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| Scott Swaney coming down a rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Approaching the next set of rapids with a pack raft full of water, one paddle, a 30lb pack, a overly buoyant and bloated bow, with a diminishing pear shaped stern, I look aft and I am funneled into standing 3's and 4's while boils push me back into the current.
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| Pat and Mike getting ready for the hike to Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Balancing my top heavy raft and attempting to paddle with one paddle, I can feel
the directional shift as my unbalanced raft heads astern and takes in
more water. The balance is thrown off and I am again pushed into another boil as my craft is taken under.
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| Pat, Daniel, Scott, Hollon, and Mike almost to the tail end of Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Handle barring the shore, I am taken into the Colorado river and
swim into an eddy where I swim ashore. I got four more miles to go so I get back into the water and fight my
way through the unusually challenging ripples with one paddle and a awkwardly slopped
raft to the take out point.
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| Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Cove Canyon is a Grand Canyon Classic 3BVI canyoneering route within the Toroweap region of the park. This canyon has it all from hiking to pack rafting and canyoneering through almost every layer of rock that might be encountered within the canyons of the Grand Canyon.
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| Scott and Daniel in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The night before, Scott Swaney and Daniel Elson picked me up from work and we headed directly to the camping spot where Pat Winstanley, Hollon Kinney, and Mike McKenzie awaited our arrival.
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| Daniel in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We got to the canyon in time to get straight to bed as the morning was going to be early and the following day was going to be long. We initially planned this as a three day trip but we continued to discuss that we would complete this as a two day trip. We decided that we would extend it back out to three days so we would take our time and not injure ourselves trying to race through the canyon.
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| Mike going down a rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
As we bivyed under the stars, the temperature dropped down low enough to give us a cold spell that even 10 and 15 degree sleeping bags had challenges keeping us warm, it was cold!.
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| calcite deposits in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We woke up a little later than expected and headed to the trail head but got stopped by a closed gate that gets opened a half hour after sunrise and is locked a half hour after sunset, that is good to know for future visits.
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| Scott coming down a rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Once the rangers let us in we headed out to the trail head and figured that we would just get the cars on day three to save us time now and hit the trail.
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| Pat and Daniel in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Today is our biggest day as we planned a 12 hour trip with the hope to get to the confluence of Burro canyon inside cove canyon.
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| Mike in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We set off on the Tuckup trail which is a trail that follows the, you guessed it.... Tuckup layer, which is a plateau along the Grand Canyon. We continued for around 8.7 miles to the top of cove canyon and prepared for the 13 rappels that we encountered throughout the canyon.
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| Daniel in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The first 3-4 raps were pretty close to each other and had some interesting spring travertine hanging garden falls along with some interesting Muav Sandstone formations along the walls.
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| Pat in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We continued down and encountered a lot of annoying and tedious boulder hoping and down climbing that took us to a relatively flat area. Following this flat section we eventually we got to the red wall Limestone layer.
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| Hollon watches as Daniel raps down into the narrows in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
This is where the canyon started to narrow and we found two raps, one was around 180ft and another was around 20ft.
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| Mike, Scott, and Hollon in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
This was a beautiful but short lived section within the canyon but the Redwall did offer up a lot of action with raps and beautiful stained cream colored walls with a red shadow like hue to the canyon walls. That was quite impressive.
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| Daniel in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The walls were also polished from the water course which made the canyon shimmer with a smooth texture around the color.
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| Daniel in in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We continued to work our way out of the narrows into more of a gorge like passage more boulder hoping.
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| Scott in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
There was quite a bit of boulder hoping that lasted for a few hours until we came to yet another layer of rock and the final three raps before the camp.
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| Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The sun was starting to set so we had to move quickly to get to the Burro confluence where we would have a place to lay out sleeping bags and pump water.
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| Mike in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
One rap was around 150ft down a otherwise flowing water fall, but the season has been dry due to the lack of rain so it was a dry run. The rock was quite awesome as it was a cream to a slightly yellow color with perfectly drawn lines like the rock was set in the canyon like bricks, making a beautiful rap.
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| Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We continue on to make it before sunset and we get to the last rap just as the darkness sets in and we don our lights to make our final approach to camp.
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| Scott in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Once we got down we found our way over to the campsite and get set up for the mildly temperate night which was a huge and welcoming change from the night before.
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| Daniel, Hollon, and Mike camping in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
After boiling up mountain house meals and exchanging a few stories we wondered off to our bags and slept under the clear night stars within the ancient and confined walls of cove canyon.
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| Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The following day we woke up as light made its way into the canyon and continued on to the last three rappels of the canyon.
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| Hollon, Mike, and Daniel in the lower section of Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The rock had a combed and outcropping texture with some gray red and brown color until we got out into the last set of gorge walls.
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| Lower Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
This was quite spectacular as the walls were over 1000ft high and reminded me of orderville canyon in Zion but with different layers within the wall.
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| Scott hiking in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We work our way down a few more boulder sections to the final rap which was a 40ft drop down a beautiful hanging garden and the exit point to the Colorado river.
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| almost to the river in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
This was really interesting as there was some deposit formations on the wall and a lush forest of green vegetation overgrowth that consumed this canyon wall.
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| Mike at the top of the last rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Once we got down we all headed out of the canyon and made our way to the Colorado river. This is where the fun will begin.
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| last rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We got to the beach proceeded to prepare for the pack raft trip down to lava point which is around 4 miles from cove canyon.
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| Last rap in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
As we were preparing our rafts Scott found that there was a small hole in his boat because the raft would slowly deflate even after the internal air temp adjustment of the raft sitting in the water.
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| Pulling the ropes down in Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
I blow up my Sevlar raft which has work great on many rivers including the Colorado river but this run would prove to be quite different. I brought two paddles but informatively I was only able to attach one paddle to my oar so I had to use and shift my weight the sevlar as a directed this raft.
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| preparing for packrafting from Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
The raft itself has a bloated and bulging bow with made the boat uneven in the water and with a shape of a pear, the boat became a challenge to maneuver unlike the explorer 200, the supai, and the alpacka rafts.
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| About to pack raft the Colorado river from Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
We set off from shore and shotgunned down multiple sets of small rapids big enough to completely swamp some of our rafts including my sevlar. The heavy pack, unevenly buoyant bow, and a host of other multipliers made negotiating the funnels, boils, currents, and standing waves a challenge to maneuver to the point where I had to handle bar the shoreline and even found myself abandoning my craft unintentionally. I was able to swim to shore on both occasions without incident but it was rather comforting. I kept emptying the boat out and continued down the river with one portage to ensure that I wouldn't find myself and my equipment floating down the Colorado river. after about an hour of this we were at the take out point and loving land as we set ashore.
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| View from the take out from Cove Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. |
Woohoo!!! we made it to the final hike out which is a 3 mile hike with a elevation gain of 2800ft on loose scree and volcanic talus. The conditions were ideal for this hike out but Scott was not feeling to well so we all took some of scotts equipment up with us so we could all make it up to the rim safely.
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| preparing for the hike out |
After a couple hours of hiking, we made it back to the rim a day early and just in time for the sun to set. What a beautiful place and a incredible end to an amazing trip!!
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| Back at the top of Lava Falls |
