Grand Canyon Journals - Part 12: Baiting the Ringtail Cat Trap

 April 17, 2000

I awoke to a beautiful crystal clear bottom of the canyon morning and was in good spirits. Today was going to be a long hiking day for several of us and it would be overland instead of just going up a canyon. After a breakfast of burritos, eggs and lots of hash browns, I packed up a sack lunch and hopped into the dory for a quick splash down to Tapeats Creek where six of us and some crew were dropped off. We started hiking up Tapeats Creek and had to cross it twice with a lot of difficulty due to high fast moving currents. Another person and myself had to anchor ourselves in the middle of the worst part and form a "chain" for smaller people to hold onto and walk behind us in our eddies. As it was, I had to lean into the current at almost a 45-degree angle and could still feel my feet slipping on the rocks at the bottom of the riverbed. We made it safely and nobody was flushed downstream but several people were a little bit spooked.

We came to the intersection of Tapeats Creek and Thunder River (Can a river flow into a creek?) and hiked almost straight up alongside a continuous froth. Thunder River begins as a mammoth spring roaring out of the face of a bluff and tumbles 500 vertical feet down to Tapeats before it slows down. We ate lunch at the base of the falls where is slams into the rocks and liberally washed it down with water bottles full of untreated spring water, which was sweet and yet almost tasteless at the same time. After lunch, we climbed another 1000 or so feet up and over a pass into Surprise Valley where we got a full taste of hot and dry desert hiking full of prickly desert rose bushes. I slipped on a loose rock gashing my lower leg open a bit but even my blood was too lazy to come outside into the hot sunlight. After a couple miles, we climbed another small pass and then dropped down into Deer Creek, another drainage formed by a natural spring pouring out of the red rock cliff. The falls here was smaller and you could hike up behind the falls, which we all did trying to re-hydrate our parched hides. Fully re-hydrated, we continued down alongside Deer Creek where is carved a beautiful slot canyon back to the Colorado River. We hiked along a very narrow shelf of rock at the rim of the slot canyon, very exposed and lost in the beauty around us.

Deer Creek

At one point, on the far side of the gorge, handprints left by the ancient Anasazi Indians were left before the deserted this area of the country for an unknown destination. It was their belief, that when a warrior dies, he must undergo seven tests before reaching the afterlife. The seventh and final test occurred at this point where the warrior must jump across the gorge to the other side. The "hands" were said to be there to help pull you across. The gap was so narrow as to visually look "jumpable" but it was a long ways down should you miss. One of our guides told us a story in which he had been here with a group of friends some years ago and was one two many beers past the point of rational judgment. He had leapt across the gap and in mid-air realized that he didn't have anywhere near enough momentum to make it to the far side. Just as he started the downward part of his arc into the canyon below, he felt something grip his body under his arms and pull him across. Telling us this story years later and completely sober, he said it in such reverent awe that I was forced to believe every word.

Anasazi Handprint

The Deer Creek gorge comes to an abrupt end at the edge of a cliff lining the Colorado River, the creek shooting from the cliffside out into a pile of rocks below. I could almost picture myself doing a Wiley E. Coyote impression of walking off the cliff in my lack of attention, through thin air until realization of the situation sets in and gravity takes over. Instead I took a picture of the boats far below. The boats and the passengers who hadn't hiked had floated downstream to meet us and to take us to camp another half mile downstream.

Boats Just One Step Away

Camp is situated on another sand beach beneath an overhanging cliff so I decided to take advantage of it and tossed my gear underneath for later. The assistant cook Mary "loaned" me a beer, which I slowly deposited while taking a bath upstream at another secluded sand beach. Having a rare moment of privacy, I air dried while sipping my beer and watching a beautiful sunset reflect off the cliffs upstream and a natural arch downstream near Cranberry canyon. The cliffs turned an appropriate cranberry red in the final minutes before the sun slipped over the rim. Back in camp, after a noodle and beef stir fry supper, we built a little fire and sat telling stories until late in the evening.

As normal, I was the last one to leave the confines of the fire for my sleeping back underneath the rock shelter. I cleaned the sand of all tracks around me and set out a piece of chocolate in hopes of seeing the elusive ringtail cat that inhabits the inner gorge of the canyon. For many nights I have seen its tracks all through camp in the morning but have never seen the nocturnal mammal that resembles a raccoon. Bronco has suggested smearing the chocolate on my lips so that I would wake up when it started licking it off but I didn't want to chance waking up with no lips at all. I awoke in the early morning hours to a rainsquall and could make out the cocooned forms of two of the boat crew that had abandoned their sleeping quarters on the boats for my dryer one. I drifted back to sleep to the sound of blowing sand drifting around my sleeping bag. In dawn’s light, I would see that my new neighbors were Nick and Elena. The chocolate was gone and a fresh set of ringtail cat tracks were in the twelve inches between my sleeping bag and the rock wall. I had some sand in my dry sleeping bag but still had both of my lips so I considered it a good night.

Author “Caught” Escaping Into a Slot Canyon


Anasazi Cliff Granaries