Pack is set, trekking poles locked in place, water bladders filled, and calorie impactful rectangles are strategically places around the pack for immediate use.  Slowly as I continue to waiver in and out of light headedness, I lay down in a cold sweat.  Immediately I heat up and the unsettling feeling of being too hot and too cold blends like oil and water around my body as the hours of the night progress. 8 hours until our early start and I am already sweating like I have been hiking on the esplanade for a day. Is this a bedside experience to foreshadow the future?   I already feel like I am at the capacity of making the final ascent out of the grand canyon, without even starting.  Regardless, immediate changes will have to be made and a re-alignment of purpose is yet to come.   I moved this trip from fern glen to hidden spring, green spring, twin spring loop which is a relatively "easy" loop.  Now I am not even sure I can do this. 

Catching COVID appeared to have an effect on me.  Now that I just got my second dose of the vaccine, I feel like I am back to my bedside self sweating this out and exhausted for unusual reasons.

So what does saying "no" look like? What are these quantified variables suppose to look like within a equation? How does this summation equal a decision not continue look like? To put a visual to it,  For some... college Mathematics Specifically, a linear equation with advanced distribution within a soaked down sleeping bag in 42 degree lows. 

 However there is a cause and effect factor in play. a feeling of missing out looms, a feeling of making the wrong decision taps onto what is now my decision.  When that occurs, I see it as the universe ensuring my own  decision is sound and of my own effects. Indeed it was. Waking up the next more I broke the news to the group and although their concerns were valid, I insisted that they continue down into the canyon.  I had my own journey to endeavor.  I walked them to the break and fair maidened a goodbye.  That ship has sailed and now my re-centering began. 

wavering from spirts of energy and irresistible sleep under , I watched the team sail over the first rap and now it was just me.  Solo I stand in view of what I define to be as spectacular, with a 2 day dose of spectacular, I breathe and re-centering my disposition.  I audit my sensory perceptions throughout my body. Setting up my intention to cleanse myself and peel any internal beliefs that attached along the way from my last iteration to re-align my oculus to different directions.

 re- posturing my mentality, I found that this was no better time to take a journey inward within at a place I find hard to live without.  Saying No to the grand canyon, or ANYTHING, for that matter, is and shall never carry a negative connotation. Saying NO, at your most critical point is a re-balance, brings your options to the forefront, empowers your resolve, and shifts your agility from a process to adaptation. "Shake up your own decisions with your own curve ball." Show up for your own  health and sovereignty, show up to your own progression and show up for yourself.  

It was at this point that growth was found on the rim of the grand canyon. May the colors of webbing stay true and the Rapides hold spec. stay curious my friends.  

They stuck with the plan to go down hidden spring canyon to surprise canyon, than head up surprise canyon to green spring canyon, than head up green spring canyon, and out twin spring canyon back to the esplanade and back to the rim. 

Encountering two rappels at the supai, they found themselves at the redwall. 

A couple more raps were encountered in the redwall. 

There was a scenic section where there was a arch over a 150 ft. rap which was said to be the most interesting part of the canyon. 

Surprise canyon was met at its confluence. 

The large rap did look interesting from the photos that they took.