So finished a GCFI trip this week, and had a few weird interactions.

Campsite 32 has a CCC lean-to, three picnic tables, and six ammo cans for food storage. I pull into site 33, and I have five ammo cans and six lids. Hmm. So I discreetly check out site 33: sure enough, they have six lids and seven cans. So I waltz over and tell them I believe they have one of my storage cans. "Oh, no, I'm sure not."

"Well, see, I have six lids and five cans, and I have 11 people, so we kind of need all our storage."

"By golly, this can I'm sitting on has no lid! It must be yours!"

"Fine, thanks, no harm no foul," and I take the can back.

Later that night one of them walks over (short-cutting through the re-veg area -- tsk, tsk) to apologize and say he had NO idea, NONE that he wasn't supposed to take cans from other sites. Yep, just because it says so on the lid of the can? Just because he has three picnic tables, six ammo cans, AND the benches inside the lean-to to sit on? Poor baby.

Then the water goes out. Again. 24th time this year. I have a water filter, so that's OK, but it means there is one bathroom with two stalls for 45+ women campers. And one has to grab a bucket, clamber down the rock-lined stream bank to Bright Angel Creek, fill said bucket, clamber back up and use it to flush.

So I have actually done this a lot. Our toilet used to break, and we would use a bucket to flush. Also it is a good way to clean the bowl. No biggie.

Except most of the women don't re-fill the bucket. It is too, too difficult to climb up and down with a bucket of water, so I fill the #$%^ buckets every time I go to the bathroom, and every time I walk by the bathroom. And most women apparently have never dealt with a broken bowl, or have never cleaned one, because they don't get the flush technique (which is, for future reference, to pour quickly from a substantial height). One lady gets her boyfriend to haul the water --that's OK -- but then has him flush as well, which is not OK because it means there is a guy in the ladies' room.

So the morning we hike out, I go to the bathroom, and without going into sordid details, I am desperate. And Mr Boyfriend is in the ladies' again. There is a slight problem with the flushing, and he is working on it. I wait, and I wait, and when he steps outside to grab another bucket, I grab the bucket, push past him, and fix the problem: both his and mine. I suppose he thought he was doing the world a favor, but Pl-ease, don't stand around posing in the only two women's stalls in the entire campground.

Busy, busy fall. Did an intro backpack which will be written up in Arizona Highways, then a rim to rim and another RTR next week.

Saw the usual pink rattler at Cottonwood. It likes to hang around the water faucet to catch mice when they show up for a drink.
Lovely full moon, in fact, the first equinox moon in more than a decade. The full moon rose opposite the sunset, right over the equator. Jupiter is also directly opposite the sun, and closest it has been in a while, so it was spectacular. With the full moon, the runners were out. Trotting through Cottonwood at 10 PM, 11 PM, midnight, 1 AM, 2 Am, etc., all stopping by the water faucet (along with the snake) and all conversing LOUDLY about their run. "We can't be more than 5 miles from Phantom Ranch". "You are 6.5 miles from Phantom, and please leave. Now."

Lots of bugs at Bright Angel. We don't get bugs here! Biting flies, something else little that bites (gnats? Miniature flying scorpions?) Took a black light and found a dozen scorpions in the rocks at campsite 33. Very dramatic. A little scary, when they just kept showing up, and showing up, closer, and closer...Bwa ha ha ha.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the mule traffic. With the work being done on the South Kaibab, all mules are on the Bright Angel, and they are limited to ten mules a day going to Phantom Ranch with the 20 pack mules a day which support them. When the South Kaibab is complete, they will start work on the Bright Angel, and then what? Xanterra doesn't want to take mules down the SK, because they say it is too steep for novice riders.
The Park doesn't want mules on its new trail because their hooves have much more effect than hikers' boots. Do the math: my foot is about 12 by 4 which makes it 48 square inches. For the sake of easy math, let's say I weigh 200 pounds when carrying a really heavy pack, my foot pressure is about 4 pounds per square inch. On a day hike it is closer to 3 pounds.

If a mule weighs 2000 pounds, and he or she has a 200 pound load, and the mule shoe is about 12 inches by one inch, it has 180 pounds per square inch. Even if we count the whole foot, which is maybe 4X4, it would be 130 pounds per square inch. And the shoes are metal. Mule riders say their mounts have no more effect on the trails than hikers, but that doesn't add up.

Proponents of the mule rides say that the trails were all built for mules, and therefore mules have the right to stay.

Originally trails were developed by game animals, and then by Ancestral Puebloans, who had no stock animals at all, much less mules. It is true that the Native American trails were improved for mules and burros, but by miners, and mining has been outlawed in the Park.

By the 1960's, Phantom Ranch was so rarely visited that Fred Harvey wanted to close it down. The Park Service told them to raise rates in order to keep it open as a tourist attraction. Hikers at the time weren't even allowed to WALK through Phantom. The first time I visited it on the day hike, the caretaker chased me away.

Also by the 1960's all the trails were in poor repair. Trails outside of the corridor were, in fact, mostly gone. The Tanner had no trail at all below the Tapeats. Hikers made their own way down the last shale slopes. The New Hance (Red Canyon) trail wasn't. A trail, that is. Hikers were given a mimeographed sheet of paper describing "way points" along the route, such as "leave the stream bed when the red rock cliff appears", and "climb to the twin towers in the Redwall".

Us hikers showed up in the sixties as part of the "back to the earth" movement, and we found those abandoned trails. We wore them back in with our busy little feet. The Park Historian, Michael Anderson, believed that we hikers saved the off-corridor trails from oblivion. So mules are not the only animals to thank for the existence of the trails.

When I first started hiking, there were no permits required (hikers had to get a permit, but the numbers were not limited) so it was not uncommon to meet a group of 200 Scouts, 300 Sierra Club hikers, or 100 church members.

Campfires were allowed. Very bad idea. Popular sites such as Indian Gardens had NO living plants. Trees, branches, bushes, grass, flowers, were all torn out for campfires. Bark was stripped from the trees as far as a person could reach.

In 1972, permits were limited and fires were banned. The inner canyon is better off for these changes. Perhaps limiting mule traffic is one of those changes forced upon us by increasing visitation and limited public funds.

This weekend was the Perseid meteor shower, and we were discussing where to go see it. Mather Point? Hopi Point? Just lie in the back yard? Then I mentioned jokingly that Horseshoe Mesa would be nice, and we thought, why not?
I got a permit, and we walked down Thursday night after work. There was an after-school meeting, of course! so we didn't even get on the trail until 6:10.
I finally found a trailhead more obnoxious than the Bright Angel. The Grandview has toilet paper all over, people standing in the middle of the trail taking pictures of themselves, taking pictures of their dogs(!) on the trail. They cut switchbacks shamelessly. The trail is steep enough without taking a shortcut.

Got down in two hours, just before it got too dark to see the route. About 10 minutes from camp I heard a BUZZ and stopped to study a little rattler. He was most upset that I wouldn't move on, but I wanted to point him out to Brad before he (Brad) stepped on it or was startled right off the cliff.
No one else camping on the Mesa. The Milky Way was spectacular, and lots of huge meteors with tails until about 9 PM when we both fell asleep. Woke up at 3 AM because the experts said that would be the best for the shower, but all we got were lots of wee little shooting stars: nothing big. Out in 2 hours ten, but I spent at least ten minutes trying to erase graffiti from the desert varnish, which is really tough. Troop 407 was there, and their leader was either too lazy or too ignorant to keep them from leaving their scratches on the rocks.

Been spending a lot of time on the North Rim lately. spent a night at Cape final out on the way eastern rim. Didn't even know you could get a permit for that. Also hiked down North Kaibab to Supai Tunnel, but turned around because it was a)hot and b) full of mule traffic. The mules have worn the trail down to dust, and it is full of mule droppings. I guess because it isn't as dry on the north side, so it doesn't dry out as fast as on the Bright Angel.

Spent a week on the North rim scoping out hikes for a new class for GCFI. Did Cape Final, Point Imperial, head of the Old Bright Angel, Ken Patrick, and Snake Gulch. Lots of really good rock art in the latter. Told ourselves we would hike in two hours to beat the heat (the gulch is very exposed) and kept seeing better and better rock art. I guess we turned around before the biggest panel, since we had forgotten the map and were guessing at where we were.

Snowed the first day we were there.

Busy,busy, busy. A meet the canyon with a nice couple who are going to Phantom Ranch later this week, then a day with a school from California. One of the middle school boys asked if there were any "hot girls" on the rim, and I said I knew one who often hung around the south rim. After our hike, we were sitting in the shade waiting for the rest of the group to show, and hot chick shows up on cue. I invited her over, and she chatted, and after she left, the guy who wanted to meet her came back from the curio shop. He was rather peeved that the girl of his dreams had come and gone without him.

A five day rim to rim for the field institute. The sign at the trailhead said water was off at Supai Tunnel, so we filled up from a very weak dripping faucet. It wasn't off: but it was off at Roaring Springs. 140 degrees in the sun. Two pink rattlers, a king snake, a big horn (at Phantom: pretty hot for that).

The family next to us at Indian Garden got up at 2 AM to get ready to hike out, and EVERYONE heard them. Yelling and clanging and yelling some more. Caught them at Mile and a Half, and the kid was still yelling. A day hiker on the trail told him to pipe down, even.