Grand Canyon
We left after work and headed to Joe’s house in Pasadena to pick him up. We were all very excited to go backpacking in the canyon to go to one of the caves. After throwing Joe’s pack in the back of the truck, we squeezed back in and took off. We headed to Bob’s house in Brea, picked him up and hit the road. The plan was to drive to just outside the National Park boundary and sleep. In the morning we would have to go to the park headquarters and get our permits: one to backpack, one to cave.
Everything went as planned and we were at the trail head by nine a.m. the next morning. We saddled up and started the hike. The trail got serious right away with about a 10 degree steep angle down. We had a couple of miles to go and a couple thousand feet more to lose in elevation. The trail slide show will show you some of these steep angles and the views from the trail.
We arrived at the Mesa fairly fast considering the weight we all were carrying. Consider this: our water, camping and caving gear including vertical gear, standard for each of us; plus rope and a cable ladder we dispersed through the team to equal out the load. We found the campground and immediately pitched our tents and made camp. It felt good to sit down! After we were done we explored the area. We found a small copper mine and wondered who was crazy enough to mine there! We also found the pit toilet. This was placed on a wooden platform with a screen on the camp side. From the throne, the view was intense. You looked out over a side canyon where you saw a bit of the Colorado river in the canyon below. We hiked on looking for a spring. We found potable water within a half mile of camp which helped a couple of people who under estimated their water intake.
Back at camp, we readied for caving. The cave entrance was very close to camp and the cave was supposedly known for it’s beauty. We entered the cave and saw nothing other than dry and dusty formations and walls. However we knew that the good stuff took some effort to get to. Pete led the climb up the wall to rig the cable ladder. I followed and helped unlock the gate while Pete rigged the ladder for the others. Once the last person was up, we pulled up the ladder and locked the gate behind us. Beyond the gate was a dusty crawl that led to a small room with a dirt floor. There was a little climb that led up a crack and into some of the most orange flowstone and formations I’d ever seen. We shed our boots and dusty coveralls so the cave would not suffer from our visit. The cave really didn’t have much length, but we were able to spend hours in there taking photos of everything we saw. You can see some of them in the Grand Canyon cave slideshow. We exited the cave after dark. After a hot meal we all crashed out being burnt out from a very full day of activity.
The next morning we broke camp and hiked to the end of the mesa to take pictures. After that we headed for the truck over a half a mile above our heads and few miles in distance. We made it out in about 3 hours. But we still had a 10 hour drive home! We waited for everyone to make it up and into the parking lot and said our goodbyes. It was now getting close to 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We hit the road and made gas and food stops along the way. After dropping Bob and Joe off at their places, Lisa and I got home at 3 a.m. We took showers and went to bed getting only a couple of hours of sleep before heading to work the next day. Getting around was a bit of a challenge due to our sore muscles. Our leg muscles were sore after that trip. However, we would do it again for the sites we saw and captured on film.
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Out!
