Grand Canyon - days 9-11

Photo credit (various pictures in the Grand Canyon series of posts) to David Bogle, Robyn Cantor, Art and Jillian Cook, Cathy Cox, Sheila Reiter, Leslie Reuter, Steffen Saustrup, and Sheila Torres-Blank

Mark had a plan for us to slow down a bit through this next section.  He wanted to let several other groups go on ahead, plus we had time to do some sightseeing in the middle of the more interesting parts of the canyon.  From my perspective, the even better news was that we were out of the major rapids for the moment.

So we hung out for a while at Emerald Camp at the start of day 9.  It was nice having a leisurely morning - thank you breakfast crew!

Mark had time to compact the recycling:

John went up the hill on a little hike and took a picture of camp from above:

Geology rocks:

Even higher view of the river:

Strange pancake-like rocks sticking out:

Another interesting feature, thanks for the photos, John!

Back at camp, the Sheilas added air to the rafts:

My standard position, sitting with the PRO "bible" in my lap and pencil in hand.  Robyn found something curious in one of the guide books, perhaps a picture of a raft tipping over in a big rapid or some such nonsense:

Mollie was interested in learning how to roll a kayak, and you can't find a better teacher than Mark:

On the river again, where Steffen admired (and took a nice picture of) a great blue heron:

Randall's video of our raft running Ruby rapid:

The North Rim Powell Plateau with many colorful layers is visible ahead of us:

We ran Serpentine rapid (class 7), and we must have been getting used to the big waves because I don't recall anything particular about it.

From the looks of Randall's video of Serpentine, we all got wet including the camera lens:

Looking on the left bank, we searched for the Ross Wheeler, a small tippy boat that was abandoned in 1915 (apparently small and tippy isn't the right choice for this canyon).  The owners dragged it above the high water mark, according to our guide book.  We finally spotted it and someone grabbed a photo:

We were really hoping to snag Bass Camp for the night.  It's a large and very nice camp, quite popular.  Mark wasn't sure it would be free, based on his chats with other people.  He and Thomas paddled ahead to check.

Down the long stretch past the Bass cable crossing, we couldn't see anything.  Were there boats and people?  Where was Mark and Thomas?  Finally Thomas paddled into view and waved us in.  We got Bass Camp!  I did a big dance on the raft, leading someone to remark that the verdict was clearly a good one.

I wanted to explore Bass trail, which goes up to the rim in both directions.  In my mind it's notable as the Rim2Rim2Rim-alt FKT route, one that includes swimming across the river in both directions.  Nothing I ever desire to try, but I was excited to see the site of the crossing and hopefully the trail to the north.  Who knows when I might ever get a chance to see it again?

We had been talking about taking a layover day somewhere (staying somewhere for 2 nights), so I basically begged to do it at Bass Camp.  There were trails, places to explore, and I could go for a long run for the first time in too long.  Everyone agreed.  Yay for a Bass Camp layover!

On the first afternoon, one group went for a hike over to Shinumo Creek:

Leslie, Robyn, and John checking out a possible route to Fan Island:

Kinda cute, also kinda not:

Hey, John found solar panels in the Grand Canyon!  Because, of course he did :)

Admiring some really old rocks:

On their way back to camp they got a picture of the rest of us, somewhere down there:

Other afternoon activities included dominos and games of horseshoe:

Who's the man?  John's the man!

One half of the amazing dinner crew:

And the other half - they joked around so much they decided they should have their own cooking show.  Something along the lines of "Camp cooking with Robyn and Leslie!"  I'd watch that.

A lovely rainbow!  Oh right, it rained a little this afternoon.  Just a sprinkle or two, if I remember right.

After supper and cleanup, in the dark as people were moving toward the tents, Randall came over to the kitchen to report that there was a ringtail cat on one of the rafts.  Oh cool!  

Several of us hightailed it toward the boats to see this curious creature.  It was roaming around amid the boxes, and when it saw us it looked up and I swore it did a little "hi!" wave.  You know, a "nothing to see here, no I wasn't planning to chew on all of your apples tonight" kind of wave.  Super adorable!

We moved most of the apples (the ones it hadn't taken a bite out of yet) to one of the coolers that didn't have any ice left.  I thought we were being nice by leaving it a couple pieces of fruit so it could finish what it had started.  It thanked us later that night by pooping apple tailings in the back of the raft.  Oops, sorry Jimmy!

I wish one of us had thought to get a picture of the delightful feline, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Day 9 haiku:

  Gem rapids are fun

  Hiking, rain, and layover  :)

  Ringtail in apples!

Another excellent breakfast to start the day - we certainly ate well the whole time:

I was so pleased to have the whole day to go run!  I would have taken more pictures, but my old camera had given up back around day 6.  I was still inspired to get my phone out for a couple shots during my trek up North Bass trail.  Yay for some on-foot time!

View up the creek:

I even met a group of backpackers, which was like finding a bit of civilization in the middle of nowhere.  They were camped near the creek, where the bypass trail started uphill.  Good morning to y'all!

The trail splits and part goes through a little canyon, but I was more interested in getting up high.  After a bit of climbing I was up on a flatter area.  Weaving around the tops of little drainages, I had the sense that the terrain looked vaguely familiar.  This must be Tonto plateau - I've run on the plateau near the South Rim and seen it from various angles many times.

It was super fun, finally a trail I could actually move on.  Yay for actual running!

On the way back I checked out the original Bass Camp.  I'm not sure why they left a bunch of stuff, maybe people came in and out a lot:

Inscriptions on a stone at the camp:

Leslie, Robyn, and John went on their own adventure, trying to get to Fan Island (from their prior day scouting).  It is confirmed, Leslie is a rock star!

Partway along, they were wondering exactly where their goal was, so they texted Dave (through Leslie's communication device, like my InReach Mini) to ask him where they were in relation to Fan Island.  His reply was that they were a couple miles from the river!  No, not an actual island, Dave!  Confusion on both ends, and a funny story later.

They did find the approach to the top of the "island in the sky" and made it quite a ways up, almost to the top before deciding to turn around.

An awesome view from their vantage point:

Excellent day - thank you for the extra time to go explore.

Ooooh, there's going to be cake tonight... I'm helping with a pre-wash of the dishes:

Jimmy's helping with water schlepping:

The scene of the ringtail "crime" at the back of Jimmy's boat.  Pro tip - when you are moving apples out of reach of an animal, move ALL the apples including the ones with bites out of them already.

It's a birthday on the river!  Happy birthday, Mollie!  Your Dutch oven cake was delicious (thank you Leslie and Robyn!)

Day 10:

  Running on Tonto

  Layover day - awesome day

  Birthday for Mollie

Well, I guess we have to leave this wonderful place.  My chair is packed up, but I can still work on getting ahead with the food pull planning:

Last call for the groover!  Oh wait, too late -

John is here with the poop cans, so we are about to push off.  Thank you, Bass Camp!

Pam and Mollie played around in the inflatable kayak, although I'm not sure what they're doing over in the corner, maybe waiting in an eddy for the rest of us to get moving:

Back to river-level scenery:

Mollie looks like she is having a blast:

Thomas looks like a natural in the kayak:

Randall's kayak skills were also improving - check out this wave action:

Steffen took some fun photos of the rafts going down a rapid, possibly Hakatai or Walthenberg:

Nothing too difficult today, just a bit of a drop.  I think Robyn's even smiling a little!

Leslie's getting good at this:

It started raining, and John spotted a slight overhang where we might stay dry (?) so he backed up into it.  Other rafts followed him over there to see what he was doing.  There was barely room for one raft under the alcove, and the whole idea of not getting wet from rain during a whitewater rafting trip was highly amusing to us.  Maybe you had to be there.

Our one pull-over for the afternoon was at Elves Chasm, and I'm really glad we took the time to see it.  The word "magical" is used in our map book, and I agree.  Peaceful and beautiful, with dripping water and a mossy green waterfall:

Yay for adventures with friends!

We finished the day at Blacktail, aiming for the Lower Blacktail camp on river left.  Normally there's not a lot to say about docking the rafts for the evening, but this was more exciting than normal.

In the process of running Blacktail Rapid (an easy class 3), Steffen drove over a submerged rock and the raft caught sideways.  Pam and Jimmy slid out of the raft, with Pam hanging on to climb back in.  Jimmy went swimming, and one of the kayaks went over to retrieve him.

Meanwhile, Mollie was also in the water, having flipped out of the inflatable kayak, and ended up swimming to shore.  I assume based on my haiku that Charlie was with her, so he must have righted the kayak and fixed that situation.

Meanwhile (!) the rest of the rafts tried to hit the shoreline at camp but most of us took aim too soon and got stuck in the huge eddy pulling everyone back upstream, sailing in at least one big circle.

It was quite the show, and I can still see a visual of Mark watching all this and shaking his head.

We eventually got all the boats and all the people onto dry land, in camp, and no one floated down the current heading downstream from there.  Wow, after 120 miles on the river, you'd think we could do better.

We hurried to set up the stove and boil some water to get hot drinks into the shivering swimmers.  No sunshine made for a chillier day.

To top it off, Mark wanted to take us across the river and back upstream to see Blacktail Canyon.  This involved using the giant eddy to swing the rafts around and then paddle hard to ferry across.  I was highly skeptical that this was a good idea and envisioned a raft ending up way down the river such that the whole group would have to pack up and find another camp down the way.

Mark rowed a set of people across and John was game to try, and I didn't want to miss the chance to see a pretty place so I reluctantly went along.  It might have taken a couple tries, and I might have said way too many words about how dumb I thought this idea was, but we did make it!

OK, it was worth it.  The tall narrow canyon is quiet and serene, a respite from the excitement outside.

Plus we got to see the Great Unconformity up close.  The lower layer is Vishnu Schist (I love saying that) at 1.6 billion years old.  Sitting on top of it is Tapeats Sandstone in horizontal layers, and it's 550 million years old.  Where is all the rock from between those ages?  An awful lot has happened here.  Very cool.

A nice view of us heading back to the river:

Sheila says yay, we made it!

Day 11:

  Elves, Blacktail - peaceful

  Charlie, Mollie, Jimmy, Pam

  Swim club inductees

Grand Canyon - changeover days

Photo credit (various pictures in the Grand Canyon series of posts) to David Bogle, Robyn Cantor, Art and Jillian Cook, Cathy Cox, Sheila Reiter, Leslie Reuter, Steffen Saustrup, and Sheila Torres-Blank

Things were about to get real.  I believe Mark called the next two days the hardest ones on the river.

I look surprisingly calm about it on the morning of day 6.  I think working on the menu and food planning kept my brain busy with dry land things.  Obviously I had been awake before first light:

Setting off, and it's another lovely day on the river:

Scouting Hance, a class 8.  There was a lot of discussion about rowing from right to left at the top, trying to hit the "duck pond eddy" behind a large boulder, and staying away from the "Land of the Giants" (huge waves) along the right side.

Even though we had the advantage of watching Charlie ahead of us end up too far right, each raft in succession had even less luck making it across to the duck pond.  Too much drifting at the top, not nearly enough "row for your life" effort as the river pushed each of us to the right.

So we were in the Land of the Giants, not where we wanted to be.  This was probably not the first time Robyn and I yelled "Hit it straight!  HIT IT STRAIGHT!!" at John but it was definitely the first time we really, really meant it.

I'm certain we got absolutely submerged, with water pouring over us plus everything in the raft.  John might have even gotten wet in this one.  We held our breath and hung on, through wave after wave, until we were at the bottom.  Then there was the Son of Hance, of which I have no memory.

OK, that was a bit crazy, but John did hit it straight (thank you John!) and all the rafts made it through without incident.

Mark and Thomas watched all of this from a "safety kayak" position, not impressed by our steering skills.  Mark told us that he doesn't give out "D" grades, and we didn't flip or lose anyone out of a raft so no one failed.  Therefore we all barely ended up with a "C".  We'll take it!

Mark trying to teach us how to do better:

Along the banks we could see dark Vishnu Schist and colorful Zoroaster Granite, which apparently makes for steep canyon walls and sharp, difficult rapids in the Upper Granite Gorge.  We had two class 7's to go, Sockdolager and Grapevine.

Jeff, Sheila, and Sheila starting down a rapid, possibly one of those two (although I can't place the location for sure):

Charlie coming out of a rapid, with Dave brave enough to have his phone out (!), while Leslie hangs onto Dave and Randall:

Here we go!  I think we're about to get wet...

On the other hand, some of the waves popped us right up over them:

It was a short but exciting day!

In order to stage ourselves for the "people exchange" the following day, we pulled up at Clear Creek camp.  It's a small beach and our tents were stacked up together, which seemed fitting (and comforting) for the last night with 4 of our friends who would be hiking out to the South Rim.

But first!  A hike up Clear Creek, seeking shade and a waterfall.  I could use a shower, sounds good.

Walking up the shallow creek:

What a lovely waterfall!  Perfect for washing us all off.  Sheila jumped right in:

What a great picture of Randall:

And Jillian  :)

Leslie and Dave, perhaps chatting about how this is much easier than expedition racing, once they got out of race mode and settled into "river pace":

Climbing back over rocks to return to our cozy camp:

Day 6:

  C-minus on Hance

  Love the Clear Creek waterfall

  Sad our friends will leave

Yes, it was hard to say goodbye to Dave, Cathy, Art, and Jillian.  They piled into the raft with John for an early departure, giving them ample daylight for their long climb up to the rim.  We will miss you!  Dave had loaned out items to almost everyone so he wouldn't have to carry them up the hill.  Including the shirt Mark is wearing:

The early raft, approaching one of the two Phantom Ranch footbridges:

After breakfast the rest of us followed in that direction:

Parked at the boat beach for a brief opportunity to run up to the little camp store:

Bright Angel Creek, looking serene and cool.  What isn't pictured are the hoards of hikers, mules, campers, all the people we saw that morning.  It was a bit of a shock to the system after a week of only seeing other people occasionally and at a distance.

Mark directed people to fill up our water jugs from the faucet (nice not to have to filter it for once), I grabbed a couple treats for John from the store, Randall splurged on a bag of ice, and we eventually reconvened at the rafts.

Time to welcome some new friends to the floating party!  Payton, Mollie, Pam, and Steffen hiked down that morning to meet us at Pipe Creek.

Gear rearranging with Sheila's help before jumping on the rafts:

I didn't actually witness their arrival.  John had parked his raft at the far end of the beach, and each raft in our flotilla squeezed into a spot next to it.  Until Jimmy tried to pull in and missed his last chance to sneak over to shore.  There was a rope tossed and a valiant effort to help us, but we ended up saying "never mind!" as we turned to face Pipe Creek rapid instead.

So Robyn, Jimmy, and I spent some time pulled over downstream, chatting and relaxing and waiting.

We even got to critique another set of rafts running the rapid, as we watched at least one of them catch a giant eddy and go in a big circle across the way.

Eventually our group was all back together again.  Hello John, we haven't seen you in a while!

Payton and Mollie getting their first taste of life on a raft:

Just over a mile after throwing their gear on the boats and jumping in, our new river friends got thrown into the deep end, although not literally.  Horn Creek is a class 8, and the good news for me and Robyn was that it was walkable.  Say no more, we were already walking.  Have I mentioned that we basically trained for this a couple months ago?  Scrambling over boulders but without heavy backpacks - yep, we got this.  Mark kept trying to tell us that we were less likely to get hurt in the raft instead of on shore, but we aren't taking a river person's word for that.

Pam also took the "dry run" route in order to snap some pictures for her article (link in an upcoming post), and I suspect there was someone else with us but I don't recall exactly.  Part of the "walkaround" included swimming along the shore next to tall boulders, also way easier on our mental state than taking a ride in the rafts.

It was quite entertaining watching everyone else run the rapid, especially Charlie who basically went over the top of one of the two rocky "horns" at the beginning.  I wish I had a picture of Leslie (the one passenger in Charlie's raft) as she almost did a split while bracing her feet between the gunnels as the raft tipped sideways.  Amazingly, they both stayed in the boat, it didn't tip over, and the rest of their run was fine.

Leslie proclaimed at some point that these rafts are indestructible.  I'm not sure I'd go that far, but every time someone tested them they passed with flying colors.  We all appreciated that!

Sheila and Jeff enjoying a break between rapids:

Mollie took to the whole experience like she was born on the river.  As a Binion (a big name in Texas Water Safari history), perhaps she was.

The 2nd class 8 of the afternoon was Granite.  I thought Mark had said earlier that we could walk all three of the 8's today, but he told us we should ride Granite because it might be tough to pick us up at the bottom.  OK fine, I reluctantly stayed on the raft.  

And actually, I'm glad I did.  Granite is probably my favorite big rapid.  It's long and has a bunch of "laterals", waves bouncing off the right wall and coming back toward us at an angle.  John ran it perfectly, aiming the boat toward the lateral waves instead of directly downstream.  It felt sort of like a washing machine, getting rocked from left and right, somehow not huge or overwhelming.

I'm pretty sure Robyn and I still freaked out, did a lot of yelling, and I said "It's OK!" over and over while she replied, "Is it?  Is it really?"

Charlie lining up for Granite, with Mollie, Payton, and Leslie hanging on for the ride:

If that had been the end of it for the day, I would have been fine.  But we still had to run Hermit Rapid.  While scouting it, I learned that Mark wanted everyone to ride this one too.  What?  What happened to walking all of these class 8's?

During scouting along the bank, I could see why it was better to ride.  It's another long rapid and it wouldn't be easy to catch back up to the boats at the bottom.  Still, "Mark promised," which led to some whimpering on my end.  John gave me a big hug and we all got back on the raft.  They're indestructible, right?

Robyn took over the role of asserting "It's OK!  It's OK!" all the way down the big waves, which made me laugh.  Thank you, John and Robyn!

Randall filmed an excellent video from the back of our raft at Hermit:

We landed at Boucher Camp and got to work explaining camp life to the new arrivals.  And celebrated surviving another day  :)

Day 7:

  So. many. people.

  We can't eddy out for sh*t

  Big rapids - scary!

Scenes from Boucher Camp in the morning - Payton learning from Charlie how to wash and sanitize the breakfast dishes:

A friendly neighborhood raven checking for anything loose and interesting it might fly away with:

Jeff demonstrating his "feet in the air" approach to abandoning ship during a rapid:

Loading up and getting ready for departure:

Day 8 was short, less than 10 miles, taking us most of the way through the "gems".  We just had to manage Crystal rapid, a class 8 and the only large one of the day.  Our book talks about holes at the top and a mid-stream rock garden at the bottom, but I don't remember anything about this one (in spite of the haiku below).  My brain was probably still processing the prior day's events.

Randall's video at Crystal shows that John managed to miss most of the big stuff, probably why I don't remember it - thanks John!

The remaining rapids were 3's and 6's, including Tuna (that's a strange gem), Agate, Sapphire, and Turquoise.  We were deep in the middle of Granite Gorge, with high dark walls around us.  In hindsight, I think I liked the gems.

Randall's video of Turquoise, notable for a glimpse of the eddy at the bottom where we spotted an unusual object amid the sticks:

We had one minor scare when Mark asked us all to hold up while a group around the corner ahead of us dealt with a flipped raft.  Oh my.  It didn't take them long to get themselves going again, and we suspect it was a "people raft" without the big frame like we all had.  Which might be more likely to "taco" and flip people out.  But easier to get back upright, perhaps.

I don't have much to add about this day, for once.  Here's a picture of our small Emerald Camp, with a beautiful sunset lighting up the cliffs in the distance:

Day 8:

  We survived Crystal!

  Someone flipped a raft - not us!

  Thank you, John, thank you  💜