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| Backpack | 44.00 Miles |
12,000 AEG |
| | Backpack | 44.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 12,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Pernell invited me on a nice trip to a new area of canyon - and my first GC summit.
We were a group of six but started at three separate times. I started down south kaibab a little after 8 and was relaxing at the river 2.5hrs later. I suppose it's harder to make a sunrise start when you drive from southern Arizona. I finally spotted some of the group crossing the bridge and met them to hike to phantom ranch. On the clear creek trail there's a great view upriver from below the tapeats, and no others. Sumner wash had several full potholes and tapeats slabs, which I like. The hike across tonto felt fast, maybe because I've only done very long tonto stretches solo recently. We almost had clear creek to ourselves on the first night - plus a few mice visitors.
We left camp before sunrise on day two and had an easy hike into the east arm of clear creek. Then up a hole through the tapeats, across a fleeting flat section of shale, and up again through the redwall. There was some navigation of chutes here and we didn't pick the easiest one to scramble up. Highlights were loose rocks and threatening yucca. I walked into my first barrel cactus... somehow it blended in with the rocks. We walked through crunchy ankle deep snow around "little thor", which I thought was some of the easiest walking of the hike and the southerners didn't enjoy. Then several more scrambles through supai ledges until the esplanade band, where most of us roped up for a short pitch. Some redwall and supai scrambles were trickier than I'd happily do alone and I was grateful for the spotting. At the summit of Thor we snacked and relaxed for a short while.
After some coaching I happily rappelled down the trickiest scrambles - better than downclimbing. We also used a handline for one supai ledge. We found an easier way through one ledge where the beta had been "swing your leg up and straddle that boulder like a horse". I had an altercation with a catclaw that had looked thorn-free until I was in too deep to retreat. Once back in the creek the going was quick. I like the shinumo narrows in there. In the dinner circle we again had mice visitors and this time one crawled up my leg 
The third day was mine to hike out. I opted for a slow morning and left around 9. The sun felt hot on tonto for the first time in months and I passed several folks hiking into clear creek. Once again, I allocated about an hour to spend at the boat beach. This time I handled my nutrition much better hiking up south kaibab. I was warm at the start of the climb but I'm glad I didn't soak my clothes because the wind was gusting off snow near the rim. Lastly, there were lots of folks doing trail maintenance - thanks! |
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