Grand Canyon Journals - Part 13: Sipping Cognac and Howling At the Moon

April 18, 2000

Overcast and windy when I woke up next to my overnight "visitors." Today was a leisure day (i.e. no hurry to start day) so I sat still sitting in my sleeping bag, leaning back against the bluff rocks and watching over camp as everyone slept late. Elena brought up some steaming cups of hot chocolate and she, Jorge and myself sat sipping them while watching camp slowly come to life. After breakfast of a stack of pancakes draped in bacon and smothered in real maple syrup, we loaded the boats. One of the new couples that we picked up back at Phantom Ranch are about the most disorganized persons I have even known. Even though it was a leisure day, we waited two hours after everyone else was ready to go before they were finally ready. Normally I wouldn't be concerned but when it affects my hiking time in the evening because we got such a late start, I get a little bit bothered. We have had to wait at least an hour extra for them every morning since the day they joined this group.

They also have absolutely no common sense. Normally, I am always the last one to set up camp so that I can remove myself from the cluster that all the other guests seem to form. However, this new couple are so disorganized in setting up there stuff as well that they are sometime just getting around to it when I do. One camp, I had decided to pitch my sleeping gear on a nice sandy spot on a rock ledge overlooking the river on the opposite side of a little feeder stream as the rest of camp. The stream flowed down across bare rock in an algae covered slick but with my long legs, I was able to just jump across. While writing in my journal, Joanna (wife half of the disorganized couple) came to the edge of the stream saying that she wanted to pitch her tent over by me but asked if the stream was slick. Now Joanna has really bad hips, knees, is overweight and can barely totter around in her age so I told her that yes indeed it was very slick and that she shouldn't attempt crossing it. I didn't want her invading my space either but being polite, I didn't mention that. Well she tried walking across and promptly slipped and fell onto her back in the moving water and getting her gear wet. She crawled back out, fished her gear out of the water, and said that I had been right before walking back towards camp.

When we finally pushed off in the boats, a stout upstream wind and the coldest weather I have seen so far this trip arrived and battered us around. We went through Fishtail and Kanab rapids both, which doused us really well, and by the time we pulled in for lunch, everyone was soaking wet and shivering in the cold. We all hunkered down in the lee side of a bunch of tamarisk and soaked up the brief but warming exposures of sunlight. Slightly warmer, we pushed off again and the wind soon died down just as we finished with our very wet but upright run in Upset Rapids.

Around the bend from Upset, we camped at a place named Ledges after the many shelves of flat rock in the area instead of the normal sandbar beaches. As I was selecting a nice rock ledge further up the hill from camp, I spied more than a dozen bighorn sheep less than forty feet above me with four spring lambs, one only a couple of weeks old following them. I stood motionless for five minutes watching them graze on some sparse vegetation before they sensed my presence and started jumping up the ledges. The lambs had a hard time scrambling up after the adults but eventually they too disappeared over a ledge at my skyline. Most of the other people were so engrossed in setting up their tents that they never noticed. After getting camp set up, I took a walk along the ledges upstream from camp and was soon involved in trundling large rocks off into the river. (See earlier blog on this subject.) Like a little kids again, we scampered back into camp where we told our exploits to the rest of the people who could only hear the large atomic sizes splashes. Lee was reading excerpts from a book entitled "Grand Canyon: Century of Change" by Robert Webb out loud to the assistant cook and myself when I joined them. It was an extremely fascinating book and I will have to read it myself sometimes.

I am developing a pretty close bond with the crew mainly because I philosophically agree with them on most environmental issues. To them and myself, boating on this river is more of a spiritual journey than an adventure that most of their guests compare it to. I find myself hanging around them more than the other passengers and going on short walks with them in the evenings. All this is more than fine with me and it appears as if it is fine with them also.

For supper, we had broccoli cheese soup, scalloped potatoes, coleslaw and grilled pork chops. Everyone but the usual crowd headed for bed immediately after and soon it was just Elena, Jorge, Lee and myself up by the fire. I had been working on a tin cup of Lee's Wild Turkey whiskey but soon changed to some superb cognac of Jorge's imported all the way from Germany. It was still a little cool outside but I was warm and toasty inside. It had cleared off in the later afternoon so we were able to see the full moon tonight. The lighting on the cliffs upstream and downstream is spectacular but the towering ledge over camp shelters us from seeing the moon directly. Maybe later if the cognac doesn't put me to sleep to soon, I will do some howling.

Colorado River In Shadows