Tough Weekend

We finally got some snow on Friday...not much, but it heralded heavier amounts near the divide, which is what the ski areas need and we will need when it melts next spring/summer.

Things looked to be good.

Saturday we were going alpine climbing. That night we had a couple of XMAS parties, and of course it was Marlys and my birthday's. Those were not so much celebrated as survived.

Then the shooting at Newtown hit the Internet and TV. Took some time for the impact of it to become known, but we couldn't stop watching, thinking about the parents, kids, etc. and trying to understand why someone would kill little kids.

The snow stopped.

We turned in that night knowing that it would be an early call to meet up with the other at Falls Gulch to practice belays, rappels, protection placement and removal.

10:48 PM the phone range.

A neighboring county needs help. A father when out to cut down a XMAS tree and didn't come home.

The morning just got earlier. Sleep escaped us, thinking about someone out on a "new snow" night in an area forecasting hurricane force winds the next day.

Turned out at 0330. Met up with the short team that was heading out in Canon.

Rondezvoued with the other Team at a general store in the Wet Mountains. People there included the missing persons friend, wife and children.

We headed up to the search area with the family following.

Marlys, another team member and I were stopped and told to turn the family around...their husband/father/friend had been found.

He did not make it.

We needed to keep the family back at the store, but we could not tell them he had been found.

We did this for about an hour. Then the family was told of finding him and their loss.

It was a very sad time after that.

Hard to celebrate the season that evening, knowing that there were families across the country that will always associate the season with the loss of their family members.

Forecast for bigger snows starting tomorrow. It will make it "look" bright, fresh and "holiday...like".

Snow Sky?

We need moisture! 

Hopefully the reflection of the "red sky at morning" really is forecasting some snow today and an even larger chance on Saturday and Sunday.

Yesterday it was close to 60 up here. Really doesn't have that pre-Christmas feel.

Monarch's Open House...The snow WILL show up.

Looking northeast out of the new tunnel @ the lot

We went up to Monarch yesterday afternoon for the open house celebrating their base lodge expansion. Monarch is very much a small gem here in Colorado and the feel is more family like then then the mega resorts.

Got up there about 3 pm and the lot had a good crowd of vehicles. The mountains are majestic...but pretty much bare and these are some of the highest 14ers in the state. Monarch is one of the highest ski areas with a base at 10,790"

Although the lodge is larger it still has the feel of the ski areas of the mid-west mainly Minnesota and the UP. 

In the corner, where the crowd is there was an assortment of local micro brewers, distillers and wineries.

The beers from Eddyline, Elevation and Amica were great as always. In fact Eddyline's Boaters Beer was my go to brew during the summer. 

The brandy from Deerhammer Distillers (Buena Vista) is very good and is distilled from wine made in Salida...very local. Didn't try their whiskey, a white whiskey (moonshine craze) don't know if it measures up to the shine from under the counter in a previous post on shopping in Salida.

Looking into the new tunnel from slope side

The expansion and tunnel will make moving around the through the base much more convenient.

But we need snow. Monarch got 13" last weekend, but have had to delay their opening which was originally scheduled for next Wednesday.

Looks like beyond the snow, everything is ready to go for a great year.

Family is coming in for Thanksgiving, so Marlys is going to set up the XMAS decorations  This is a multi-day challenge to accomplish.

Many furniture projects underway. A new maple/cherry tabletop, a chair made from a old plywood backboard and crutches, many bottle openers from the scapes of wood collected over the summer.

Marlys is also refurbing (polish off the rust) the old kerosene lanterns we have acquired or have been acquired for us.

We may also work in a trip to the "Peg" (Winnipeg). I know its the wrong way to go during the winter.

De Islands, waterspouts, iggies, cabbage heads, etc.

Just got back from the US Virgin Islands (USVI), mainly in St. Thomas, but we made it to St. John and the BVI's also.

Yes it is hurricane season, but that made for some very un-crowded beaches and attractions. We lucked out in that the weather was either 86 or 87 each day with a passing afternoon shower.

The trip down was a three hopper with stops in Houston and San Juan. The final leg in a Cessna 402 (small plane) was a 25 minute flight at 1850', during which Marlys sat in the co-pilot seat and we flew by a waterspout, which was pretty cool.

The trip thought Charlotte Amalie to Cowpet Bay where we were staying was pretty slow since it was Saturday night and there was a parade. I had thought about renting a car, but after a few minutes of riding on the left side of the road I figures driving it could be problematic. Beyond that the hills and curves even give a Coloradoan pause.

CK and BK were waiting at check-in and the island living began. CK, of course, had the clown bag with her so there was no need to pick anything up, just ask and it appeared.

We spent the first few days on the beach, literally just floating in the surf. We did do a dinner cruise to Christmas Cove on St. James. So called because Chris Columbus celebrated XMAS here in 1493. Which is surprising in that the latest book by Steve Berry (The Columbus Affair) would have you believe he was Jewish and only came over to hide the Temple Treasure.

Tuesday we headed to the British Virgin Islands and specifically "The Baths" on Virgin Gorda. This is a National Park and probably provides many of the the tourist brochure pictures for BVI.

From there is was off to snorkel, lunch and then to off to the Soggy Dollar on Jost Van Dyke. This is a island hopping stop where there is no dock so you need to swim in and then take your soggy dollars to the bar for a vanilla painkiller (rum drink that is very dangerous). Another swim out then on to St. John to clear customs and re-enter the USA. This was a 90 nautical mile loop around the Caribbean (south of the Virgin Islands) and Atlantic (north of the USVI).

Spent most of the week hanging at the resorts beach and watching the local fauna wonder around, which at first was pretty shocking, but the local iggies were pretty laid-back.

The iguanas were pretty much everywhere when the sun came out, eating a berry/plum that fell off the local trees. They would just walk by and look at you, but if you scared one they would stand tall on all four legs and run.





We did go over to the Virgin Island National Park on St. John. The main town is at Cruz Bay. Not very big mainly a tourist type place.







Trunk Bay is probably one of the nicest beaches anywhere. Except that Marlys ended up getting a Jelly Fish sting on her back. It was from a Cabbage-head, not a Portuguese Man-O-War, which can be trouble. Even though we saw a number of JF while out snorkeling she didn't even realize one got her until we showed the welt to the lifeguard. Rubbed wet sand on it to remove any barbs and then re-applied the sunscreen and back into the water.

Trip back to Colorado was un-eventful except that Marlys got to ride shotgun on the jump to San Juan and I had a baby kick my seatback for the 4 1/2 hour flight to Houston.

For a week at home it seemed awful busy.

You heard about the start of the week in the last blog entry. That was Monday, through noon, when the rain started and the day cooled off.

About 90 minutes after that entry, the phone rang and we had a mission to support Custer SAR (just south of us on the Sangre De Cristos) in the search and rescue of what initially was four people missing on Crestone Needle (14er), which is noted for folks taking the wrong exit route when coming down and getting lost or cliffed out (no way up - no way down).

I got a hold of some of our alpine and technical rope team members and we headed for the Custer County Rescue Barn.

Everyone brought their cold weather gear (layers, ice axes & crampons) and prepared for a evening out. As we crested the Wet Mountains and got our first good view of the Sangre's we knew it would be cold and wet. The Sangre's were capped with a very dark cloud bank and had snow down to tree line.

Arriving in Westcliffe the number of missing was now at two, a couple that had been out since Saturday. The weather precluded air search/support. These types of changes in the situation are not uncommon early in a mission as facts are being gathered and clarified.

As we geared up to deploy to the field, e.g stripping gear that won't be needed, splitting gear up amongst the team, getting maps, etc. The call came in that they had been found. This is always good news, now the wait to see if rescue would be needed. They turned out to be OK and could be walked out.

We stayed until released, then headed back to Canon.

The rest of the week went as planned, except for the need to call in a cable locater to mark the area at the end of road so that I could dig some post holes using Mike's trencher (more on Mike below). Getting a locater up here is always an adventure, will they show up...at the right place etc. By Friday at 3pm we had the power company locater show after Marlys ran into him a couple of miles down the road, after taking the ATV to collect the mail (5 miles away). She had him follow her.

While he was working, the phone rang. Chaffee County (west of us) needed help in finding a couple missing on Mt. Columbia (14er) that hadn't been heard from since they placed a 911 call at 17:30 the day before at the 13k' level.

They needed more people to go into the field the next day (Saturday) to continue the search. Had a advisement sent out from dispatch and started to work the phone to see who could go out (and making sure we still had folks here to handle a situation should if one developed). Decided on 6 people, two teams of three.

While making arrangements to send the teams, the locater turned back up at the house to let us know that the power went right through where we wanted to dig.

Turns out that before the afternoon was over the couple was found, and no one had to go.

Which was good because the weekend was already full; Saturday ATV certification training, Saturday evening going to the Springs for the CSSO Pops concert "The Music of Led Zeppelin, then Sunday's re-scheduled Flight For Life lift ticket re-certification.

Saturday's ATV training started especially colorfully when Mike, whom a few of you have met, showed up with the donuts...and pants last seen in a drug induced hallucination. Obviously he did not get enough attention as a child, or it was a plan to visually confuse other golfers in order to give him a sporting chance.

We bought season tickets to the CSSO Pop's series this year and the Music of Led Zeppelin, by Windborne was a great start. LZ music lends itself well to a full orchestra and Randy Jackson the singer they had covering the songs had the style and voice down well. I would like to see some of their other shows, e.g. Music of the Eagles, Pink Floyd, etc.

This is basically a traveling rock band and conductor that plays with a local orchestra. It is a great combination.

Got home at mid-night, now time to get ready to go to helicopter training.

I thought retirement was suppose to be leisurely.

Building a Spot for The Camper

We needed to level an area 20'x10' for the camper and Mike had lent me his trencher which also has a backhoe and a blade below it.


I have never run this type of equipment before and after using the backhoe to clear a few boulders, I figured out why you pay experts like Tim L. to do this type of work. If I had had another couple of hands and could really run multiple consciousness', I maybe could have watched and adjusted for everything going on when doing this type of work.

Leveling this small patch of dirt took me about an hour.

Luckily it started to rain, otherwise I would have probably kept screwing with it and ended up overdoing it.

They say part of becoming a great artist is knowing when to stop and say it is done.

Up at The Bank

The last two years our Technical Rope Team has gone up to The Bank climbing and campground for a weekend of training, usually starting on Friday night.

The weather cooperated after receiving a little over two inches of rain at our place this week, and Marlys and I got there early Friday afternoon to grab some camp sites. The selection was based on where we were going to train over the next couple of days as the backside of the sites to the north border on the climbing area called The Darkside (in shadow). So beware if you go wandering at night because literally 50' behind some of the sites is a vertical drop off.

We grilled once folks showed up and headed out to the cliffs about 7pm. We planned on setting up a lowering system and then a pig-rig raising system and figured to be done around 9pm.

So why in the dark? Because many times by the time a search and rescue team is called out it is late in the day or evening and the work we do ends up being done in the dark. We try to practice in the dark to get everyone use to it.

There were a number of new folks with us and after running through the setup and tear-down a few times it was 11pm before getting back to camp. Late but not too late for a beer and a smores.

We waited until 9am before gearing up and hitting the trail on Saturday morning. The training was a scenario where we have a disabled climber on a cliff face and we would lower a rescue climber, do a pick-off then raise the rescuer/climber combination back to the top. Because of the need for a victim and a rescuer we had two lower systems set ups, safety lines and a raising system. A lot of work, but everyone did a great job. Again we got a few runs in, we broke everything down and debriefed about 3pm.

All in all a great weekend, now I need to put the exhaust system back on the Jeep after it very inopportunely fell off crossing a arroyo during last weeks rains.

Part of this repair included cleaning out the interior. I transferred a lot of mud after laying in it to wire up WITH A COAT HANGER the exhaust system for the long slow 35 mile drive home.

Bottle Openers From Recent Travels

During the recent trips to Minnesota and around Colorado, I have attempted to collect a piece of wood in most of the locals to make into bottle openers.

With the Summer travels coming to an end a few days in the shop resulted in these.

There is wood from the Alpine Loop below Handies (fifth from right), Monarch (2nd from left), Dan's place in Minni (third from left) and Democrat-Cameron-Lincoln-Bross (sixth from left or right). The one on the far left is curly Redwood from Eureka, CA. The wild striped one is from a piece of Gambrel Oak (scrub Oak) cut from behind the house when doing fire mitigation.

Haven't spent much time in the shop this Summer, but hopefully things will slow down this Fall and I can get in there. Found a source for curly maple and cherry up here in my area for the new table top Marlys has been asking about for a year now.

Handies, Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln & Bross

Two days, five 14er's.

We were in Steamboat Springs last weekend meeting some friends, before driving to Lake City, Colorado to start a week of 14er hikes.

Steamboat Lake State Park has a nice campground and the DOW Ranger gave a great talk on Saturday night (PowerPoint under the stars) about Mountain Lions. He addressed many of the myths and legends. My main take away was his statement that in his 32 years of being a Field DOW Agent he had only seen a mountain lion once when not specifically looking for one. So I guess casually running into one is pretty remote, even for those folks whose job it is to be in the bush most of the time.

On the way we stopped for a night at the Monarch Park campground and the views were in the million dollar category.

The fire-pit design at the campground turned in to a must have for CK, so one of the prison cell doors behind the shop is going to be re-purposed as a fire grill along with three big slabs of rough granite for the yard in Laporte.

It should be nice if you have access to skid loader to put it all together.

Monday we got to Lake City, Colorado which is positioned in a small valley with the Alpine Loop giveing access to the surrounding San Juan Mtns.

The campsite here was in a private campground and was a little tight compared to the State and National campgrounds. Luckily it rained most of Monday so we didn't need to be outside.

BK did a masterful job of backing in his 26' trailer.

Even getting the camper on the truck into the spot on the river required backing around a building and a couple of trailers.

The people in the campground (mostly from Oklahoma and Texas) were exceptionally friendly.

I rented a jeep for the trip up the Alpine Loop to the trail-head for Handies, which other then the 20+ mile drive in was about the easiest 14er I have been up.

The surrounding mountains were exceptionally rugged and provided some of the best views in the San Juan's.

BTW that is Sloane Lake beside my left hand in the background.

I also forgot the traditional sign.

It was a 3 1/2 hour round trip on the trail. Even for its relative remoteness there were a number of folks on the trail. This is a highly recommended 14er especially for first timers.

Tuesday evening we went to a presentation at the Lake City Arts Center about a trekking trip to Mt. Everest. The theater was full and the presentation was well thought out and delivered, too bad a few of the questioners afterwards hadn't put as much thought in to their questions, e.g Are the rocks wavy in the Himalayas?

Mid-week it was back to Pinon Rock and a trip to the Springs to pickup BK's pal Warren.

On Friday it was off to Hartsel to watch the 5th stage of the USA Procycling Challenge.

Sat there for about an hour to watch a 10 second mass of riders scream by. At least I can say I have been to a bike race now.

The pre-parade  and post-parade of motorcycles and cars dwarfed the peloton.

Saturday it was up at 4am and off to Park county to do the Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, Bross loop of 14ers.

The days forecast called for a 40% chance of thunder storms after noon so the plan was to get around the cirque and back to Kite Lake early afternoon.

We hit the trail at 6am after what seemed like a rush hour scrum of vehicles heading out of Alma. We opted to pay the $3 bucks to park closer to the trail-head.

I last did these 4 peaks in 2009 and they seemed to have gotten higher in the last three years or ...

We hustled from Democrat to Cameron, which in my mind is a true 14er even though the cartographers will use some type of relief rational to say it isn't.

They obviously have not made the transit of the saddle from Democrat to Cameron.

Last time it had started to over develop during the transition from Cameron to Lincoln, but not today, looked like the forecasters may have gotten it wrong.

The Lincoln summit is pretty small and has plenty of places to fall off it to the east, south and west. We spent a few minutes taking pics and then headed for the final peak of the loop.

Its a pretty straight forward walk from Lincoln to Bross where you "wink, wink, nod, nod" bypass the actual summit due to a private property issue.

This summit is huge (from Google Sat Pics ;> ), you may need to walk around to three separate high spots thinking that each is the highest then realizing that the first spot was indeed the summit...I am just saying from Sat Pic observations.

At this point you are 1.5 miles from the Kite Lake parking areas, but it is one of the toughest downhill trails I have experienced.

By the time you get back to the lot, you just want to pack up and get a Diet Coke in town.

In 2009 I did the loop in 6:30 hours. This time I had trekking poles which really gave me some speed and set a personal best of 6:25 hours. I am not getting older, just faster.

Moondance & AirVenture

Last couple of weeks were spent in Minnesota at the 3 day Moondance Jam in Walker, and then on to Oshkosh for the EAA AirVenture.

First, Moondance, all I can say is Kid Rock...rocks! Heart and Don Felder weren't bad either. Never new Heart had so many hits, I recognized everyone of them.

After a brewery tour trip down to Oshkosh, which saw us at the Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls and then the Point Brewery in Steven Point, we were at Oshkosh for two day OD'ing on aviation.

I am always amazed at the number of aircraft jamming this airport during the show.

Spent a bit of time looking at the Beech Staggerwings, which is my favorite vintage plane. They still look sleek 80 years after they started building them.

Also stopped in to listen to a couple of talks in the Forum Area; one on the retrieval of the P-38 from under the ice in Greenland...yes I saw the show on the Discovery Channel, but hearing about it, in person, adds much more depth (pun intended) to the adventure, then Dick Rutan (Burt's brother) talked about a number of his "oh, shit" moments, e.g. taking off in the Voyager for the round the world record, dropping a plane through the ice at the North Pole and attempting to balloon around the world. Great stories and it is nice to know that even a big time test pilots sometimes has oops moments.

Also had a chance to look up close at the new Ford GT super-car. It's a cool car, but if I wanted to show off the engine compartment, as that seem to want to with its transparent covers, I sure would have spent a little time and a couple more bucks making it look good. Enzo Ferrari always required that tubing, wiring and piping be hidden from view in his super-cars. Squeeze clips, black hoses have no place in a $150K car.

Table and Chair

Its been a busy (with other things) and slow season (no time) in that I have only built one skiadirondack chair so far, but it is a sweet one.

This chair is a slightly different design in that Derek added some sweeping lines to my standard templates.

The idea was to make the chair reflect flowing/blowing snow, but still stay with the angles and dimensions of the chairs that sit so well.

Originally I was going to use white Army skis, which are white with no graphics, as you would expect. They are white, but not white-white so they did not match well with the chair white.

I switched to these 90's era head skis that have a carbon fiber fabric look. Also noticed that all of the screw holes have been plugged.

I have decided that the army skis will go on a frame that is painted in winter camo, e.g. white, grey and black. Stay tuned.

I also had a slab of beetle-kill Ponderosa in the rack that fit well for a "sofa table" that against a stair railing that would not overpower the space.

Besides the beetle-kill top and shelf, the legs are made from Fir and the stretchers are from curly Redwood, the last of the pallet load I bough when building the house.

It is one of my best tables.

We are off to Moondance Jam in Walker, MN  and then the EAA Airventure in Oshkosh next week.

The All-Nighter

Now that folks are in the outdoors the SAR business has really picked up. You have to have people to have missing or injured folks and the need for a search and/or rescue, although with the wildfires in the area we can also get called out for area evacuations and road control.

We spent three days towards the end of June with the dogs of Colorado Forensic Canines looking for a person associated with an abandoned car, from back in April, up in Phantom Canyon.

There were four handler/dog teams, we put a SAR person with each for navigation, communications and hopefully to guide the recovery.

The teams were from different parts of Colorado and the dogs were all types from a retriever to a doberman. These dogs were amazing in how they worked an area. Although we had some areas of interest for a more intense search when the temps cool down, we didn't find our missing person.

The dogs though had a end of mission success, when the handlers buried a rib and a number of teeth, for them to search and indicate. Its amazing! I asked how old a bone could be and still be found, they said they had just come back from a Civil War burial mission, so over a hundred years. The dogs ignore any bone that isn't human. Cool people and dogs to with which to work.

We also had a search last week in the Wet Mountains that ended succesfully, in that the person walked out from his last reported position, about 16+ miles. His last reported position had his ATV in a tree, in a ravine.

Yesterday we had an all-nighter to bring out a teenager with a broken leg in some pretty rough country. Dispatch had called for ATV's, so the thinking was, based on the mentioned trail-head, that it would be a relatively fast, ride in, package the subject, load him onto the litter trailer and bing, bang, boom we're out of there in a couple of hours.

But as we were driving the 11 miles up into the mountains, the radio traffic clarified that the trail our subject was on was not the ATV trail going to the east, from the trail-head parking area, but across the road to the west. 

Hunters don't even like going up this trail looking for elk, and they will go most anywhere they hear a bugling critter.

That changed everything and kinda took the wind out of peoples sails as we now knew it was going to be a grind in and up, and then even more so coming out with the subject, all in the dark.

Took us a couple of hours, starting at 8:45pm, to hike/climb in the couple of miles, to where he was located, and once the follow-on teams, with the litter and additional medical gear, arrived, it would take us the rest of the night to evacuate him. The trail slope averaged, a low angle rescue classification. There were only two areas, I can recall as leveling out a little, and of course many areas that took the slope angle higher, more on that later.

Marlys, Jody and I were the first team (medical) up the trail. We got to him at about 10:30pm. Jody and Marlys did the medical work, while I handled logistics and communications, which surprisingly were pretty good, something I never count on around here, even though we carry both 800mhz and VHF radios. Verizon was of course a no bars (can you hear me now, nope, normal), but the subject was with ATT and they were able to triangulate and give us a good location before we headed up.

I was looking hard for a heli LZ all the way up, but the map had indicated that was probably a losing proposition due to trees and terrain steepness. Might have been able to use a military medivac chopper out of Ft. Carson, as the new Lakota's have winches and canopy penatrators, but it would have been mid-morning to get a mission for them approved and put together, and we planned to be out by then.

The young man's dad said the trees cleared out about another mile up mountain, but that it was real steep and a talus/scree field. SO, a move UP another mile in the dark and very steep, rough terrain to a maybe baby? No way.

I busied myself over the next two hours, as equipment and additional teams arrived staging gear and people, giving medical updates to base, and staying out of Jody and Marlys way.

We got him packaged up and moving down trail at 12:45am. We ran into the last evac team (read additional muscle) just as we hit the trail. I was thinking a few hours to the trail-head. Within minutes we were to the first belay point and my ETA's started to slip. By the end of the evac the team was very good at litter belays.

We moved the litter downhill to the trail-head, with I can't tell you how many belays, I stopped counting at a dozen. The heli swooped in flying up the road between high steep ridges on both sides (it was very cool) within minutes and picked him up at 7am. He was a trooper, 12 hours with a backcountry broken leg and a "as gentle as you can make it" litter ride to the trailhead.

He had 20 people in the field. Between rope teams leap frogging down the mountain, the litter teams keeping things balanced, doing caterpillar passes over and between rocks and the endless number of belays, I could not have been more prouder of a group of folks.

We were SAR zombies once our charge was airborne, dumped gear in cars, got the equipment stowed and ready for the next call-out (which could have happened anytime), hydrated, de-briefed, filled out reports and then headed for home.

Started this season where I ended lasts.

Last 14er for 2011 was Mt. Sherman in the cold cloudy, windy and icy conditions.

Last Saturday's hike couldn't have been more different. Relatively warm, no summit cloud and no wind.

Plenty of people took advantage of the weather, which made for a bit of a traffic jam on the summit crest, and I have never seen more dogs on the trail.

By the time we left the sky was OD'ing and thunderboomers were not far off.

Grand Canyon Loop - South Kaibab-Bright Angel

I have mentioned it a few times, but last week Marlys and I exercised our back country permit and became part of the 5% of Grand Canyon visitors that go below the rim.

The challenge of getting the permit were documented in posts from earlier this year, so when we showed up in the park last Tuesday afternoon we went to the Back County Center to check in (not needed/nor does it seem wanted) and saw signs saying that there was a pipe break on the north side, so no water at Phantom Ranch/Bright Angel Campground, our destination. The Ranger at the counter confirmed this without much fanfare.

What his means is that after loading with water at the top of the South Kaibab the next site for potable water would be Indian Garden on the return trip.

There are places to get water at Phantom Ranch/Bright Angel and the River House, but it would need to be purified before use.

In the Canyon you are figuring a gallon of water per day per person, not counting water used for cooling, which is important if you are traveling during the heat of the day, e.g. 10am-4pm.

We spent the night at the Maswik Lodge across from the Back Country Transportation center on Tuesday night, ate dinner at the El Tovar. On the happenstance there may be openings for dinner down at Phantom Ranch on Wednesday night, we went to the Transportation Desk that takes care of reservations for Phantom Ranch to see. They did! I had checked in February when ordering a couple of sack lunches at the bottom, but they had been booked up, but now there were two openings for the Hikers Stew Dinner, sign us up!

Getting two meals at the bottom from Phantom Ranch reduced the amount of food we would need to carry. We still need to have food, because of the water lose during hikes you need to eat almost whenever you stop to rest to make sure you keep electrolyte levels up, along with energy replenishment.

The meals could offset the carrying of a couple more liters of water.

We grabbed the first hikers express shuttle to the South Kaibab Trail head at 4am and were among about 20 others getting an early start to beat the heat.

The trail down is 7.3 miles to Phantom Ranch and a ~4500' drop from the rim to the river. Going down hill is more difficult (gravity enhances every foot plant), so we chose the shorter of the two trails for the descent.

Bright Angel would be a 9.5 mile ascent to the rim the next day.

We needed headlamps for the first 45 miniutes of so of the desent.

About two thirds of the folks heading down trail were not going to the bottom, but to the Tonto Trail which cuts of just beyond the half way point and head west to meet up with the Bright Angel Trail, making for a long day hike. Seemed to be alot of aspiring "adventure racers" in this crowd.

We started down at 4:45am, looking to bottom out in about 4-5 hours.

The number of switch backs, put those we see on 14er's here in Colorado to shame. We made a few stops in the first hour to get comfortable with our loads and and the terrain. The temperature was great it being in the high 40's on the rim.

The forecast for the bottom at Phantom Ranch/Bright Angel was a high of 98, this was to be proven wrong.

We didn't pass anyone coming up until past the halfway point and they had a load on, but they were probably half our age so their legs still had the spring of youth.

We talked to them at one of the rest stops along the way and they told us that, "if available grab site 14 at Bright Angel". As the day heated up this became some of the best advice/info we received during the entire day.

Both the South Kaibab and Bright Angel are also used by mule trains to resupply Phantom Ranch and to carry tourist to the bottom for overnights in the Ranches Cabins.

At we went over the tip above the river we ran into a few. The first group of two wranglers with 5 mules apiece was hauling out trash and packbacks for folks who paid the ~$50 to have their gear hauled in and out.

The mule trains stop pretty frequently to rest the mules. A round trip for a mule train takes about 7.5 hours according to one of the wranglers.

Over the next two days it became obvious that below the rim everything depends on the mules. It also explained the size and number of corrals at the rim.

The drop to the black bridge is pretty sectacular, with the view of Bright Angel Campground.

Phantom Ranch is actually a short hike up the valley to the north.

We reached the bottom at 8:45am. It was already warming up and our knees were heavy into the wobble zone.

The trek along the north side of the Colorado to the camping area was a challenge.

BUT the good news was when I passed a drinking water faucet it was dripping...WTF I opened it up and there was water. So one of the first tasks in camp wasn't going to be refilling/sterilizing water bottles/camelbacks, but walking over to the faucet and turning it on.

I wonder if at the top they say there is never any water at the bottom to make sure that folks carry water treatment equipment/chemicals, just in case.

There were not many folks in the campground, only those doing a layover.

The Bright Angel and North Kaibab hikers were/should be well on the way by 9am. We had our choice of sites, of which 14 was open.

It was in bright morning sunshine, but after pulling out my compass and looking at the overhanging Cottonwood tree and rock face to the west side we could see that as the morning progressed this would be a great choice.

We set up the tent, pulled pads and fleece bags from packs and stashed them in the tent, got water and hung up our packs. This is a must as the squirrels are very comfortable with going up to a pack for food. Speaking of which we stored all food in the ammo cans at the site.

After a while we took the walk to the Phantom Ranch Canteen, which is farther up the trail to the north rim then you would think. We bought lemonades, picked up our sack lunches, checked on the reservations for the Hikers Stew Dinner, then turned around and went back to veg out for the day.

After a nap laying on the picnic table (Marlys took the tent sans rain-fly). We took a trip down to the creek to sit in the cold water and cool off.

By this time our site was in shade and the campground was starting to fill up. It was obvious that an early start had paid off as the folks coming in during the heat of the day looked like the walking dead.

Most of the rest of the day was spent reading, napping, eating and drinking water. I though I had been doing well in that regard until I realized I had not taken a leak since that morning on the trail. We knew that if we started tomorrows hike dehydrated it would be bad.

At 4pm we went to a Ranger Talk at Phantom Ranch about the history of the area. We had been told that the presentation were a "not miss item" at the bottom and that is good advice, don't miss'em.

BTW: The temperature hit 112F that afternoon.

We went to dinner at 6:30pm and sat with some folks from the east coast doing a rim to rim. They had come down from the north rim that day and were going up to Indian Garden on the Bright Angel the next. Bright Angel is traditionally a two day hike to the top with a stop over at Indian Garden which is at the half way point.

We were going to do it in one.

Sitting back at the campsite I asked the Guide for the guided group next to us what he budgets for the return up Bright Angel. He looked at us and our gear and said 7 hours. This kinda floored me because using my mile an hour average in the mountains, and also the Boy Scout; two miles and hour, plus an hour for each 1000' in altitude, it would mean 9.5 hours.

We planned for a slog out starting at 3am that should put us to the rim around noon.

It was so hot the fly never went on the tent and we were in our underwear on the sleeping pads when we turned in at 9pm.

Equipment Note: Our bottom of the line Sierra self-inflating sleeping pads were GREAT!. Got them from Sierra Trading for $30/each.

We woke up at about 11:30 when another group was moving down the trail flashing headlamps everywhere and talking like it was the middle of the day.

At midnight the moon (near full) came over the canyon wall and lite us up. At 12:15am I asked Marlys if she was awake, which she answered in the affirmative.

We got up packed up, without turning on a headlamp or flashlight and hit the trail.

After a quick stop at the toilets we got to the Bright Angel Trail head and were on our way.

The first hour was spent going along the river after we crossed the silver bridge (not to be confused with the black bridge used coming down).

At the River House we turned south and headed toward the Devil's Corkscrew. Most reports say to get above this area and out of the river bottom before the heat of the day sets in (Summer Rules). All I can say is I am glade we did it at night because it may have been mentally discouraging to see what we would need to transit to get out.

After another hour or so we saw the lights at the top of the south rim. So close yet so far. At this point we were about a quarter of the way according to the 9.5 hour plan to get out.

About 4am we ran into a sign that says Indian Garden, under which is a arrow pointing south and another sign that says 3 Mile.

I had a number of interpretations of what this was saying:

• Indian Garden is to the south....Good that is way I thought it should be.
• Indian Garden is still 3 miles away....Eck, this meant we had only gone 1.5 miles in 3 hours.
• We were 3 miles in from the Bright Angel Trail Head...OK, 3 miles in 3 hours, right on plan.
• Or the 3 Mile water/rest stop, which along with the 1.5 Mile water/rest stop is to the south...Also OK, but still don't know how far to Indian Garden.

Regardless we headed in the direction of the arrow, second guessing ourselves a little until we came upon some mule shit, which confirmed that we were still on the Bright Angel Trail heading toward the rim.

Trudging on (in the dark), we were still on schedule for about a noon-1pm Rim Out.

After a couple of minutes I could hear a motor running, which initially I though was from the top as it was very still, but as I rounded a bend in the trail my headlamp caught a rather large stone building in its beam...what the heck?

As we approach there was a sign welcoming us to Indian Garden and the building was part of the trans-canyon water pipeline.

WOW, it is now 4:15am and we are at Indian Garden, basically halfway up to the rim and in 3 hours!

We had our first real rest stop, took off our packs drank and ate. In ten minutes, we were back on the trail. Since this is also a campground we were very quiet and kept our lights pointed at our feet.

When we had looked at the Bright Angel trail from above on Tuesday before heading down we could see Indian Garden, which looks like an oasis, being green and having trees, but there was a long fairly straight trail from the lip into the lower canyon to it. In hind site, we figured this is where we first saw the light above on the rim. It just that it looks straight and kinda level from above and it was not so much when coming up it.

We hit the 3 Mile water/rest stop an hour later just as the sky was getting light enough to turn off the headlamps. 6 miles in and deep into the switchbacks on the upper canyon wall we were starting to slow down. After another few minutes drinking, eating and resting, we loaded up. 

We had enough water, it seemed, to run out as we rimmed out...so we decided to bag this bad boy.

After 3 Mile the traffic from the top increased the closer to the rim we got. People were beyond the 1.5 Mile Water Rest stop with little in the way of water bottles, wearing dark clothes and sometimes flip flops. There is a sign at the top that says "what goes down, must come up" and the trip down to 3 mile is about 2 hours down and 4 hours up.

As we approached the top, the trail steepened and we ran into a mule trail heading down. We even needed to walk back down the trail to wide spot for it to pass...giving back real estate at this point was hard, real hard.

We rimmed out at 7:15am for a 6:30 trip from Bright Angel Campground to South Rim. 

If you would have asked the night before I would have said you were crazy to think of doing it in under 8-9 hours, but we even beat the guides estimate.

We walked about another half mile back to the Back Country Center to retrieve our car, stopped at the market for coffee, water, Diet Coke and headed home.