and get past the top of the Redwall in a ravine filled with broken rocks. As I had done before, we crossed a slope and went down to the lip of a fall at the top of the Redwall in the main arm heading up to the south. It is no big deal to go up this slope covered with rocks fallen from above until you come to the top 200 feet of Supai cliff. There was no possibility of going around at this level either to the east or west. The places I had seen as possible alternates to this route from the rim of the Supai on my trek last May would have to be reached by going up different ravines from the top of the Redwall. I am practically certain that I was mistaken when I spotted a break in the straight Supai cliff farther west that I thought would be Packard's route. I feel sure now that he was using the same route Paul and I were on. In due time we arrived at the cliff where the bighorn ewes must have gone up, where I chickened out and came down last spring. This time, with Paul watching and able to direct me in placing my feet on the descent, I was able to get up the courage to proceed. Paul wasn't too sure he could get down first, so he waited at the base of this climb for me to try to finish the passage through the Supai. After this hard 20 feet the rest of the climb was no sweat for me. It goes just as Bob said, well over to the right to the one break in a small cliff and then up and back into the main ravine. In getting back, I made the false move of getting too high for the best crossing, but there wasn't much delay. Near the base of the final Supai cliff in the western branch I found a neat little spring. There was a pint of water in a little pool, but this could be enlarged and it would be a real help for a person who wanted to travel the Supai rim from the Boucher Trail to Vesta Temple. It was easy to go up the main south arm at the top. There were bighorn droppings all along this route.
It had taken Paul and me two and a half hours to get from camp to the hard place near the top of the Supai but I used over an hour and a half to negotiate the last 200 feet of Supai. When I got back to the hairy place near the base of this final wall, Paul stood by and talked to me about the holes. I went down all but the last 20 feet facing outwards. About 15 feet above the bottom I had a bad moment or two before I found a meager hold to keep from falling outwards. We had lunch just across from this place. I was longer finishing than Paul, and he went back to the hairy place and climbed up the 40 feet to where the rest of the climb out would be routine.
We got back to camp about 2:35 and had a restful afternoon. On Sunday morning we got off by 6:40. 1 got to the top of the Redwall at White's Butte Saddle in one hour and 23 minutes and from there to the top of the Supai in an hour and 20 minutes. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to reach the Dripping Springs Trail and another 35 minutes to get to the Hermit Trail. The whole trip up took seven hours and 23 minutes.
Reflection Canyon
[October 4, 1978]
Roy Carpenter and his nephew, Chuck, were already waiting for me when I arrived about 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday although our appointed time was 3:30. After I ate at the picnic area, we launched the boat and had a little trouble getting the motor to start. It seemed to flood easily. There was time so we went directly to Rainbow Bridge. Both Carpenters are enthusiastic shutterbugs and they took many pictures from all angles. Then we went to camp at Hippie Harbor without a landing at the marina.
We got away quite early. I had taken my breakfast of bread and orange juice on shore where I slept while the other two stayed in the boat. I was barely warm enough in my lightweight down bag and with one blanket over that. Also, I learned that mice are very active on this dry and bare peninsula. They ate more of my sandwiches than the mice at Boucher Camp even.
As we went up the lake I pointed out the site of Music Temple and various side canyons. Roy
wanted to see the mouth of the San Juan so after we had gone that far, I went on to show them Hole in the Rock. Then I took them to Reflection Canyon. The lake level stood at 3640 feet and the boat had to go between numerous trees before we tied up in a dirty looking slough near the end of the water. We left the boat via the terrace on the west and had to walk through lots of Russian thistle. Almost immediately Roy spotted a ruin on a high ledge on the west wall. He and I looked at the climb and I concluded that good climbers can still do it, but that for me there was real risk of a fall, and we turned away. Soon the way was through dense thickets of cane near the running creek. After ten minutes of this, we found the cowpath on the terrace along the east side where the ground is uncluttered and walking is easy.
Just beyond a place where we had to cross a gully, Roy spotted an Indian ruin which is easily accessible, merely a walk up to the base of the cliff. When we were through inspecting it and were coming down to the north, I noticed what I had seen when I was here before, a pictograph consisting of a bighorn sheep done in white clay and a peculiar design of double pointed wedges. They are touching each other and form a horizontal line of points reaching up and down. The upper half of each slender diamond is white and the lower half is brown.
Sooner than I was expecting it, we came to the place where I had climbed out on top of the slickrock country. Still this walk had taken us close to two hours. Here Roy and Chuck wanted to stop to investigate possible ruins and I wanted to proceed to try to connect a route to the road or get where I had been before on the north side of Lewellyn Gulch. Roy later reported that he had seen five sites and was able to climb into two of them.
This time I noticed a few fence posts (metal) and I went through an open gate where the cowpath went up. On top I went mostly north and west especially where I could see the impossible bed of Lewellyn Gulch ahead. Near the top of one of the higher rock hills I found a BLM survey marker in a rather poorly preserved cairn. Beyond here I went northwest until I either had to find a way across the gulch or turn more south to the base of the Kaiparowits cliffs. I had resolved to stop at 11:30. At 11:15 I came to a ravine in the bed of the gulch filled with slide material and I could see a similar access route on the other side going down into the bed of the other arm. If these routes could be connected along the floor of the gulch, they would save quite a detour around the head over to the cliff.
This idea worked fine. I had to climb over a couple of chockstone stopped narrows, but these places were easy. Furthermore, the very narrow channel at the bottom was most interesting with partly overhanging walls. I tried going past the place where the rock filled ravine made a route, but the north arm of this very narrow canyon soon was stopped by an absolutely impossible fall. When I went out the slide ravine, I continued until I could see that I was essentially in the clear to pass the north arm. The narrow canyon had become a shallow depression and I could have walked on to the road or back to the northeast where I had been the time I gave up and retuned to the Hole in the Rock.
When I had retuned to my day pack at the top of the first access ravine and had eaten my lunch, I was almost 15 minutes behind my schedule. Not entirely intentionally, I returned by a different route not so close to Lewellyn Gulch as before. I went south as well as east and missed the cairn with the survey marker. I was wondering how well I would get back when I began to see the familiar area leading to the cowpath through the fence near the bottom of Reflection Canyon. I had come back in 45 minutes where I had taken 75 in the forenoon. On my way down the bare slope to the fence, I noted two big potholes with standing water, the only water I had seen since the stream in Reflection except for a minor seep in a bank on my way up from the bed in the morning. Here there was a streak of wet rock with a growth of yellow and red flowers on either side.
When I got below the fence to the bed of Reflection, I walked right along but didn't miss the ruin with the pictograph. I used a quicker route at the end and got to the boat in about an hour along the bottom of the canyon. The others had been waiting for me for about that long.
I was back to the boat about an hour ahead of my projected schedule so I figured that I might do my hike in Twilight Canyon the same day. I only wanted to walk up through the narrows until I could get into the open. As we boated into Twilight, we got into the narrow part where the boat could not be turned around, but I didn't realize that it had gotten shallow until the skeg dragged in the mud and gravel. We brought the prop up and poled ahead until we could see the bed above water. We would have to anchor and I would need to wade for 50 feet before starting my hike. I could see that the Carpenters didn't want to come with me and I hated to see them wait so long. I decided to call off this part of the trip.
There was still time to go back to Wahweap and put the boat on the trailer. I did it awkwardly and I had to put the boat back into the water twice to get it positioned right. When it was finally set, the Carpenters took off to reach Jacob Lake Wednesday night and see the North Rim before they would have to start back to San Angelo.
I ate at the Empire House and then had a long delay while a young Indian mechanic tried to fix my trailer tail lights. They went out in just a few miles and I spent the night in the boat at Bitter Springs before driving here by daylight on Thursday.
Cave Canyon, Rampart Cave, and Quartermaster
and Burnt Canyons
[December 30, 1978 to January 3, 1979]
Jim Kirschvink left his car in our driveway and went with me to Havasu City to get Jim Ohlman. We left with Ohlman about 1:00 p.m. and reached South Cove about 4:15. We moored for the night near the mouth of Pearce Canyon. There was no wind or we would have been bumped against the shore. Ohlman and I slept in the boat and Kirschvink was on shore in his neat Jansport tent.
We moored again within the line of tamarisks on the west side of the Columbine Falls cove and started up a rough trail about 8:30 a.m. There were a few cairns leading above the falls, but the trail gave out at the streambed and we bucked brush as well as climbed over big rocks to get into the narrows. As I had done on 2/17/75, I finally quite trying to keep my feet dry and waded with my shoes on in the upper narrows.
The previous log covers the trip above the narrows and up to a barrier fall next to a blunt tower. We were stropped here in 1975, but time was a major factor since we had allowed only half a day for our trek. Jorgen had told me about getting up here without using any pitons and now the two Jims and I saw a cairn indicating that one should start up the place I had been before to the west of the blunt tower. This time we noticed that it is possible to climb up in the angle to the west of the tower. It is hard enough for me to like a person below to direct my footing on the descent. You reach a bench, narrow in places, that takes you around to the bed above the fall. This bypass is on the left side of the canyon when one is facing downstream.
About 100 yards farther up the bed, we noticed another cairn. The walking continued good, but about 100 yards farther, we found the reason for the cairn, another barrier fall. We went back and climbed to the east or the right wall. The bypass is longer than the lower one but not nearly so hairy. Where we came down into the bed, Jim Ohlman looked down a fall and saw quite a pile of rocks against the wall forming a large step. On the return he tried going down the main bed over this fall. He got down the first drop easily, but the next was clearly impossible. Evidently someone had gone down the first drop and then had needed help from the rock pile to get back up.
About a quarter mile south of the top barrier, there is a cave on the west side of the canyon up an easy scramble from the bed. When we came back from the junction of the two big arms of Cave Canyon, our destination for the day hike, we examined the cave and found an old broken shovel and quite a bit of digging in the floor. I spotted a bit of pottery and the walls and ceiling were smoke blackened. This must be the one that Jorgen and Bill Belknap found long ago. We reached the top of the lower bypass in about two and a half hours from the boat and we turned back at the major junction about 1:30 p.m. The west arm, from the scouring of the bed, would appear to be the main arm, but Jorgen and Bill came down the east arm. Study of the Grapevine Wash Quad shows a road ending near an upper part of this arm.
The way back to the boat was uneventful except that I appreciated advice in placing my feet at the steepest part of the lower bypass. We got to the boat about 5:00 p.m. and went up the river to a campsite with a fire ring about at mile 267. The night was very windy and we had trouble mooring so that the boat wasn't bumping the bottom all night. Furthermore, pieces of the bank broke off into the water and splashed the boat. Kirschvink had a better sleep on shore in his tent than Ohlman and I did in the boat. As I lay awake, I also began to worry about the effect of the dirty river water on the pump in the motor. In the morning I was ready to retreat so as not to get stuck without an engine.
The boys wanted to see the outside of Rampart Cave, so we went down river for eight miles. With the lake level at 1192,feet, we could moor clear across the cove at the foot of the trail. We didn't find the actual trail until we had gone about a third of the way up to the cave. The last bit up to the entrance was harder climbing than I had remembered. I was glad to use the fixed rods in the rock for handholds. We saw the plywood bulkhead and the plastic seal that had been around it to make it airtight during the campaign to put out the Sloth Dung Fire. The bulkhead was torn away, but what surprised us was to find the steel grill door standing open. The chain and padlock were still there, but the padlock was snapped shut so that we couldn't use it to lock the cave. The air in the cave had a bad smell and since we had no light, we weren't tempted to go very far into it. While we were going down to the lake, a ranger boat came along. We had quite a visit with the two men, Craig Dorman and Dan Shurline. They told us that a helicopter had been used in the fight to quench the fires, and that the whole operation had cost something like $100,000. Various experts had argued long and hard about how to do it and several ingenious and expensive methods had been tried. What finally succeeded was to dig a trench to bedrock in front of the fire and let it go out when it came to the end of the deposit. Only about one fourth of the dung had been saved for scientists of the future. The rangers were perturbed to hear that the cave was open to the public and they told us that articles left unattended in boats were now subject to theft and vandalism. They also told me not to worry about my water pump since their outboard motor had been running in that dirty water for two years.
With that reassurance, I decided to proceed upriver again to do some real hiking. With only a half day left, I took the boys to Quartermaster Canyon. We found a fine place to moor, in the channel at the mouth of the creek. We used the anchor beyond the stern so as to keep the bow from bumping, but we were close enough to step off on the bank. After lunch we proceeded along a dim trail at the base of the cliff to the east of the tamarisk jungle. We had to bushwhack a bit and then we reached the travertine slope south of the tamarisk jungle. Here we could go up and get down into the streambed above the big fall. I remembered how to go far enough south and then go up to the farming area with the barbed wire fence and the irrigation ditches that have been fossilized by travertine. I led the boys over to the bare travertine cone above the springs and then we tried going through the vegetation back into the dry streambed. It was a jungle of willows, weeds, and monkey flowers. After I stepped in deep water, we retreated to the north and got through to the dry bed. We went up to the mouth of Jeff Canyon before I figured it was time to turn around. We had seen mescal pits north of the farm area and we found more near the junction of Jeff Canyon and Quartermaster. In fact one of these was about the biggest and deepest I have ever seen.
After a comfortable night at the mouth of Quartermaster, we moved on to the mouth of Burnt Canyon. I had had to switch from the 12 gallon gas tank to the 18 gallon tank before we reached Quartermaster, so for safety, I decided not to go any farther than Burnt Canyon. After looking at the possibilities, we decided to moor on the upriver side of the rock headland. By 9:15 a.m. we were on our way. The tin roofed stone shack with the Ocotillo ramada nearby was just as it had been, and we soon located the trace of a trail on the hillside to the east of the tamarisk jungle. We had packs with winter weight bedding and food for three days. It took me about 20 minutes to get past the tamarisk jungle and the trees in the wet part of the delta. As I had noted in the log for 1/7/76, there was water here and at two more places only a little farther up the bed. With only a lunch I had walked to the junction of the main and east arms in two hours, but now it took me two and a quarter hours. Ohlman called our attention to the little spring I had seen near the Indian campsite on the terrace just south of the fork. There were icicles hanging from the rocks but the little spring was flowing freely, so I assumed it comes from some depth and is permanent. It was 11:00 when we left the fork and by noon we had come to an impressive gate at the base of the Redwall. There is a short cave southeast of this gate and the fire blackened walls and the charred floor show that it has been used as a campsite. We had lunch here in the first sunshine of the day.
After a stop of 45 minutes, we proceeded. I found that I hadn't drawn my line of progress on the map for the 76 trek as far as I should have. I remembered that at that time I had climbed about 200 feet to the top of the Redwall on the east side. This had to be north of the sharp, meandering narrows. We came to the top of the Redwall due east of the point marked 4370 on the Tincanebitts Quad. There were no difficulties nor barrier falls and we came to water in the bed shortly before we reached the fork. The east or main arm here goes up to Burnt Canyon Spring, and there is another spring in the straight west arm that is formed along a dike. Just north of the fork in the main arm there is a 15 foot fall with an animal bypass on the east side. The wall was well festooned with ice, but the running water underneath made a clear sound all night. In order to keep warm, I put my bed under an overhang to the west of the top of the fall while the two Jims slept in the Jansport tent below the fall. We were higher than 3900 feet but we all were warm both nights. We had arrived about 3:00 p.m. after five and a half hours of actual walking from the river.
To use our time, we put down the packs and went up the bed. In less than 10 minutes we came to a constructed trail down to the bed from the Esplanade to the east. There is a barrier fall north of here that would be hard for cows. We found plenty of their droppings on the Esplanade. We went west across the bed north of the barrier fall and got into the west arm. Here a barrier fall stopped me from getting to the bed directly but I found a trail on the west side south of the barrier. Ohlman called our attention to some igneous rock in the bed and showed us that this fork is fanned along a dike. We got back to the packs about 4:00 p.m. I had been planning to go back to the boat the next day, but when we checked our food, we decided to take a full day to explore the area.
By 8:15 on Tuesday we were on our way to climb Red Point, a long ridge of Hermit Shale to the west. As we went up the trail out of the dike ravine, we found a couple of cairns to mark the spot. The blackbrush was a bother in walking, but we avoided some of it by getting on a bare south facing slope, and eventually we got on a ridge projecting east from the main Red Point ridge. The boys climbed all summits of the ridge no matter how minor. Walking varied from simple to a bit precarious along blocks forming the crest of a narrow ridge. We think that the map is in error about the heights of the summits. The highest point is formed by twin summits at the south end of the ridge where the map omits elevation figures. The printed heights of the other summits should be interchanged. We got back to camp by 12:15 after a four hour hike.
By 12:45 we were ready for the hike to the top of the Shivwits Plateau to the east. A rather steep talus leads up to a break in the top cliff directly east of the stock trail to Burnt Canyon Spring. We could use the bed of a wash until the going got steep. We tried to stay on firm ground and follow a trace of an animal trail, but I slipped many times and it was slow going to the top, 2000 feet above our camp. Ohlman built a small cairn and then we went south along the rim. The view was great, especially of Red Point where we had been in the forenoon. I turned back at 3:15, but the two Jims continued to the survey point marked red on the Tincanebitts Quad. They had a good look at the rim of the east arm of Burnt Canyon and were convinced that there is no access route into it. They caught up and passed me just below the rim on the way to camp. I just made it in time to get dinner and set up camp by daylight.
Getting back to the boat was easy and I held the map in my hand and kept track of all bends down to the big fork. The boys went ahead and had time to see what I had seen of the east arm two years ago. Then they did something that had been suggested by George Beck. When he was in the east arm, he found a cave on the north side about halfway from the junction of the arms and the end of the line in the east fork. Beck had told me that the cave is hard to reach and that he had had a worse time getting down than up. What was most interesting was that Beck had seen split twig figurines here. With this information, Ohlman and Kirschvink were able to see it from below and climb up to it. With no light, they missed the figurines. They estimated that the cave is 450 feet above the bed and they reported that the climb is more difficult than what we did in Cave Canyon. The figurine Indians were expert climbers.
Kirschvink and Ohlman got to the boat about an hour after I did. We took the boat directly to South Cove and got it on the trailer before we slept beside the road about a quarter mile away from the lake.
Except for the fact that we came home four days sooner than I had planned, it was a good trip. I was especially happy to get past the barriers in Cave Canyon that had stopped me before. In Burnt Canyon I had done my 155th Redwall route since I can figure that going up the bed is different from the way I climbed the upper 250 feet up the east wall. Then I got my 80th named canyon summit when we climbed Red Point. I have to thank Ohlman for this since he noticed that it has a name on the new map. It was interesting to learn that one can walk from the river to the road east of Burnt Canyon in eight hours or less. I also learned the best way to go from a boat in Quartermaster Canyon to the farming area near the springs.
We saw quite a few ducks on the lake and a flock of juncos up on the plateau. There were coyote tracks and droppings everywhere, and we saw cattle and bighorn tracks on the Esplanade.
Upper Cave Canyon
[March 16, 1979 to March 17, 1979]
Ohlman, Kirschvink, and I had come up from Lake Mead to the big fork in Cave Canyon south of the Indian cave at the end of December, so I was eager to complete the route from the rim down to the bottom. Art Foran was near Ajo and he knew about my date to meet Bill Mooz on the evening of the 15th. He wrote me and then phoned, and he was waiting where the dirt road from Kingman meets the Meadview Road when I arrived about 7:15 p.m. We had a good visit sitting by a campfire while one of his kites carried a strange sort of tubular light aloft. Bill arrived and had no trouble recognizing my Jimmy even though I had been asleep for an hour. We were ready to move on by 8:00 a.m. Friday morning.
Bill left his sporty Studebaker at Diamond Bar Ranch and got in with me. Art and his two dogs followed in the Jeep. The ranger, Craig Gorman, had given me the idea that we wouldn't be able to drive the road up Grapevine Wash, but we found that this merely took care at a few places. I didn't need to use four wheel drive and the second half of the way to New Water Spring was still easier. From the map we knew that the road makes a sharp turn near the spring, but we had no trouble locating it since there is a tin shack and corrals nearby and a cement tank farther up the canyon. A very rough road goes up past the spring, but this is now impassable even for four wheel driving. The water is plentiful and good with no algae. We filled our canteens and took off for the end of the road near the head of the east arm of Cave Canyon. Jorgen had told us that this was the route Belknap and he had used.
At first we could walk the grassy banks beside the wash where the cows make paths, but before long we were down in the wash on boulders of all sizes. Art and his dogs seemed to be coming along all right and Bill was with them while I was ahead. Then I noticed that Art was out of sight while Bill had caught up with me. We considered waiting for Art and the dogs, but Bill assured me that it would be all right to have two contingents, two in ours and three in theirs. I thought that Art might be having a slow time getting the dogs over the boulders but that he would decide to take them back to the car if that seemed best. Bill and I were careful to note the various forks so that we wouldn't lose our way on the return. We had considered doing a loop by coming back to the car up a different arm, but I thought that there might be impassable barriers in the other arms. We reached the big fork in about two and a half hours although I hadn't driven the car quite as far as I might have.
We ate our lunch here and then Bill went down canyon to try to reach the Indian cave in 30 minutes. I had the impression that we had needed only 25 minutes to go back from the fork to the cave, but this must have been wrong. Bill turned back without reaching it. I spent about 50 minutes on a round trip up the west arm and back. I had reached the junction of this arm and the tributary going through blocks six and seven of the Columbine Falls Quad. The walk back to the car took longer for the uphill walk, but we reached it about 4:45. Art had driven off and we found his note saying that he had become completely blind but that his larger dog had led him back. He didn't say how long it had taken him to recover, but since he had driven away, we assumed that he hadn't been blind all the way to the Jeep. That walk over boulders, through brush, and past cactus would be no joke without sight. We wished that he had told us when this began to hit him and also that he had waited before leaving the area.
Bill and I spent a pleasant evening near the shack at New Water Spring. Before we turned in but well after dark, two identical, new looking, big four wheel drive vans came by without stopping and tried to go up the canyon past the spring. They got farther than I had thought possible and then had to back down part way when rocks at the edge of the track gave way and nearly ditched the lead car. When they came back they stopped and we learned that they had come in from Peach Springs until they reached the locked gate at the boundary of the reservation. Then they had found a way to go north and get past the fence. Their only map was a state highway map and they had turned north instead of south to reach the Diamond Bar Ranch Road. It was very odd that they had driven by us the first time and that there shouldn't be just one person in each of those big vehicles. It was also odd that they were using the Buck and Doe Road instead of US 66, and at night too. We thought later that they might have been eluding a road block to stop car thieves. Another strange thing happened that night. About 2:00 a.m., a car came past our camp and took the very obscure road beyond the sharp bend at the spring. Then when we were driving over this track about 7:30 a.m., we met these two people coming back. The driver said that they were looking for arrowheads, but I am sure that they hadn't found any between 2:00 and 7:00 a.m.
On Saturday morning, Bill and I took the left fork of the road about the middle of block 19 of the Grapevine Wash Quad. I had to look sharp to see this track, but it became clearer farther along. We parked when we were about halfway across block 18 and we went down the valley to the northeast. There were no confusing tributaries to worry us on the return, and besides we hoped to get back up the next canyon to the west. The canyon was similar to the one we had used the previous day. There was one impressively narrow slot of a side canyon. It appears on the map just north of the northwest comer of block five.
Only a little farther on, we came to a deep drop in the bed, probably 120 feet straight down. Benches on both sides gave a little hope for a bypass. Bill took the left side while I went to the right. He came to a sheer wall where his bench ended. He could see a ravine on my side but the possible route ended in a sheer wall of 50 feet at the bottom. When I went past this ravine and on around a corner, I came to a fine wide break filled with broken rock that made a perfect route to the bottom. There was no other barrier and we reached the place I had come up to on Friday by 10:30, two and a half hours after leaving the car. My tracks were clearly showing in the sand to prove I had been there on Friday.
We went up the main bed of the west arm only a little way before reaching another junction. The main bed comes from the west, but we now turned into the tributary coming through block six. It was more impressive and narrow than any other part of our two day trip. Just after entering it, I stopped to photograph a skyline arch. Bill then realized that he didn't have his camera and had to retrieve it from a short way back where we had rested for a snack.
Seeing a vertical fall ahead gave us some worry for a moment until we got close and could see a good way to climb past it on the east side. It was steep enough to persuade me to hand my pack up to Bill. We got out of the bed and walked over the blackbrush flats before coming to the road. It didn't take long to reach the car along the road. We had a late lunch about where we had left the valley because we had been waiting for a snow flurry to stop. We noted a cave up from the bed on the east side that might have been shelter for at least one person.
There was one Indian paintbrush in bloom!
Surprise and Lost Canyons
[May 2, 1979 to May 3, 1979]
Joe Hall had heard so much about Rampart Cave that he wanted to see it at close range, so we stopped and climbed to the gate. He got a picture or two of the entrance and we got back to the boat in about 75 minutes for the entire trip. We still had plenty of time to go upriver to a good mooring place in the entrance in Quartermaster.
Here things were very different from how they had been in January. We could step off the bow of the boat down a few inches to the level of the dry mudbank covered with dead wild oats. The land to the east of the channel has been burnt over some years ago and it is now clear and forms a good place to sleep on shore if desired. Joe elected to do this both nights that we spent here. The birds were thick: swallows, swifts, warblers, and especially red winged blackbirds. We could also hear the waterfall at the head of the tamarisk delta. When we had gotten settled, we took a short walk and could see the fall. The next morning we walked south on the best, but rough, route to the hinterlands and got a closer view of the fall. I have never before seen it running but now it looked almost as good as Columbine Falls. My Petri camera jammed again and I had to give up the idea of recording the present trip on film. Joe spent a good deal of time with his elaborate equipment taking scenery, bird life, and he even set up his camera on a tripod with a trip device for animals to take their own pictures at night. The night we were at Surprise Canyon nothing happened, but the second night that we spent at Quartermaster, his shutter was flipped but the flash bulb failed to go off.
We moved on to Surprise Canyon and moored at the edge of a gravel bar. I was careless about the depth of the muddy water and nicked the prop on the gravel. The first surprise was the good flow of clear water in Surprise Canyon. I had supposed it would be as dry as Burnt Canyon, but of course with more than the usual amount of water in Quartermaster and other canyons, perhaps Burnt Canyon is also flowing from the melting snow above. When I set off from the boat about 8:55 a.m., I waded away from the boat and then put my shoes on. There was so much water in the creek that I had to get my shoes a bit wet in some of the crossings. After the first half mile I was able to hop across on stepping stones and let my shoes dry out.
The part of Surprise Canyon I would hike through is shown on parts of three of the new seven and a half minute quads. I had them all with me and while I was walking upstream I held the appropriate map in my hand and kept my precise location at all times. I didn't try to hurry, but my steady pace was producing results and by noon, I was only a little way short of the side canyon that heads at Amos Spring. I had resolved to turn back at 1:30 or the junction with this tributary, whichever came first. I wanted to be sure of my location in case I wanted to come down from above and connect a route from the rim to the river.
I must have passed the mouth of the tributary about 1:00 p.m., a half hour after lunch, but I thought that the gravel and sand bed was simply an alternate channel of the main bed. As 1:30 approached, I began to hurry to get to my intended turning point, but there was no tributary. The skyline ahead made me think that there might be a fork coming, so I continued long past my suggested deadline. At 1:53 1 came to the place that had looked like a fork, but there was only a turn to the east and a steep ravine coming down from the west. (This side canyon south of the C in Surprise Canyon on the Amos Point map. In order not to arrive at the boat long after 6:00 p.m., I turned around rather completely confused. I hadn't been able to recognize places on the map for some time. When I had been going back for 55 minutes, I recognized the east side tributary that had been my objective. I had overshot my goal by almost 25%. On the way back I didn't keep the maps handy and concentrated on speed. However, I got a bit dizzy from watching my footing on the boulder bed and had to slow down. The landmark on the way back that I recognized was the one and only grove of cottonwoods which was about 100 minutes walk upstream from the boat. On the return I kept to the west side of the bed along here and found quite a good spring coming out of the bank. After the snow melts completely, this might be the only water in the lower part of the canyon. When I was only five minutes from the boat, I recognized a deep pool of the clear water where a bath and some swimming strokes would be possible. A sign that the river people come in here was a low dam made of large pebbles to raise the water in this bathtub. I got to the boat at 6:15 after nine hours of actual walking besides the time out for lunch. It was an unusually hard day and my feet were sore.
On Thursday we moved down to the mouth of Lost Canyon and tried to force the boat in through the tamarisks to where I could get out and walk up the bed. We must have killed more than 20 minutes this way before we gave up. I considered mooring at the west edge of the delta but getting out of the boat was no better here than near the mouth of the channel. Finally we tied on the west bank of the channel and forced our way up the bank through the jungle. On the way to a higher silt terrace that was free of tamarisks, Joe and I found someone's camp. There was a box of heavy wire mesh that might have protected food from rodents and a square board frame that might have formed low walls beneath a canvas roof. Tamarisks had grown up through these things.
I climbed up the dry slope above the delta thinking that I would be able to get down to the bed of the stream a little to the south, but from what I could see, the water was up forming a wet jungle for quite a distance. At one place the water would have been open in an area as big as several tennis courts except for some cattails. This may have been the lake that Marston had said someone had seen inside Lost Canyon. With some effort I was able to climb up through all of the Tapeats to the west of the jungle and it was nice to find the trace of a trail above the Tapeats rim. This may have been made by burros at some time, but there were a few places where it seemed to have been made by man. I saw no signs of burros at present, and the trail had large bushes growing right in it. It appeared very old.
There was a lot of water in the last mile above the tamarisk delta but the trail came down to the bed about five minutes walk above the uppermost spring. It took me almost two hours to go from the boat up to the trail along the Tonto and then contour back to the bed. After another hour I was at the end of the biggest tributary of Lost Canyon on the south side. The upper end of this arm would be walkable to quite a high level and it seemed quite likely that one could go around a point and get on up the Redwall and out to the top of the plateau. I didn't have the time or energy to try this, but I walked up the arm for 15 minutes and ate my lunch there. There was a little very old burro manure at the lower end of this canyon.
Clear Creek
[August 23, 1979 to August 26, 1979]
I left home quite early Thursday and stopped off at the math department and saw quite a few of my old buddies. Ev Walter took me to look up Lanny Westbrook who used to beat me in chess when he was going to college. Now I won three in a row and then we drew. After lunch with Lanny and West Brown, I stopped off at the Museum where I visited with Billingsley and exchanged greetings with Katherine Bartlett and Ned Danson. That evening I had a good visit with Tom Davision at his trailer after visiting Gail Burak and Mary Ochsner. Mary confirmed the statement that Tom Pillsbury and Dave had led a Sierra Club group up from the southeast to the Wontan Angel's Gate Saddle and had gone down into Clear Creek. Tom also impressed me with his climbing ability by telling me that they had climbed Brady Peak.
With my permit made out on Thursday, I was able to get started down the Kaibab Trail by 6:08 a.m. I visited with two groups of hikers down the trail but then I went ahead and was leaving Phantom Ranch by 9:00. For a while I was able to keep a slow but steady pace, and then I began to drag with frequent rest periods. The heat got to me and I also had to realize that I am a lot weaker then I was just last year. This time it took me 7.75 hours to get to Clear Creek from the Ranch. One shallow rain pool near the trail below Sumner Point was mostly filled with dirt now, but two fairly deep ones in the bed coming down from the route to Zoroaster were well filled with possibly permanent water. They occur below the trail just before the drainage joins the larger one directly below Zoroaster.
I started from Phantom with three quarts of water and still had some when I got to Clear Creek. I was very glad to sit down in the water and to wash off the sweat. I moved my pack down near the mouth of the canyon coming from between Royal and Wotan to camp just south of the mescal pit. Tiny ants were a bother in the night, and one even got into the ear canal. I could hear rodents working in my pack and toward morning something hit me on a shoulder and dashed away. I believe it must have been a bat.
On the next day, to try for Hawkins and Hall Buttes, I was away by 5:45 a.m. I found that I didn't remember details of the route up the canyon from the Howlands Saddle, but it gave me no real trouble. On the Tonto toward the Angel's Gate Saddle, I made the mistake of going a little too high and having to come down to cross a wash. Three hours after leaving camp I was up to the steep upper part of the route. There was a simple way behind a big rock that had looked discouraging from a distance. At one place a little higher, I shoved my pack up on a ledge ahead so that I could climb more safely. Then I went up and to the east where I decided to leave the pack with the gallon of water and my lunch. There was one more place that took a little care and courage for me at this age and then I was on top of the saddle and could see Hall and Hawkins. I knew that the higher one would take too long for me to go without water safely in the present heat. For some reason I rejected the idea of hauling up the pack with a rope I had and then going after at least one of these peaks. I was also set back when I went down the approach to the saddle from the southeast side. I got down where I could see two drops that looked too hard for me.
When I had gone along the Tonto from Clear Creek to Vishnu Canyon, I had formed the impression that there is a Redwall route on the west side of the Hall promontory, and from the top of the Angel's Gate Saddle I had this impression confirmed.
There was shade where I had left the pack, so I ate an early lunch. A fine swallowtail butterfly stayed close and a canyon wren also came close. On the way back I checked the route to the bed of the main drainage to the east. I had to go across one big draw, but I got down the next and followed the bed easily in shade much of the time. This was a review for me, but I found flowing water from below the Angel's Gate Saddle on down almost to where I had turned out of the bed to go toward the Howland's Saddle. I got back to the bedroll in two and a half hours, but this route would probably take longer than the other if one were climbing. The fine narrow places make it more interesting, however, and I had the pleasure of seeing a big buck with quite a rack.
My general weariness and feeling of indigestion in the heat and the poor rest at night made me decide to leave sooner than planned. After resting and reading most of the afternoon, I ate an early supper and started up the trail to Bright Angel Creek by 6:00 p.m. I got to the top of the switchbacks in 40 minutes, but the trail along the Tonto seemed plenty long. After walking fairly steadily in the shade for one and a half hours I found a smooth place in the trail and went to bed. I hoped that no rodents would fi