A group of us set off to go up Shinumo Wash,/Siver Grotto. Actually the suffered attrition as we saw the conditions of muddy pools to swim and difficult scrambling. The attrition included me as I was was gripped by the exposure and risk. Eventually Sam climbed up on a wide ledge above the mouth of the side canyon and found a bolt that allowed a rappel down into the water-carved gulch. Initially, I was uncertain about the rappel, as Sam had not explained that the the rappel off a well anchored bolt. When I retrieved the throw-rope that was used for the rappel I saw the bolt and was assured of Sam's good judgment. By this time I had already committed to going back to the camp.
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| From Grand Canyon Day 4 |
After we all got back to camp and got packed up we rowed on down through the flat water to Redwall Cavern, a spectacular and iconic spot that was already occupied by the private group from Montana who were hitting the beer and the weed hard at 11:00 AM. Eventually we had the place to ourselves. Dan S. (and I) became entranced by the wave interference patterns resulting from sunlight passing through ripples on the surface of the shallow water playing on the sand ripples on the bottom of the eddy. The videos will be on a Physics lecture coming soon. At this point my camera was begining to suffer from my inability to recharge the battery using the untested setup I had purchased just before the trip.
This is an incredible section of the river that deeply carved into vertical cliffs of the Redwall Limestone. After the Cavern, the river was flowing through the Muav Limestone, so the rapids had mellowed out, but the cliffs remain. There was an abundance of solution cavities in theis section of the river, most of the side canyons such as Buck Ranch Canyon, Red Bud Alcove and especially an alcove just above Red Bud actually look more like collapsed caverns rather than gulches created by head-ward erosion of surface water.
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| From Grand Canyon Day 4 |
Michael and I shared rowing today, it was great to have his company and helped in this mostly flat water. However there were a lot of riffles with nice surfing waves and he lamented that none of the kayakers were taking advantage of them.
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| From Grand Canyon Day 4 |
36-Mile rapid was very wavy and fun. President Harding rapid was just as described in the guide books. Eminence Camp looks like a great place for a future camp. We ended up at Saddle Canyon, the upper pull-in was no good, we used the lower pull-in. Scott and Dan provided a lot of trout for dinner.
We were all starting to feel the rub of too-well used Paco pads provided by Moenkopi...we started the nightly musical pad routine, trying to snatch a better pad than we had used the night before. This is where we might have started to recognized the significance of the Purple Princess Pad ( a wider, almost new Paco pad that actually held air and was not water logged). We also started coveting Max's super thick yellow pad that he had brought from home.
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