Finally dropping into the Canyon

After 2 days of moseying around the rim, it was time to make some footprints below the canyon. The rim of the canyon is a pretty amazing place with the amount of signs, warnings and pictures all offering advice about what not to do: Do not attempt to hike to the river and back in one day, do not feed the animals, do not hike on a hangover, do not drink alcohol while hiking, hike only at a pace where you can still talk comfortably and so on and so on…They even listed all of these things for us and upon inspection we were amazed to find we had already accomplished a good number of these “don’t do” feats. Well done Team Extreme. Needless to say it was amusing to people watch and see the various types making an attempt at “hiking the grand canyon”. It seemed as though all who read the warning signs were already prepared and well educated, yet those who walked by without notice to them were the ones who would benefit from their advice the most.

If the sun doesn't blind you, shaun's nipple may.

These guys packed in an out a lot of asses, and i dont mean the 4 footed kind


Down Down we go. Walking some ridge half way to the river.


All the cacti were in bloom

The hike down was easy enough and we were soon at our campsite in 95 degree weather and ready to take a dip in the Colorado. Nice cold water, a nice sandy beach and a hot sun – hard to beat that. We even hiked in a bottle of Jaeger to celebrate finally making it down to the bottom. We spent 2 nights at Phantom ranch with our layover day being spent exploring the Phantom Creek side canyon, and a good day it was. We scrambled, hiked and swam our way upstream through the narrow deep canyon. We spent an hour trying to get past one bit which narrowed to 8 feet or so and contained a serious of ledge drops. Eventually we persuaded the ladies to follow us through the drops and we managed (through the use of some human chains) to get up and past the obstacle. In the interest of keeping our backpack dry, Shaun had one of the most amazing feats of athletic brilliance I have yet to see. A 5 foot sloping drop fed into a deep narrow pool with fast water in it. Shaun stood perched on river right on the slope with feet planted in the fast current. I walked the pack up the pool and managed to find an underwater shelf to keep my head above water and held on with one hand while I tossed the pack to Jono who was on the river left just opposite shaun (both of which were holding on with only one hand as well) the bag swung its way over to shaun who then lost his footing and began the nail biting fall into the pool below. Like a true Gary shaun accepted his fate, went with gravities persuasion and sailed over the drop and into the deep water below – the brilliant moment came with the hand off of the bag – as shaun passed me mid air he managed to pass/toss the bag in my general direction and saved the day by keeping the bag dry. Shaun was not as lucky, he was instantly eaten by the man eating creek and we never saw him again – we named it“Shauns Canyon”. What a Gary.

Well actually he just swam to shore and then swam back up the drop again and with a second more organized attempt we were all above the drop with a dry bag. Well done team.

Mid-day swim on Phantom Creek.


Shaun sacrificing himself for the team

Wiiiiiicked fun

We spent that following night at a “Critters of the night” presentation and learned all about scorpions and skunks and snakes and other critters that come out at night in the GC. At the end of the presentation, the women brought a small blacklight with her which causes the exoskeleton of scorpions to glow fluorescent green. We gathered around her just a foot off the track as she searched for one of the buggers…4 seconds after she turned the light on she found one, another 4 seconds later she found the 2^nd, this continued on for about 2 minutes and we soon realized we were more or less surrounded by scorpions – it made for a bit of a restless night as the 5 of us lay on our tarp trying to sleep, waiting for a scorpion to crawl into out bag looking for some warmth.

Shaun scaring away the scorpions amongst other things.

We rallied early the next morning and were on the track by 6:15am in an attempt to reach the top before the noon-day sun cooked us. 5 hours of hiking and 5000 vertical feet later and we were celebrating at the top with Popsicles.

Up at the crack of Goon on our way out of the canyon