Grand Canyon Backpack

On Sunday and today, it was fun to revisit part of a backpack we did in 2002.  This one was a lot more relaxed because we weren't fitting it within a vacation or airline schedule.  We didn't have to drive.  We just hopped the national park shuttle bus, hopped out right near the Bright Angel Trailhead, cinched up our packs, and we were ready to go.  (Of course, we left the cats extra food and water, and all that.)  We enlisted the aid of a friendly hiker to snap our photo at the trailhead:

We were off down the trial by 9am.  No sooner did we get down off the rim then Kathy looked up and spotted a CONDOR flying overhead!  As we watched, more joined, and within minutes we were gazing at five condors riding the thermals at the rim of the canyon!  There are only 400 California Condors worldwide, of which only 200 have been released into the wild in an ongoing effort to stabilize the population of this endangered species.  Of those 200, fully 73 inhabit the area in and immediately around the Grand Canyon.  All have been tagged with numbers and electronic transmitters.  There are so few of them that the National Park Service and related agencies can identify each condor and keep track of its activities in detail.  The other day, we encountered a young ranger waving a receiver around in the air to pick up the transmissions of any nearby condors.  Later that same day, another gentleman pointed out to us a small cave high on a canyon cliff below, on a formation called the "battleship" where a condor pair has a nest with and egg.

Detailed data on the condors is available online here.  The condor we spotted on the trail first thing Sunday was #80, an 11 year old female who was released into the wild in 2003.  She has mated with #4 and they laid an egg on the battleship formation - the very nest we saw the other day!  (There is more to this story below.)

Sunday's hike down into the canyon was 4.6 miles, to Indian Garden, a spring, oasis and campground located about halfway between the rim and the Colorado River.  We had camped there on our previous trip and love its magical "Secret Garden" atmosphere, right in the middle of the desert.  The hike was uneventful, other than the usual spectacular canyon views.  It's impossible to describe the feeling, not only of experiencing the colors and three dimensional spaces of the canyon, but then of continuing to experience them over a 3 hour hike, as they continually change and morph with our movement down the canyon wall.  We've posted other canyon photos, so we'll pass on them here, in favor of the sunset photos below.

One notable event on the hike:  we met a young ranger who was on her day off, hiking back up from Indian Garden.  She recognized David's Appalachian Mountain Club t-shirt and asked if we had been to the White Mountains.  Well, this started a lengthy conversation.  We explained how we are AMC members and were on the volunteer committee for the Mohican Outdoor Center, which she knows.  She was a kroo member, mainly at Lonesome Lake Hut, and, it turned out, was krooing there the years that we stayed in that hut!  It's very likely we had met before.  We asked her about her position as a ranger at Grand Canyon.  She would love to return as a paid staff member at AMC.  We wished her the best as we each went our ways.

Here's a photo of David in our campsite, with our tent in the background.

We were surprised how easy the hike down was, compared to what we had remembered about the downhill hike in 2002.  Hopefully it means we're a bit more trail-hardened.  We had a few hours to set up camp, relax, browse some hiking and geology books in the campground library maintained by the park rangers, and generally be off our feet.

A ranger talk was scheduled for 4:00 pm, and we arrived early to get a good seat.  As we relaxed under the trees, we heard rustling and scurrying all around the little amphitheater where the ranger talk is presented.  On closer inspection, we found little collared lizards chasing each other all over the hillside around us.  As the ranger later informed us, it's mating season, and those males are not to be denied.  Nevertheless, the females were giving them a good run for their money.  I guess if you can outrun her, you can have her.

The ranger talk was coincidentally about the California Condor, and we had a chance to learn many details about those amazing birds we had seen over the last few days.  The ranger mentioned that a nesting pair has an egg in a nest just on the other side of the large red stone formation looming over the campground on the west.  She mentioned the formation is known as the "battleship" formation.  What a coincidence that the condor Kathy identified nests in the cave we saw earlier in the week, right next to the campground we were visiting!  We felt like we were part of what the ranger called that nerdy clique of people who get into tracking individual condors.  Here's a photo of our ranger, who was a very animated, knowledgeable and entertaining speaker:

One big reason for camping at Indian Garden is that there is a 1.5 mile trail out from the campground to Plateau Point, which overlooks the mighty Colorado River and is an unmatchable location to watch the sunset in the Grand Canyon.  As soon as the ranger talk was done, we put on our backpacks, hightailed it out to Plateau Point, and enjoyed our Gatorade bottles of wine (see Kathy demonstrating below) before cooking a camp dinner and watching the sunset.  The South Rim, where we started our morning hike down, is behind Kathy.

David manned the camp stove.  Here he is in his natural element.  Behind him is the North Rim, and just over the cliff roars the Colorado River, probably a third of a mile below.

Sunset is a good time for shadow photos, and we couldn't resist one looking east:

Here's that mighty Colorado River we were telling you about, from Plateau Point.  It looks tame, but we were told that some of those little white rapids produce waves up to 15 feet high.

Now some sunset photos, which are so special for their shadows and colors:

The next photo is not a sunSET photo, but a sunRISE photo, of the cliff overlooking our campsite.  It started getting light before 5:00 am.  We were up by 5:15.  After a hearty breakfast of oatmeal and camp coffee (instant coffee with instant cocoa - Kathy's favorite), we got on the trail by 6:45 am, headed back up to the South Rim.  This would be a fairly daunting 4.6 mile hike straight uphill, and we decided we wanted to tackle it as early in the morning as possible in order to avoid as much midday heat as we could.

The hike up, though arduous, was smooth.  Both up and down, we were surprised our time was so good.  We usually do 1 mile an hour uphill with full packs, and 1.5 miles an hour downhill with full packs.  Both up and down, we did a solid 1.5 miles an hour.  We're still not sure how we trudged up the trail that fast, but we guess that "slow and steady wins the race."  We had Camelbacks so we could hydrate as we walked.  We were pretty quick about our rest stops and didn't let the lactic acid start building up in our legs.  Kathy led the charge, and although our shade- and breath-stops grew more frequent as we neared the top, nevertheless, she led us to a record pace!  Here, again, a kind hiker took our photo at the top to memorialize our completion:

We treated ourselves to a beer and lunch in Bright Angel Lodge, then headed home to clean the red canyon dust off ourselves and our gear.  After those chores and an unintended short nap, we treated ourselves further to a carnivore's delight at Yippie-Ei-Oh! Barbeque in Tusayan, just a short walk from our campsite (you can imagine no one was in the mood for a long walk).

And the best part?  We didn't have a day's travel home.  We didn't have to go back to work.  We don't have to wait 2 months to get out and about again.  Maybe we'll bicycle tomorrow or Wednesday, but in any event we have some more hiking ahead of us in Zion, Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks and Grand Staircase-Escalante next week!

Bicycling the Rim of the Grand Canyon

Today we bicycled along the rim of the Grand Canyon.  Approximately 13 miles of the South Rim are easily accessible by tourists.  You can hop on and off a park shuttle at the many viewpoints, or you can walk as far along the rim trail as you wish.  Or you can bicycle.  We wanted to bicycle so that we could take our time and stop wherever we liked without being so jammed up with other tourists.

Here's Kathy getting her Grand Canyon High - in cycle fashion:

David got his cycle going too:

There were so many splendid views, and all the colors and textures were indescribable.  This is our third visit to the Grand Canyon and we still can't get enough.

The photo below shows the route we're going to follow tomorrow when we backpack down the Bright Angel Trail.  You can see Indian Garden campground in the middle, where the drainage is decorated with green - cottonwood trees and grass in an otherwise arid environment.  To get an idea of the scale of things, note the small figures on an outcropping in the upper center-left of the photo:

At one particularly accessible point, we asked someone to take our picture together.  The morning mist had lifted and the day was glorious:

It's very hard to decide which view of the canyon is our favorite.  Here's another classic view highlighting some of the structures and colors:

This view looks east along the South Rim:

David got brave and walked out onto an outcropping and Kathy snapped this photo, which gives you some impression of how much depth there is in the views:

Here is yet another photo showing some spectacular formations.  The various rock strata visible in this photo reach back 1 billion years, although the canyon itself took "only" 5 or 6 million years old.

Yet another view, with glmpses of the deepest, dark Vishnu Basement stratum containing rocks nearly 2 billion years old:

This was our best view of the Colorado River today.  The Granite Rapids are clearly visible.  These rapids produce 15-foot waves and are rated "8" on Grand Canyon's scale from 1-10 (ten being the most severe in the park).  Today, the river's water was a deep glacial blue-green.  Remember as you look at this that the river is perhaps 9 miles away.

The western end of the sites accessible to tourists is named "Hermit's Rest," and is the trailhead for the Hermit Trail, which we hiked yesterday.  At Hermit's Rest, there is a gift shop and food service, as well as trailhead parking and picnic facilities.  The building itself was constructed in 1914 and designed by Mary Colter, an architect who designed several of the most famous structures at the Grand Canyon.

We stopped here for lunch.  Here's a selfies with the Grand Canyon behind us:

After a bite to eat and a brief rest, we pedaled straight back to Bright Angel Lodge (lots of ups and downs), where we treated ourselves to a beer and then headed home.  Before our bike ride, we had stopped at the Backcountry Office to see if we could score a backcountry camping permit for Indian Garden Campground for tomorrow night - and we did!  So we needed to get back here to the RV to start packing the backpacks for an overnight down into the canyon.

More on that adventure on Monday or Tuesday!

Fort Ticonderoga

Today we decided to be historical, and we drove east along Route 74 to Fort Ticonderoga to learn all about that historic fort.  Its history is a little complicated, because it was built by the French in 1757-1759, promptly lost to the British, then lost to the Americans in the Revolutionary War, then back to the British, then back to the Yanks.  For a detailed timeline of its history, see this page from the curators of Fort Ticonderoga.

Our day was a beautiful, sunny day, and we drove east along Paradox Lake and Eagle Lake, then over the easternmost ridge of the Appalachians to Ticonderoga.  From Mount Defiant (more on that later), you can see Fort Ticonderoga, poised on a strategic peninsula on Lake Champlain, guarding the entrance to La Chute River and the 3.5 mile portage past the five waterfallsof La Chute to the north end of Lake George:


After a very tasty lunch in the Visitor Center cafe, we made it to the afternoon tour and were greeted by perhaps the best tour guide we have ever had at an historic site.  He painted us a portrait of what it was like to be a British or Colonial soldier at that dramatic time that Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys (oh, yes, and that ne'er do well, the later-to-be-traitor Benedict Arnold) crept up to the fort in the middle of the night and overpowered a single senior citizen sentry to take over the fort:

We had a chance to explore the fort on our own.  Here's Kathy nuzzling the muzzle of a genuine cannon of the period, as it peered over a strategic area looking toward La Chute River and the portage to Lake George:

Because the fort was destroyed three times, each time by the army that had occupied it in order to deny it to its new conquerors, most of the fort, including the enlisted men's barracks, had to be reconstructed by, first the Pell family, which owned the property from sometime in the 1800's, well into mid-20th Century, and then the nonprofit foundation to which the Pell family handed over the fort.  Here is a photo of the enlisted men's barracks:



A reconstruction of the ad hoc fireplace used by 18th Century soldiers lay outside the barracks:

Every wall of the fort had cannon poised to wreak havoc on errant ships or enemy soldiers:

The one building that survived most of the destruction was the officers' quarters, at the south end of the fort.  It was the first to be reconstructed in the 1930's.  Here, our guide leads us through the parade grounds toward the officers' quarters:

And, again, the ever-present cannon, guarding the Passage to the Portage:



After our guided tour, we had an opportunity to watch a demonstration of use of 18th Century military firearms - a/k/a breech-loading muskets.  The re-enactors provided a very concise and very unique explanation of every step of the typical parade ground handling of muskets, to explain that they represent the appropriate methods for handling, loading and firing the muskets, so that they don't accidentally fire at friendly soldiers but can be safely and effectively fired at the enemy:

An area between the fort and Lake Champlain has been set aside as the King's Garden, which is a demonstration garden that simultaneously replicates not only the provisions gardens maintained by the soldiers garrisoned at the fort, but also the decorative King's Garden constructed by the Pell family during the period when they first occupied, then maintained a tourist hotel for guests on, the property.  Here is a view looking down the formal walk toward the garden and house:



We had a chance to tour the vegetable gardens:



Here is a photo of the Three Sisters Garden, which features "scarecrows" modeled in the forms of three sisters - perhaps three Indian maidens -- and features three different vegetables which Native Americans grew together.  The three crops benefit from each other. The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants utilize, and the squash spreads along the ground, blocking the sunlight, helping prevent establishment of weeds. The squash leaves also act as a "living mulch", creating a microclimate to retain moisture in the soil, and the prickly hairs of the vine deter pests. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the human body needs to make proteins and niacin, but beans contain both and therefore maize and beans together provide a balanced diet.

In this photo, the three sisters as scarecrows, overlook and protect the crops:



The original Mrs. Pell had a formal garden designed by Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1957).  Ms. Coffin is recognized as one of the first and most accomplished female landscape architects in the United States.  Coffin achieved widespread recognition for her designs of country estates including Henry Francis du Pont’s Winterthur in Wilmington, Deleware.

Here is a photo of the garden pool with Diana the Hunter, which is said by rumor to have been sculpted from a life study of a young Bette Davis



 
Volunteers tend lovingly to the garden, which presently is abloom with color:



On the advice of our guide, we strolled around to the lake side of the Pell mansion, which was subsequently repurposed as a tourist hotel.  It was graced with spectacular sash windows of leaded glass that lined a hallway onto which opened doors from guests' bedrooms:

The nonprofit association administering Fort Ticonderoga hopes to complete the restoration of the Pell facility in the near future.

We finished our visit with a drive up to Mount Defiance, the nearby mountain which proved to be the Achillies Heel of the fort, and which succeeding armies used to threaten the fort and force its surrender.  Not incidentally, Mount Defiance offers a spectacular view of the fort and of Lake Champlain both north and south of the fort.  Thus satisfied with a grand overview, we drove back to our campground and enjoyed the fall colors, which graced the Adirondacks as we drove back up, and down the ridge, and along nearby Eagle Lake and Pardox Lake.

Tomorrow:  a visit from Laird and Risa, and the arrival of Katie and Maggie!

Hello Old Friend... our third visit to the Grand Canyon

Hi Blog.  Today is Friday, May 17, 2013.  This was our first full day in Tusayan, AZ - Gateway to the Grand Canyon.  After getting Eddie and George up this morning, we took the shuttle bus into Grand Canyon National Park.  After arriving at the Visitors Center, we hopped another shuttle to take us over to the Backcountry Permit Office.  We are going to try and get a camping permit for the Indian Garden Campground, which is about half-way to the bottom of the canyon.  We have to go back tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. to see if we scored a permit.  Wish us luck!

We wanted to do a day hike today to get ourselves acclimated to altitude and dry conditions.  Since this is our third visit, we had already done some of the big trails - Bright Angel and South Kaibab.  We picked a hike at the very western end of the South Rim which we had not visited before.  The shuttle bus took us out the 8 miles to Hermits Rest, a small tourist shop and snack bar.  It was time to leave the tourists behind and drop down over the rim.

The Hermit Trail began as an old Indian route.  It was improved by the prospectors looking for gold, and then further improved by the Santa Fe Railroad.  The railroad would bring in visitors to the canyon rim and then bring them down to the river on mules.  There are remnants of the old Hermit Camp about 7 miles down from the rim.  It is another mile and a half to the river from the camp.  That was a little too far for us today.  We set our sights on a shelter about 2.1 miles down known as the Santa Maria Spring.

The weather was windy and overcast, but that actually helped us stay cool during our four hours of hiking.  No matter how many times we see the Grand Canyon, our first impression is "this can't be real." It is like a movie set backdrop.  It is just too huge to comprehend.  It looks like a giant matte painting.

Here we go.  There were definitely times you felt like the trail was just going off into thin air.

Sometime we just had to stop and take it all in.  The colors were constantly changing.  When the sun went behind the clouds, the bright reds turned to a deep purple.

We had to watch our step, not just because we didn't want to trip and stumble over the edge, but to avoid stepping on the little lizards sunning themselves on the trail.

Here is one section of trail that still shows the improvements made by the Santa Fe Railroad.  The cobbles were laid to make traction for the mules.  However, they are horrible to hike on.  You slip on the way down and get blisters on the way up.

The trail levels out a bit as we get closer to the Supai Formation - the really cool red formation which you can see to the right.  If you look closely, the trail goes under those large rock outcroppings.

Every once in a while, we can get a peek further down into the canyon.  Actually, Dave gets to look because Kathy won't get that close to the edge of the trail.

Now, if you look real close, you can see Kathy looking up from a few switchbacks below.

It look Dave a few minutes to catch up, so Kathy just plopped herself down and enjoyed the view.

Here is Dave checking out the cave area formed by those large rocks hanging over his head.

Just as we went around the corner, we could see our destination.  There is a hiker saying that if you can see your destination, it takes you twice as long to reach it.  We tried not to look, but we couldn't help it.

Yeah, we made it.  While the spring is barely a trickle, the old tub the railroad installed to catch the water still works.

The best part of making it to the shelter - the double rocking chair!  It says "restbit," and we did.

After cooling down, having a snack and chatting with fellow hikers, it was back to the rim for us.  By this time, it was getting pretty cloudy and we got sprinkled on a couple times.  We didn't take many more photos.  All our attention was focused on getting back to the top.  Our reward was a Fat Tire at the Bright Angle Lodge.  We love hiking because it makes beer taste that much better!