Training Log Archive: Sandy

Another perfect day, just winding our way down the river. This was my favorite section of the canyon - the schist rock with pink granite running through it.

After pulling in to camp and unloading the boats, the guides would all sit together on one of the boats and chat for 20 minutes, presumably about plans for dinner and the next day but we figured they were also dishing a bit on us. Our guides were great - very professional but really friendly and enthusiastic.

Another day, another hike up a bluff, this time overlooking a rapid we would be rafting after we got down. This was as close to the edge as I got - no looking over to see the rapid for me!

That night it rained some more and I hadn't done a good job setting up the fly and so there was a stream of water coming into my tent. But we slept on these 4 inch foam pads so I stayed dry although a bit of the sleeping bag got wet and most of my gear was in plastic bags so mostly just the outside of the bags were wet. But, we woke up to sun and there was a mist on the river.

We did a hike up the canyon wall to some granaries. The hike wasn't bad until they wanted us to climb on these ledges to get right up there. I couldn't really concentrate on the talk they gave about the granaries - I was just hanging on to my 6 inch perch hoping I wouldn't fall.


Drying out my stuff at camp that night:

View in the other direction:

A cool naturally made cavern (note the boat already tied up on shore and the person walking to get a perspective on how big it was):

Guides getting lunch ready:

In the afternoon it poured for about 45 minutes but then cleared up as we pulled into camp. We went hiking up a canyon but I overheard the head guide Heather talking to Corey, the guide leading the hike, telling him to be safe and turn around if he needed to. About 40 minutes in while we standing in a wash in a pretty narrow part of the canyon, we could hear thunder in the distance and Corey made the decision to turn around. So back we went. We got onto the part of the trail that was on the rocky slopes of the canyon and not in the wash of the side canyon and it started to pour and the thunder and lightning started. I was pretty stressed as the hiking was not easy in the first place (lots of climbing over rocks that were bigger than what I could comfortably step down so lots of scrambling) and with the rain it was slick. Eventually we got to the bottom of the trail and back to camp at about the time the rain stopped. And then we were treated to a rare site. There were waterfalls of red off the rim of the canyon walls (just washing all the red dirt over) and a flash flood down the canyon we had been standing in. Had we continued to climb we would have totally been toast.


This is actually a video but I have no idea how to embed it into AP>

And so began what became an easy routine. We would get up with the sun and have breakfast (All the meals on the trip were fantastic - lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, chicken, steak, shrimp, fish and lots of other stuff; always more than enough. The boats were packed with food lockers that had ice or dry ice. We even had frozen milky ways one night for dessert and they were perfectly frozen. It was amazing how they managed it all.) Then we would pack our camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, etc. all provided by OARS - the rafting company) and our personal gear into dry bags and the guides would lash them onto the boats. We would go down the river for a while. Each day we would stop for a hike somewhere and for lunch. Then we would pull into a camp around 3 and relax before dinner. And then pretty much when the sun went down we would call it a night. Hiking the first day up a side canyon:

There was always something special at the end of the hike:

Early Tuesday we headed to the river at Lees Ferry, met the rest of the guides, got our life jackets and learned some rules of the river. And then we were off. There were 4 passenger rafts and 2 baggage boats. An easy day of just getting to know people. We pulled into a sandy beach around 3pm and were shown how camp would be set up each evening.

Flew to Flagstaff a day early so I wouldn't stress about missed connections or lost luggage. When I landed on Sunday late afternoon, my first reaction was "I could live here." Got a great view of the red rocks of Sedona on the flight in and the airport is a nice tiny friendly place and the weather was great. So super first impression. On Monday, I walked from my hotel over to Thorpe Park, at the base of Lowell Observatory - from Google Maps it looked like a large enough area that I could walk around for a while and then sit and read and eat lunch. When I got there I wandered for a while and found myself on Mars Hill Trail.

I recognized the name from AliC's log and decided to hike up the hill for a while. I eventually got to a display with a trail map and was able to figure out that I could hike around the Observatory and take Tunnel Spring Trail back down on the other side which came out pretty close to my hotel. A lovely hike and I stopped and read and ate my lunch part way through.


In the evening there was a meeting of the people on the trip (an MIT alumni trip) and one of the river guides. We got our dry bags and instructions for the morning.

One of the participants was someone I had done the Kilimanjaro trip with and one was someone I knew slightly from my time at MIT. There were 15 of us total (there were 16 spots but some last minute cancellations and wait list shuffling ended with 15). We met the head guide Heather and were told there would be 6 more to help with the trip. So 22 total people.