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