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| Hiking | 13.00 Miles |
3,000 AEG |
| | Hiking | 13.00 Miles | 11 Hrs | | 1.18 mph |
| 3,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | I headed up to the north rim for a quick turn and burn to knock out a couple of summits with Sean and Carlos. Standard Canyon summit, so got there late, didn’t sleep much and started early.
We started from the old cabin near Kanabownits Spring spring and the old fire tower. We stepped off around 4:15 a.m. Despite the darkness and overgrown former road, we will made pretty good time to the rim. After a pretty modest initial, but steep descent we were at the scenic spring and trickling waterfall that seeps from the coconino. The trickling, but steady spring created a scenic little stream that was something a little different to run across on what are usually pretty heinous off trail approaches off the north rim.
We made a quick detour to the base of Excalibur on the way to Guinevere Castle. I wanted to recon the route some and get some beta for an upcoming climb. After Excalibur, we made our way to the base of Guinevere, where we began our traverse towards King Arthur’s Castle. We realized we had started our traverse a little high, so at that point it made sense to bag Guinevere at that moment instead of on the way back as planned. We knew we would want a much lower traverse on the way back, so it would be a little redundant to drop that elevation at that moment just to make it up on our way back. The final approach to Guinevere was a little loose and steep, but pretty straightforward and easy. Much to our chagrin we could not descend directly to the saddle of Guinevere and King Arthur, so we forced to do some tedious backtracking.
The final half mile or so to King Arthur’s Castle was slow going, hot and tedious. Nevertheless, we made the fabled summit, however, we did a pretty quick turn around on the summit, as we had left our packs under a shady overhang a few hundred feet from the summit. After recovering for a few minutes under the overhang, we started to make the long trip back to the rim.
We took a much lower and more efficient route on our way back and generally more efficient, but the heat was oppressive at times and the hike out a slog. We had a navigation snafu on the way back to the vehicles due to a dead phone battery. That’s made things interesting for a minute, but we persevered despite being out of water a little beat and annoyed by the fact that we could not seem to get any of our three GPS’ tracking properly.
The miles are an estimate, as is the AEG. I would rate these as high medium to difficult summits. 11 hours car to car with some wrong turns and several short breaks in the shade. |
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