It’s 0545 and we are within the corridors of the redwall inside of Fern Glen…Lets go.!!! “
Now if you know a bit about the places that I find home, one of those places is the Grand Canyon.
Last time I was in the Grand Canyon, I had to say "NO" to going into the canyon.
I ended up staying at the rim while the crew went down into twin point.
Now it is time to go home!
We dropped off a shuttle so when we take out from the river, we will not have take another day to walk after we get to the rim.
The following morning we head over to the trailhead and work our way across the plateau to the drop in point.
We were greeted with spectacular views!
The Dome was within view and our canyon! Actually there was a lot that was in the spotlight.
It didn't look all that far from the rim but
the hard earned miles and the magnifying effect that the rim has is quite deceiving.We start to head down the rim and its steep. It gets really steep.
Steep and very crumbly. One wrong move and you could be sent tumbling down hundreds of feet.
After some substantial time working our way down to the esplanade.
Once we finally made it down to the esplanade, we were able to find the tuck-up trail and follow that around for what felt like a longer time than anticipated.
After a few more hours making our way around the tuckup trail, we got to the start of the canyon.
The Supai was beautiful in the canyon and quite interesting to see the sculpted rock. and meandering passage.
We came up on a couple of downclimbs and our first rap which was around 30 feet or so.
We encountered another rap of about 60 feet and found a section of hiking right on top of the redwall.
I found this canyon to be fairly easy going in terms of hiking down the canyon. We did not have a lot of awkward downclimbing and clambering like other canyons.
We got to the redwall and started working our way down to the 3 stage 200 ft drop. We had to snake the rope around the corner and get it to the bottom with staging people along the way.
This slowed us down a bit more
but we were safe with our movements.We eventually got to a point where the sun was setting and we set up camp on top of the temple butte layer which had pothole water and flat surfaces.
The next morning we got another early start to work our way down to the river. I re-freshed one rap and found the other anchors to be in decent condition.
The muav layer was extraordinary ! The layered limestone with these beautiful contours made such an excellent and mystical landscape. It is by far my favorite layer and it was incredible to see such an amazing array of muav.
We work our way down to the last rap and found a interesting pothole full of water to swim into in order to get into the final rap.
Not far beyond that, the Colorado river can be heard and we make it there in great time.
We had some hiking to do in order to utilize the stairway exit for our pack raft from Stairway to Lava. We made it to stairway and started our incredible pack raft portion to lava. That was simply amazing!!!
We encountered riffles that were ultra riffles! Being in packrafts made for this trip down the river, one of the most incredible experiences. After we found our take out, we hiked up the infamous lava exit which is 3100 ft of gain in 1.8 miles. This trip was one of the most amazing experiences in Grand Canyoneering. I do recommend staying down there another day but We did this route in two long days.
