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| Backpack | 28.00 Miles |
6,500 AEG |
| | Backpack | 28.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 6,500 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | I took some friends out for a somewhat relaxed trip down Tanner and across the river to Lava. The trails were the most crowded I have ever seen them - and it's November!
Hiking down Tanner was routine and we camped on a gravel bar Friday night. On Saturday we hiked up to the sandbar below Palisades and crossed the river in the tailwaves of Lava-Chuar Rapid. The sandbars are BIG right now and I found a sealed lime seltzer on one. We only brought two packrafts so we shuttled everyone across by tying an empty packraft to the other. The afternoon was spent hiking up to Still Spring. Near the Butte Fault the bed of Lava is covered with salt like a thick frost. I kept saying "we're almost there" but I neglected to actually check the map and in fact we weren't almost there. Woops. From the tracks, it looks like a fair amount of hikers have been in Chuar Valley recently.
We were able to camp on a narrow sandbar below Lava. Surprisingly, we experienced mice here. We packed up at dawn on Sunday and shuttled back across the river long before the sun reached us. There's nothing like the prospect of cold, wet clothes to motivate you to get out of bed. Temps were probably in the 30s and wading in the river felt warm compared to the cold sand on bare feet.
After breakfast on the south-side sandbar, my friends opted to hike down to Tanner. I wanted practice packrafting and acclimating to the cold so I waited for the sun to draw a little nearer before floating down. This time I sat on a foam pad in the packraft and my butt stayed warm and dry. I'm not about to start carrying a drysuit, but a foamie may become a new staple for winter packrafting. I was surprised by a gravel bar and small island in the channel, took the shallow channel around the bigger island, and had a very short portage around the top of the riffle at the mouth of Comanche Creek. When I pulled into the top of Tanner Beach I was surprised to see other packrafters already taking out there! Turns out this group had come down from the LCR.
Hiking up Tanner was also routine, except that I found a historic cairn several yards above the trail at one place. This is the second such cairn I've seen where the trail contours the Redwall Rim; the other is along the section to the "Old Tanner" exit. |
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