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