Hike Across Grand Canyon, Part 1

Last week I hiked across the Grand Canyon, from the North Rim to the South Rim.

Mark and I drove down Thursday afternoon. We arrived just before dark, here's what the canyon looked like:



Mark's brother, Paul, drove in from Phoenix and arrived around midnight. We awoke at 4:30, packed up and started down the trail at 5:30 am. Here's the view from the top of the North Kaibab trail:



A little ways down three runners flew past us. Later we learned they were attempting to beat the rim-to-rim record of 3 hours 6 minutes. One of the three was the current record holder. (A new record was set.)

After over an hour of hiking there was still plenty of canyon below us.


Here's Mark and Paul going through the Supai Tunnel.



The trail is fantastic as it makes an improbable route through cliff bands and a very rugged and steep canyon.



The first bridge we crossed - took us from the left to right side of Bright Angel Canyon.



Still going down.  The trail hugs the base of the cliffs on the right.



Like this:



After passing Roaring Springs the canyon becomes a desert.



Ribbon Falls is a short side spur from the main trail and well worth seeing.



The canyon is open for a few miles after Cottonwood camp site then it narrows and meanders for a few miles:



And finally opens up at Phantom Ranch. We stopped for about an hour here to eat lunch, drink lemonade and rest our feet. The bottoms of my feet were tender and it felt really good to have my shoes off.  Even though I dreaded putting my shoes back on, my feet felt much better as we got hiking again.

Yes, it was hot at Phantom Ranch. I'm glad it was a relatively cool day, it had been 120 just a few days before.



Next post I'll talk about the hike up and out.

Bathroom Humor

No, this isn't potty humor. This is literally humor in a bathroom. Wait, come back, it's not gross. Hear me out.

Jolene and I are driving home Saturday and we stop in the Providence development south of Cedar City for dinner. Many restaurants there. Cafe Rio sounds good.

Before eating I pop into the bathroom. As I'm making water (name the movie) I look up at the toilet seat cover dispenser and see something scrawled there:



Free Sombrero.

I chuckled.

Then I remember I'm in a Mexican food restaurant and I chuckle some more.

Then I pictured myself wearing an ass gasket on my head and I chuckle again.

I went out and showed Jolene the photo and she laughed and I laughed with her.

So there, I like low brow humor. And puns too.

Birthday Gooseberry

Continuing the birthday festivities, Gooseberry was the destination for Saturday.

The wind was blowing pretty hard when we left the hotel but it was only breezy on the mesa.

We rode Cattle Grate, part of South Rim, Hidden Canyon, Bowls & Ledges, part of Windmill and the Practice Loop.





Bike Love





Micro air.







On Hidden Canyon I balked at a ramp ledge drop with a few rocks at the bottom. I chastised myself for my cowardice and tried again. When my front tire dropped off the ledge I grabbed the brakes and sent myself on a nice endo. Rookie mistake. Jolene watched in fright as my face headed for a rock. Somehow I got my arms up and blocked the blow. I was sure I'd broken or torn something. But as I lay there the systems all checked in with no red alerts of pain. Just scraped up forearms and bruises. I got off lucky.



Two days of good riding and sunshine in the bag. Loaded up the van and headed home with smiles on our faces.

Birthday JEM Loop

My birthday snuck up on me this year (trying to ignore how old I am does that). We decided to celebrate in St. George.

Jolene had never done the JEM / Hurricane Rim / Goulds loop so we did that after driving down Friday morning. We started at the bottom of Goulds and rode counterclockwise. The start of Goulds is ugly, but it gets better and I really like the upper part.





Lots of plants blooming in the desert. This cactus was particularly resplendent.



JEM was the highlight. Is there a faster, more fun, XC desert trail?



With it's ups and downs it may not have been best to ride Hurricane Rim last, but the views are good and I like the creativity of the route.



Went back to the hotel to get cleaned up. Then had dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Jolene's brother and his wife. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday.

But wait, there's still Saturday and Gooseberry Mesa. Next post.

The sWARm

I was bummed I couldn't make it to RAWROD this year, but I did watch the Swarm event Saturday morning with Kade. It was crazy, fun.

What is Swarm? 57 guys flying remote control aircraft trying to crash into stuff. Meet the loonies:

 

 I took some video. And, no, I wasn't drunk. (Kade is in the blue hoodie with black-stripes.)



It started off with free-for-all dog fighting, then kill-the-beast, and finally the limbo contest (3 points for going under the lower line, 2 points for middle, 1 point for top; first to 10 wins a round). There were more events but Kade was getting bored and I had a ride scheduled.

The Ride. Steve and I went up to Park City and rode the Glenwild / Flying Dog loop. Felt good to ride a mountain trail this early in the year. There was a little mud in the trees at the top of Flying Dog but otherwise the trails were in really good shape.

So, a pretty good Saturday. Not RAWROD good, but I'll take it.

Office Graffiti

I've been at my new job at Fusion-IO for 4 months. There are crazy days, but overall I'm still enjoying it.

I've noticed graffiti pops up around the office. I blame the over abundance dry erase surfaces. Here are some examples.



This started off as just "the cloud". Then "the inversion" was added. And finally "the asthmatics".



IT installed some radio devices that, I've been told, detect and block unauthorized wireless devices. So someone pointed it out as a "death ray generator".



This showed up in the break room.



This week it was updated.



There are cameras all over the building and this one got an Eye of Sauron addition.



All engineers have a Do Not Disturb sign for when they are working on critical tasks. This engineer had this on the back of his sign.



This isn't graffiti, it's sanctioned decoration. The Marketing department turned our environmental chamber into a Tardis.

I get a kick out of all this. Nice to have a work environment where people have a sense of humor and employees are free to express themselves.

New Moab, Day 2

The night before we hired Coyote Shuttles to take us to the top (north end) of the Mag 7. We met at 9 am and were off.

After a mile down the Gemini Bridges road we turned off onto Bull Run. It goes along Bull Canyon with some very nice scenery and was a fun trail to ride.





We stopped to see Gemini bridges then continued on Great Escape, a new trail for 2012. This was a our favorite trail of the weekend. It has good flow, a little technical spice and great views.





Great Escape tees into Little Canyon, which we rode up and back. It's also a good trail.

At the end of Little Canyon we bailed off onto the Gemini Bridges road and took it out to highway 191 and back to our van. So we shuttled it, I'd do it again.




Next up was North 40, another new-for-2012 trail in the Brand trail network. It's a fun trail that snakes through some hills with a few tech moves.

This area looked like the fossilized remains of crashed UFOs.







We thought about doing some more trails, but a storm was moving in and we'd had so much good riding we were satisfied.

With the growth of trails in Fuita and St. George over the last 10 years, it's been easy to forget about Moab. But the flurry of trails built in Moab over the last 5 years have been mostly really good rides. Long live the King!