Troy & Steve's Grand Canyon Adventure!

Ahh a new year of adventure is upon us.  I am still collecting my stories and writing lots, but its been awhile since I've posted anything so I wanted to get this going again.

My good friend Steve came into town last fall with plans to go on an epic hiking adventure.  He invited me along and luckily, it worked out that I had the time and was able to join him on his trek.  Steve and I go way back, our friendship was forged in the ring of music and our connection runs deep.  He is an Adventure Racer (check out his site at ActiveSteve.com), and he came to Nevada in between races to do some hiking in the back country of Zion National Park.  He is a super-fit, highly capable and motivated individual.  I am fortunate to have friends like Steve to guide me in this life and push me to do things beyond my expectations.  He is my brother, and as such I feel it my duty to keep one elbow firmly implanted in his ribs at all times.  I love to pick on Steve!

We spent a few days planning the fine details of our adventure over many beers by the poolside.  If you are back country camping and carrying what you will need to consume for 3 or 4 days, you'd better plan that well.  Steve was in charge of the plan, I provided the comic relief.  We also warmed up for the big hike by doing little day hikes around Vegas to make sure these old bones were in good hiking condition.  I was worried about my knee, which got tweaked on my adventure to Mt. Charleston and made for a long day.  But all was good, all systems go!  We got out to do a hike at Red Rock and took a ride out to Death Valley.

We had a really weird experience out at Death Valley.  We were lucky it was a cloudy day so it wasn't nearly as hot as it should have been.  We got off the beaten path a bit when we spied a slot canyon carved out of the mountainside that we wanted to see up close.  We walked up the wide floodplain towards it, but there was a growing sense that this was a bad place to be.  The sky was darkening and heavy purple clouds were gathering over the mountain above us.  There was a spittle in the air, and all the hairs on Steve's arms went up.  It would have been really cool to see that slot canyon explode with water, but truth is, it was a dangerous place to be.  People die all the time like that here because they are unaware of the threat of floodwater in the desert.  And here we are standing in its floodplain, staring up at the hole in the rock where all the water is going to come blasting out of.  We got our pics and got out of there.

Looking down on Badwater from Dante's View, 5475' elevation

We made our way from the valley floor around the back of the mountain where we caught the storm, and then climbed out of it to the peak.  We watched as the storm rained on the valley where we had just been.  There were lightning strikes too, going down from where we stood!  Very cool.  Another system moved over us and then it started to hail!  Death Valley... the hottest place on the planet and we're getting pounded with ice balls!  That was a wild experience.

We travelled early on a monday morning to Zion National Park and ended up waiting in a long traffic jam just to get in to the park, and then we got snaggled in another traffic jam when we got to the campground.  So much for solitude away from the masses of tourists.  It took a lot of our morning only to find out that the campground was booked solid, and that they were making a makeshift campground for the overflow.  Then we found out the unfortunate news that in order to book a back country hiking permit, you would need to put your name on the waiting list THE MORNING OF THE DAY BEFORE you want to leave on your hike.  Only so many permits are allowed and everyone wants one, so you have to sign up a whole day in advance.  This gutted all of our plans.  We decided to cut and run and high tailed it for the north rim of the Grand Canyon to start all over from there.

We first secured a campsite at DeMott Campground for the night and set up our tent, then sought out the park ranger's office to forge a new plan of attack.  This is where we met Ranger Steve Bridgehouse.  Steve is a really great guy, very passionate about his job and the hiking lifestyle in general.  He enthusiastically helped us forge a new battleplan and lifted our spirits.  Most importantly, he informed us that we do not need to camp in any campground, that we were allowed to camp ANYWHERE on public lands!  He showed us all the service roads on the maps surrounding the canyon and recommended what he thought were the best places to camp, and even back at Zion where we'd go back to in a couple days.  He also told us the best hikes we should be doing.  Meeting him was the best thing that could have happened.  Steve was now informed and excited about our new plans.  We did a quick tour of the area and were anxious to get away from the tourists, so we foraged for as much firewood as would fit in the trunk of the rental and retreated back to the campsite.

Evening came in quick and cold and damp!  The fire did very little to warm us as the temperature dropped to freezing very quickly.  Steve had gotten us provisions of freeze dried meals for the week, along with carefully measured portions of trail food, so we enjoyed a delicious steaming bag of beef stroganoff for supper, which was very welcoming.  It was a really cold night!  It was tough to keep the ground cold out, sleeping on a foam mat in a sleeping bag.  I wore my earmuff'd hat and gloves and had to keep turning over all night long less the frost get me.

Chilly morning for adventuring

In the middle of the night all hell broke loose when a pack of coyotes exploded into revellry.  They must have been celebrating a kill or something.  I recognized the yips and yelps of happy play from my own dogs' vocabulary, but this was much more intense!  The coyotes were having a blast at whatever it was they were doing, and it sounded like a lot of them too, really close to us.  A little un-nerving, but really cool.  I believe that was our spirit-animals who'd come to welcome us to the canyon.

In the morning our car was covered in frost.  We didn't bother packing up anything proper, we broke camp as quick as possible and just stuffed it all into the trunk to deal with later.  The seat heaters in the car were heaven while we waited for the frost to unthaw off the windshield.  Then we made our way to our first real trek, a decent into the Grand Canyon along the North Kaibob Trail.

Jones on the edge

Steve on the edge

Now, I didn't really know how my fear of heights would be, trekking with Steve.  He's a professional, and I knew I wouldn't be able to travel with him on all his hikes.  But I resolved to go as far as I could with him and find out where that line was for me.  The North Kaibab Trail decended 3000 feet over 4.7 miles into the canyon to Roaring Springs.  It was a mule trail for the first while, and from there it was a meandering mountainside trail hanging on the cliffs and carved out of the rock wall in some places.  It was a really well maintained trail and despite the height and the amazing views I never lost my nerve.  The scenery was breathtaking.  The morning was beautiful too, a cool sunny morning with just Steve and I and nature, singing random tunes that came along.  Frank Zappa's "It can't happen here" was the soundbite of the week.  We finally felt like we'd broken away from the tourists and found the solice we were seeking.  Peace and tranquility, and a gorge of super-massive scale.  Wow!  Its tough to describe.  We decended for 3 hours to Roaring Springs, through layers and layers, billions of years of the earth's history.  I've never seen so many fossils!

We could see and hear Roaring Springs a long time before we got there and unfortunately, we found out that we couldn't actually GET THERE!  There was no trail to it, it was just a very tall waterfall coming out of an underground pool of water far up on the opposite mountainside.  That was disappointing.  We took a quick breather and powered up with food and drinks before we started the long ascent.  The hiking poles were invaluable for this kind of trekking.  The sun beat on us relentlessly on the way up but it was still a really nice day with a gentle breeze every now and again.  We made really good time going back up too, which took about 4.5 hours.

Sunset overlooking the Grand Canyon

Our destination for the evening was North Timp, to camp on the edge of the canyon.  We hit a local store and bought two big beers for the evening and one big roadie for me as we jetted off onto the service road through the woods for 45 minutes to get out to the rim.  The service roads were really well maintained too, so we cruised like a rally car over the dirt and tested out our rental, dodging deer along the way.  What an amazing area!  Right out to the edge of the Grand Canyon!  We set up camp amongst the pines and I gathered wood for the evening's fire.  We met two other fellows who'd been mountain biking all day and were spending the evening there as well, a Brit and a New Zealander, both were pilots who were off on their own adventure.  We enjoyed the sunset with them over beers and a giddiness of where we were and what we were witnessing.  That night Steve and I had our first real good fire!  I love bonfires, and I miss that alot.  We had a much more comfortable sleep too, on the soft pine tree gound and the warm canyon air wafting up over us from below.

The Grand Canyon is so super-massive, that I have to say you kinda lose perspective a bit.  Your eyes can see it, but the scale and definition is lost because it is so vast.  In my opinion, it isn't as spectacular as Bryce Canyon.  I told Steve that he needed to see Bryce and the spectacular colors and rock formations there, so we made that part of our plan and headed there the next morning.  We cut through the woods again on the service road for about an hour and a half, and then stopped for a good breakfast sandwich at Subway before continuing on to Bryce.

Bryce Canyon

We were now heading back into the throngs of tourists.  Traffic jams at the edge of the wilderness, our solice was over.  Bryce is crazy busy with tourists.  It is spectacular, and the hiking is easier too so it attracts everyone.  They have a bus system to get people in and out of the area, but people still take their cars in and create havoc in the parking lots.  There's nowhere you can go at Bryce without running into throngs of people.  We spent the day hiking and it was once again, an amazing experience to see it all again.

We took Steve Bridgehouse's suggestion again and found a back country campsite for the evening and just as he promised, this site he suggested was really impressive.  We were off the beaten path in a little valley, lots of firewood, and the coolest forest of downed trees I think I've ever seen!  We climbed atop one of the cliffs overlooking the valley to have our supper and watch the sunset.  Then we explored the bizarre landscape and foraged for good fire poking sticks.  The rolling hills were dark orange and were streaked with silver, contorted, dead and downed trees.  I could have spent a whole weekend right there.  We had an even bigger bonfire that night to appease my firebug, and a selection of 4 beers each.  I will return to this campsite again.

The path to Angel's Landing

Our last destination was back to Zion, and we had to get there by 8am to try and secure a campsite for the evening.  There are no public lands surrounding Zion, so our off the grid camping nights were done.  I'm not a big fan of campgrounds.  We got a site, left the car on it and geared up for our next hike.  Steve's ultimate destination on this trip was Angel's Landing, and I knew we'd be parting ways on this one.  The brochures warned anyone afraid of heights should not do this trail, and I was OK with that.  I went along with him for the beginning, and found that the trail up was actually paved... and that the tourist traffic was insane!!!  It might as well have been any steep downtown city sidewalk with the amount of pedestrian traffic flowing in both directions.  This was not for me.  I let Steve go on his own and found my own adventure meandering back to camp.  He told me later that there were a lot of pedestrians all the way to the top, and a lot of people on the trail that really had no business being up there.  I had my own adventure which fulfilled my day.  Then it was back to camp to set up the tent on the hard packed ground.  My body was done!

Steve on Angel's Landing, 1488' elevation

I decided that I should go find some firewood for the evening, and get us some beer.  It was the last night so I thought we should have a good selection of at least 6 each, on ice for when Steve returned.  Also, eating freeze dried food and nuts and granola for three days fueled a killer craving for a cheezeburger.  I drove all the way to Hurricane, 25miles both ways, to get wood and beers and find a cheezeburger, and let me tell you that that was a damn'd good burger!

Steve arrived almost the same time I returned and he wanted to wash up so he took a little plunge in the Virgin River.  Its hard to believe that this meek little trickle of a river has carved out this entire valley.

We settled in for another evening of beer tasting and fire poking.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning the wind kicked up really strong and began to pummel our tent.  The warm air rising from the canyon created a very powerful wind tunnel through the campground and our little tent was rocking like a freakin' jet engine.  We awoke all chalky mouthed and stuffed up from the dust storm blowing through our tent.  Steve just got up and started getting ready for his last day of hiking, while I hunkered in to try and get some more sleep, but the wind was relentless and it began to get lighter out so sleeping was impossible.  I got up and enjoyed one more freeze dried breakfast, scrambled eggs and ham, and packed up camp.  While I was waiting for Steve to get back I embarked on one last hike along Watchman's Trail to overlook the valley.  The tourists!  By gawds what a beautiful country, just chock full of people!

What it must have been like for those early explorers, seeing all this grandeur for the first time.  They were probably paranoid about being killed by the natives, but still in absolute awe of the spectacle before them.  Its heart wrenching sometimes.  Where we are, who we are and how lucky we are to be here and have this time.  Seeing the Grand Canyon like that, hiking into her great belly, camping on her edge.  What an adventure!  And that's only one little piece of it all.  So much yet to see and do.

I am a lucky guy!  Thanks for reading.

TRJ

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