Sunday, March 31, 2013

I recently mentioned to someone that I am leading a Field Institute group into Havasupai, and I needed to start organizing the use of a pack horse to carry most of my gear down.

She looked as though I had said I was carrying a can of spray paint to tag every rock between Hualapai Hilltop and the Village.    "You send your stuff down on a horse?"

Why not?  The last time I visited my physical therapist, the renowned Tom Martin, I got an exasperated look ("You again?  And what overuse injury have we now?") and a prescription to reduce the weight in my backpack whenever possible.  So that I can carry the usual 40 pounds when required.

Havasupai isn't a backpack anyway.  It is Disneyland without a parking lot shuttle.

In any case, why do I have to live up to others' prejudices?  They think I am a rough, tough backpacker who would not dream of reducing the weight of the pack, except by freezing my babushka off or going hungry.  Right.

For one thing, when I go to Supai I like to bring along books for the group to read.  For another, I cannot stand the amount of trash on the trail.  Looking at hiker trash and not picking it up makes my fingers twitch.  So I fill garbage bag after garbage bag and either leave it at the Village (on the way down) or take it with me in the car (when we leave).  The Supai who catch me at it always look a little surprised and mutter, "Thank you!"

People are shocked when they find out that I am not a vegetarian.  Or a vegan.  Or gluten-free.  When I was pregnant, everyone assumed I would undergo natural childbirth and were horrified to find that I wanted an epidural in the sixth month.

I was having a baby in the twentieth century, not in the Dark Ages.  I wanted every crutch modern medicine could provide.  As it was, I developed eclampsia.  That is what killed Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey.  It would have killed me and Robbie as well, had I opted for a midwife or a natural birth, and my practitioner or facilitator hadn't been taking my blood pressure regularly.  Instead I spent 36 hours (!) hooked up to a half dozen IVs, a fetal monitor, a blood pressure monitor, and several accoutrement that I was too wigged out to notice.  At one point I did mutter to the doctor that I was glad the Lamaze people couldn't see me.  He snorted.  "The Lamaze people are home asleep."

I have been hiking too long to live up to other people's' preconceptions of how I should behave or how much I should carry in my pack.  Heck, I've been living too long to do so.  I gave up behaving like all the other backpackers back when I was in college.

So if a horse is available, I send stuff down on a horse.  If not, I schlep it myself.  I eat pretty much what I feel like and depend on the amount of exercise I do to keep me healthy.  I don't rock climb, I do berate small children for carving their names in the rock, and I am always extremely tempted to tip a medium sized boulder over on top of young men cutting switchbacks.  ("Told you taking shortcuts could cause a rock slide!")

And I don't believe in bleeding, sickness caused by humors in the body, or a flat earth.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Time for the yearly pilgrimage to see the Redbud at Indian Garden.  We rode out the West Rim yesterday with binoculars, and we could see a few trees in bloom.  So we hiked down today, and maybe a dozen trees are blooming.  I assume that they will peak later this week or this weekend.  Unfortunately, I am working all week and we have guests on Saturday, so I may miss the peak this year.

Coming out nine groups yielded to the uphill (right of way) and thirteen did not.  Two of these get extra credit for making disgusted noises as I pushed through their little blood clot.  Learn the rules, people.

As A. E. Housman might say:
The loveliest of trees, the redbud now
Is hung with flame along the bough.
Poised along the Canyon trail
They make the very sunset pale.
Now of my eighty years (I pray)
Sixty will not come my way.
Take from eighty years a score
only leaves me twenty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Twenty springs is little room
Into the Canyon then I came
To see the Redbud hung with flame.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

We were supposed to do a nice, calm hike into Clear Creek this week, but life is what happens when you make other plans.  We must be in Prescott Wednesday, no ifs ands or buts, so I spent 15 minutes in the backcountry office re-permitting.

Clear Creek in one day less: no can do.  Bright Angel Campground full the last night.
Hermit to Bright Angel:  nope.  Indian Garden and Horn Creek full.
Kaibab to Grandview:  uh uh.  Whole use area full.
Escalante route.  Okay.  There is room on the Escalante Route, formerly known as the Death March.  Ranger Casey thought it was hilarious that I called it the Death March.  However, Red Canyon is full, so we had to camp at Hance Creek and hike out Grandview.

We figured that we have probably not done this route for at least five years.  Going down the Tanner was Okay, except that ice at the very steep, narrow, slippery top is scary, even with Katoolas.  In fact the whole first mile is steep, narrow, and slippery.  Redwall wasn't as bad as I remembered, though I did have to carry out some else's toilet paper (ugh).  We camped in a lovely beach site, lovely that is once I cleaned out and scattered the charming little fire ring.

As for the rest of the route, I remember pioneering this back in the 1960's.  Dr. Butchart suggested that we check it out one Veteran's Day weekend.  His exact words: I think there is a route between Tanner and Red Canyon.  At that time, the route climbed to the top of the Unkar Cliffs and then back down to the River and a nasty little down climb of a small cliff directly over a big whirlpool.  Now there is a worn in path which continues up and around the Dox formation and back into Escalante Canyon.

The major factor of this hike is that in order to get around one small cliff, which would take perhaps 30 seconds on a boat, takes 45 minutes to two hours to climb around.  Such is life off-trail in the Canyon.  So we climbed up and around the nasty little cliff, then up and around the 75-mile cliff, then stumbled into camp along the River.

Had to erase some graffiti in Escalante Canyon.  I expect that kind of nonsense in the Corridor.  I don't expect it off trail.  Rico and Pat: you have just advertised yourselves as amateurs and posers.  and Canyon Coyotes: just stay out of the Canyon.

We passed a private river party at Nevil's Rapid.  As we packed in the morning preparatory to climbing over the Papago cliff, I kept looking upstream to see if they were wending their way down.  I was going to throw myself into the boat to ride 50 feet down river rather than climb 200 feet up a nasty cliff and down a worse rock slide on the other end.  Alas, they slept in that morning.

So we climbed up the scary cliff.  At one point my water bottle fell out of the pack and rolled back down.  My anguished cries of "no, no, no!' echoed off the walls.  Actually I was a lot less polite than that.  Fortunately it stopped on a small ledge, and I was able to scramble back down and retrive it.
Then down the Great Terrible Rock Slide, which is indeed great and indeed terrible.  Then we were, praise Spirit, on a trail.

Climbed back out of Red Canyon into Mineral Canyon and finally onto the Tonto.  It was very odd to be walking on the flat, on a wide trail, where I could actually look around without fear of falling to my death.  Camped in Hance Creek, all by ourselves.

Climbed out Grandview in the morning.  Getting up the Redwall is scary too.  In fact, there was a lot of scary.  I guess I've spend too much time in the tourist areas of the Canyon.  It is humbling to realize that as spooked as I was, that is how a lot of people feel on the Bright Angel and Kaibabs.

Rocky section climbing around Cliff One
On top of Cliff One
Climbing down from Cliff One
On top of Cliff Two (75-mile canyon)
Below Cliff Two
Climbing around Papago Cliff
the Great Terrible Rock Slide: this is the good part!
On the trail again






Sunday, February 3, 2013

Nothing like a rainy day on Superbowl Sunday to clear out the trail.  Almost no one out today.

Every now and again I am met by some pilgrim on the trail who grabs me like the mariner and the wedding guest and regales me with tales of his daring do.  One gentleman stopped me just above Skeleton Point and pointed out a rock in the middle of the trail.  "I tripped over that on my last rim to rim," he informed me gleefully.  "That was last week."

He waited, anxiously, for me to say something like, "Oh, my goodness, two rim to rims?".   Instead I  made some innocuous remark about rocks or falling or some such, smiled sweetly and kept walking. 

I did wonder if he were trying to match Maverick's old record of 106 rim to rims in a year.  Although as the authors of Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon have commented: who would want to?  Given that Maverick spent three days for one rim to rim, that is a hike every 3.44 days.  Much as I love the Canyon and never seem to tire of the Corridor, I doubt that I could make a turn-around and head back over every .44 days.  I didn't wonder enough to follow up on it though.

Rim to rim runners, as they dash past, will inform me between pants that they started at the North Rim at 4 AM and will return that afternoon.  Often I will actually turn to watch them plod on and declaim loudly, "Did I ask?"

There obviously are persons along the trail who are doing something massive, or have done, or plan to do, who do not feed the overwhelming need to grab passers-by by the pack strap and announce what they have accomplished.  And frankly, all they need do is bide their time.  Usually at least one part of day trippers will stop a backpacker and asked in awe what we were up to.

 I am not a good liar, so I usually mutter, "Oh, we just went to Skeleton Point".  If Brad is ahead me me, he tells them something more complex: like we started from the River an hour ago, and now we are above the Redwall.  Or if they ask, "Have you been to the bottom?" I can answer "Why, yes," with a clear conscience, because I HAVE.  Just not today.

When leading groups out, usually they adore telling people that we started on the North Rim five days ago.  Or we are hiking out from the River.  But as the day wears on, and more and more people ask, and more and more giggle and say, "Oh, you're almost out!" it begins to pale.

At which point often a woman (and it is usually a female) will turn to me and say, "I'm going to tell them something difficult.  THEY don't know."

So I suggest, "Tell them we came down Utah Flats."  Or, "We came from the North Rim -- this morning!".  Or "We just finished a Steck route".  If the know what that means, they are very impressed, and if not, they are confused enough to hush up.

I know they mean to be nice, but at the end of a long day, I don't always want to respond.   And I sure don't want to grab people and announce my accomplishments.  I suppose I could carry a card that says, "Rim to rim, five days,"  or "Mule Assist, third day", or "Which way to Yosemite falls?"

That last actually might get me on Youtube.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Well, I lost it at the dinner table.

Over stew dinner at Phantom Ranch, someone mentioned that "they" want to put in an elevator into the Canyon, and at first I thought they referred to the old plans to install an elevator at the site of the Little Orphan Mine, and then I realized they were talking about the Confluence Tramway.

A very small minority of the Dine people are working with Anglo developers to install a tramway to the Little Colorado Confluence, with a walkway, a restaurant  and supporting helicopters and river trips.

So, thinking to educate and gather support to block this nefarious plan, I chimed in. "Oh, no, that's a gondola they want to install at the Little Colorado."

"Oh, not here.  That's OK."

"Yes, especially if it is for people who aren't physically capable of getting down here."

So I lost it.

"The Canyon is a shrine to the Hopi People!  Should we put a climbing wall on the spire at St. Patrick's Cathedral?  I'm physically incapable of climbing Everest.  Do we need a gondola to the summit?"

The lady across from me looked prettily confused, and then told her companion: "Did you hear that?  They want to put a climbing wall at St. Patrick's Cathedral!"

I believe I stared in disbelief, and then the man to my left asked for details.  So I told them, "Get online and sign the petition:  Save the Confluence."

Is this American entitlement?  If someone is "physically incapable" we have to accomodate them?  Particularly since "handicapped" people drive into closed roads all the time (with a permit, available from Park rangers) and then proceed to hop nimbly out of the car to take pictures?  They can't hop nimbly in and out of the shuttle busses, one supposes.

I'm afraid of exposure.  So I am mentally incapable of climbing Woton's Throne.  So let's put a gondola up that, also.

I can't sing like Cher.  So let me lip-sinc to her recordings and get paid for it.

I can't paint like Van Gogh.  So let me put my own signature on his work.  

We all have limitations.  We need to emphasize our abilities instead of capitalizing on our incapabilities.

Also, go to Save the Confluence and sign the petition.  

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

I have been scanning old pictures to reduce my paper load.  Right now there are boxes and albums all over the office floor.  (why, yes, Robbie is an only child).

Some things I have noticed;

I did have the most gorgeous baby in the world, thank you very much.  At times he was the Child from Hell, but gosh, he was pretty.  People used to ask me, "What is her name?", and I would reply "Roberta".  Probably explains a lot.

I made a lot of costumes.  I wanted a girl so I could sew the kind of fluffy, pink, girly things that I do not wear.  Instead I made Star Trek uniforms, Ren Faire garb, and Dune Fremen costumes.  If Robbie had an oral report to do, he had a costume for it.  And weapons to match.

Robbie had some rather unfortunate haircuts.  He just informed me that I used to cut his hair (which I did), but I retaliated that I never gave him that mullet.

Wherever we went, I tried to give him experiences.  We had memberships to every museum within 50 miles.  We spent so much time at the Phoenix Zoo, that the shuttle drivers knew him and would give him free rides.


We spent a lot of time in the Grand Canyon.  I remember Robbie complaining: "We're going to Phantom Ranch for Christmas AGAIN?"  The Christmas tradition started when Robbie was five, and I figured if he hiked out of the Canyon on Christmas Eve, he would go to sleep that night.














Now that he's in New York, I have lost my costume buddy.  Brad won't go to anything that he has to dress up as a Terran Empire officer, or a Renaissance noble.  I gave up on the nobility bit, though.  They wore too many clothes.  Now I am a merchant's wife.

Just before Robbie and Renata took off, we intimidated Renata into wearing Garb for the Ren Faire.  She hated it, but I told her if WE were dressed up and SHE wasn't, SHE would be even more embarrassed that she usually is when she is out with us.

For a long time, Robbie would only wear 100% cotton, and NO zippers.  So I sewed his clothes, and I did come up with some fairly strange outfits.  One day he was dressed in yellow and orange (with a propeller beanie) and was attacked by a baboon at the zoo.  Fortunately, he was behind glass (the baboon, not Robbie).
 
Whenever I was trying to convince Robbie not to get a tatto, I could point to his past passions.  What if he had gotten a Blue Power Ranger tatto?  Or a Pokeman Charizard?  Wouldn't he feel kind of dumb about it now?  


Also, this kid is seriously weird.  Probably gets that from me.  However, if he goes gaga and starts stalking people with a Zelda Sword, or hacks into the Pentagon  it is not my fault.  It will be proof that he is inherently evil.




 I have pictures of us at the Boston Light, the Freedom Trail, Boston Museum of Science (EVERY weekend), lots of dangerous cliffs, wading at the Boat Beach in December.  I remember he lost his shoe in the mud, and when he told me, my answer was, "And?".  I did a lot for that kid, but I refuse to swim in the 40-degree mud in the end of December looking for a shoe.  He did find the shoe.




Monday, January 7, 2013

What is it with people and their dogs?

I have known people who would accept accusations against their child as a justified and deserved, but say something about their canine at your peril.  Seeing how his grandparents treat their dog, my son complained, "I never got away with stuff like that!"

And now they are on the trails.

Some trails are acceptable for dogs on a leash.  On a leash.  Dog owners seem to believe that undomesticated animals such as elk, javalina, or coyotes should somehow be trained to stay away from their free-roaming pets.

Dogs on a leash are not going to get into an altercation with a potentially lethal predator.  They are not going to affect prey animals as a predator (and yes, canines are predators).  The most well-mannered and timid of dogs can turn into a ravening beast when faced with a wild animal.  Or more often than not, with another hiker.  They are not going to run off after a tantalizing scent and have to be chased down by an expensive and hazardous Search and Rescue operation.  S and R operations which could well be needed elsewhere.  "I'm sorry you were lying with a broken leg for five hours, but we had to capture a lost dog".

However, some trails do not allow dogs.  Usually in National Parks. This is the way it has been for lo, these many years, and yet still when I gently (the first time it is gentle) remind dog owners that their pet is not allowed on backcountry trails, I am always met with:

"Since when?"

"I didn't see a sign." (there is usually one at the trailhead)

Or, more and more lately, "Oh, this is a service dog."

Full disclosure:  my mother-in-law trains comfort dogs.  She sees no reason for her dogs to be hiking on the backcountry trails.

I am acquainted with the only search and rescue dogs in Grand Canyon National Park.  They are not allowed on the trails unless they are on a mission.  They do not go trotting along behind their owner without specific training objectives, which a day hike in and out the Bright Angel is not.

Legally I can't even ask to see these dogs' papers.  I can ask what they are being trained for, but I can't do more than that.  Service dogs in the Grand Canyon are required to get a special permit from the Backcountry Office before they are allowed below the Rim, but I have yet to meet anyone who seems to know this.  If I am in a really snarky mood, I have been known to say something along the lines of "Liars go to hell, you know", but usually I just sigh deeply and advise them to stay away from the mule trains.

Last week I met a lady with a rat dog in her arms.  I was informed that he was "being trained".  To be carried down the South Kaibab?  I rather think they were on their way to stay at Phantom Ranch, and dogs are not allowed in any hotel properties in Grand Canyon.  That would have been interesting.

If people can't stand to be without their subservient animal for a half day, let them brazen it out.  Don't wimp out with a phony "service dog" excuse.  As one backpacker did on his way down the Bright Angel.

"Since when?  This is the only place I've ever been  told my dog isn't allowed."

I said, "Did you get an overnight permit?"

Pause.  "Of course".

"Well, it is written on the back, where you were supposed to read the regulations and sign off on them."

He snorted and headed on down the trail.  I suspect he had no permit either, but since there was a ranger working at Mile and a Half House, I knew he wouldn't be heading down for long.

Service dog trainers I know are concerned about dog owners taking advantage of the service dog provision.  Too many people are getting service dog certification so they can take their dogs into eating places, or hotels, or into the backcountry.  It putting up with "service dogs" where they have no legitimate business becomes too great of a problem, it is likely that the rules will tighten drastically.

But, hey, if my rat dog gets to travel down the trail in my arms, it worked for me, didn't it?