The amazing beauty of the grand canyon has never, ever disappointed me and the times that I have had the opportunity to visit its inner core.
As tranquil as the ditch can be, the emotional and hostile moods that the beast is capable of would defy any psychiatrist diagnosis.
The amount of effort and time to prepare
for such a mood swing of weather behaviors adds pounds of gear to the back and rickety knees.
Sure there is a back country fee but the real price of admission to this exclusivity is pain in blood, sweat, and tears.....actually yes, that is quite accurate.
Just heading
to the trailhead requires tens of miles of dirt roads that diminish as you get closer to the rim.
Its either too hot or two cold in the grand canyon and the winds can whirl up temperatures to plummet lower then the lowest weather predication.
We get to the trailhead after parking a shuttle car at Scottys hollow TH, and get right to sleep for a early start.
The anticipation and slight anxious feeling must be tempered to get a solid few hours of sleep so your body is ready for the effort you are about to put into literally hiking down through opportune cracks and weaknesses in the rock just to gain the top of the canyon.
Shut your eyes and find that state of relaxation, a seemingly few minutes later, its go time!
We got a 7 AM on the trail start as we headed for what we thought would be the "trail" going down to the esplanade.
The trail was more like a guess and hope strategy of knowledge experience and a bit of "oh that might work".
This equation actually worked for us as we picked our way down through the layers and to a place where we had to rap off
a dry wash onto the slope leading to the esplanade.
after picking our way around the scratching and prickly plants of the grand canyon we got to the esplanade to re group. After a short gathering,
we headed into the supai layer and the tail end of kanab 0.
We worked down through some dry falls that would have been somewhat straight forward to negotiate head on, but we took side paths and headed around and down from them.
Eventually we made it to the first two dramatic drops of Kanab 0. It must have been 400 ft to the bottom level.
We
dropped over 200ft to the first tier
and re anchored so we were able to
drop down to the second tier and the top of the redwall.
It took us over an
hour to get down to the top of the red wall but thankfully it was in the
shade and it was not all that hot outside.
we continued into the redwall and the typical personality of the redwall narrows started to formulate and develop.
We came up to our first drops and they were in rapid fire succession.
I was happy to see that these drops were quite large in size and kept delivering a lot of big drops for most of the canyon.
We continued to work our way down more and more and the layers started to change into the muav and springs started to develop.
The drops kept coming and we finally came up to the top of kanab creek and the last rap in Kanab 0
We placed a new piece of webbing on a pinch point and proceeded to drop into kanab creek.
at the bottom of this rap was a impressive stalagmite formation in a alcove that appeared to look like Santa clause. It must have been a couple stories high.
Once we got to the bottom we headed over to set up camp on the muav benches of the river
We couldnt have asked for a better campsite as the benches provided us with great scenery and a smooth surfaces to set up camp.
Day 1 is complete but day two and three are going to get very interesting as we are headed up the sneak route to Whispering falls canyon and out Scottys hollow.
The nigt skies were perfect and we couldnt have asked for better temps on this night.
I was thinking to myself that we started off with the whole weekend in view on the rim and now we are in the canyon about to visit some very scenic canyons in the following days!! I cant wait.
