Grand Canyon Journals - Part 10: Elves Chasm

 April 15, 2000

I woke this morning to a sky filled with clouds but rapidly clearing out. By mid-morning, they were gone. After breakfast and striking camp, we shoved off for a day of mild whitewater, comparatively speaking of course. The hard black schist and granite are behind and we are now in the softer Topeats layer that tends to smooth out the rapids. Around mid-morning, we pulled in near the mouth of Elves Chasm and after switching into footgear, set off up the canyon. The mouth of the canyon is arid desert and has been painted in colors of gray and brown. Inside the canyon proper, much brighter colors were used and it was a lush green dotted with lots of wildflowers like yellow columbine (the yellow version of my personal favorite flower that I love in blue), globe mallow, scarlet monkey and red orchids.

Columbine Flower

Perhaps 95% of the people who visit Elves Chasm only visit the main falls and don't go any higher. Most likely that figure is even higher and that is just fine with me. A thing of such beauty should only been seen by those who can physically make it because in my experience, they are the ones who are likely to leave it the way they found it and not those who simply ride in on horse back or drive up it in their vehicle. Clearing up and around the main falls requires sure-footed legs and no fear of big exposures. At times, my legs trembled at the prospect on only being six inches away from a huge drop onto rocks below but with patience, I was always able to persuade them to take another step. Further up it required a belly crawl on an overhung ledge giving one a real sense of what it is like to be a snake. Eventually you come to what appears to be a dead end in a hollowed out section of rock with a huge boulder leaning against it. But where that boulder meets the cliff some eight feet in the air, there is a narrow opening of sorts. By standing on my tiptoes and reaching up through the opening, I was able to get a good handhold and pull myself up by brute strength alone. Further up the canyon, I was forced to blindly reach around a boulder perched on the top of a thirty-foot drop off to find another handhold. With my arm essentially belaying the rest of my body, I leaned back to get enough pressure on my feet to friction walk the shear face around a corner and to the safety of another ledge. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Once around that obstacle, it is fairly clear sailing to what has been called the "green room" or "weeping wall." There, your route is once again rimmed in by a half bowl ledge of red rock over which the water spreads out some fifty feet and seeps over the lip to fall and trickle down thirty feet of moss and wildflowers to the green pool below. Yellow columbine and hummingbirds are everywhere. Magical is the only word to describe a place of such beauty. I sat in silence, never blinking, never moving, never enjoying myself so much as I was then in an instant nirvana like trance. Only later when I was down the canyon and had rejoined the rest of the group did I realize that I hadn't taken one single photograph of the weeping wall, its beauty so great, it had lulled to sleep my photographic instincts.

Main Falls of Elves Chasm

Back down at the mouth of the canyon, we munched some lunch in what shade we could fine and pushed on downriver to the mouth of Blacktail Canyon. After pitching camp, the entire group hiked up the canyon a couple hundred yards to a nice waterfall and a pool where the river rim rocked us in. There, while crew member Elena gave a geology lecture, I searched for a comfortable spot on a rock shelf and laid down letting the coolness of the rock remove the day's heat from my body. The next thing I can remember is waking up an hour later as people were starting to file away from the now ended lecture. I offered a sheepish apology to Elena and she fully understood. It happens to the best now and then.

Now fully refreshed, I hiked with a couple of the crew who were my age up to the top of the Topeats layer where we had a nice view of camp below and the river. Sitting there sipping a river cooled beer, we were kings on a thrown over looking our kingdom and what a magnificent one at that. We watched another private group eddy out where our boats were evidently intent on camping right where we were. After much confusion and looking at maps, they pulled out and headed on downstream to destinations unknown. When I had finished my beer, I hiked down wanting to clean the grime from the last couple days and little did I know that I would take part in the great nude bathing incident that I have already blogged about previously.

Cleaned (and now fully clothed), I found a big flat rock on the water's edge and watched the sun sink behind the downstream rim in brilliant oranges and pinks. After a supper of fish fajitas and pineapple upside down cake, everyone retired as usual except for the crew and myself. We remained behind to swap tales and to admire the stars and the nearly full moon. The shadows cast off the cliffs by the moonlight is absolutely stunning and later is felt like trying to sleep with a car light shining in your face. But the gurgle of the river passing by my patch of sand among some rocks out on a point in the river finally lured me to sleep. The trip is exactly half over.