Our caravan of 12 left Phoenix at 5 p.m. on Friday night, stopped at Fazoli's in Flagstaff for dinner and Cameron for gas, and then headed to meet Perry at a campsite on FR 6140, just east of the Grand Canyon east park entrance (second road on the right after passing the Kaibab National Forest sign).
We were in bed by about 9:30 p.m. Rogil had set her alarm for 3:30 a.m., and I asked her to wake me up in the "morning" since we planned to pack up and leave camp by 5 a.m. Fortunately, it wasn't as cold that night as we had feared. The weather forecast had called for a low of 28 F, and our last attempt to hike Blue Spring the same time of year was thwarted by snow. It had been hot enough hiking to and from Blue Spring previously that we weren't willing to do this hike any later.
After a stop at the restrooms at Desert View in the park, we headed down the fire road just west of the park entrance. The road has some switchbacks that are not in good condition, so we were happy to see that the weather was looking good for the 2.5 hour off-road drive to our hike. We were already on that drive at 5:30 a.m.
Rogil had finally found the trailhead many years ago after several attempts at navigating the unmarked roads on Indian land. (Our route started in the park but finished on Indian land.) For this trip, she had arranged for permits several times starting in January, but the permits never arrived. Perry was nice enough to drive up early on Friday and pick up hiking permits for us all in person at the little office at the corner of highways 89 and 64 in Cameron.
We only made one mistake while driving to the trailhead, but while driving the second to last hill before the trailhead, I managed to put a huge gash in one of my tires by driving over a really sharp rock. We drove the short distance to the top of the hill with the tire spattering horrid stuff into Rogil and Richard's side of the truck, until Richard had the bright idea of closing the windows on that side. There was a nice flat spot at the top of the hill, and everyone helped change my tire.
Only one hill remained before the trailhead. Two vehicles started up that, and then, considering how steep the road was getting and the fact that I was already short a spare tire, they asked how far it was to the trailhead. Rogil replied that the trailhead was at the top of the hill, so we decided to all park at the bottom of the hill.
We started hiking at 8:15 a.m. At the top of the hill we parked by is a short wall of piled rocks (Photo 6) before a narrow ridge with canyon drop-offs on both sides. After that is a very short hike to where the steep descent into the canyon begins (Photo 11) and the "trail" ends.
The route into the canyon is incredibly steep, and Bill or Jeff carried a rope in case we needed to belay people anywhere along the route. The route is also covered with loose rock, so we wore helmets for the steepest parts.
Speaking of loose rocks, most of at least sat down unexpectedly during the hike, and two of our hikers will have sizeable bruises after this hike from when the ground just gave out beneath them.
At a few places along the trail, we had a hard time finding or interpreting cairns. At one point (Photo 18) we found the cairns led in two different directions, but we followed the route to the right (Photo 21, 22, 23) of the fork.
Eventually, we began seeing the Little Colorado River in the distance (Photo 27, 30), but the water was so low that I didn't think it could possibly be the river. On our previous trip, the river had so much silty water that Blue Spring appeared to be a clear blue streak in the muddy water.
When we reached the river, I couldn't remember how we had gotten down to the spring on the previous trip, but I did recognize the place we climbed up out of the riverbed. This trip, some of us climbed down there, and some followed the trail upstream and then hiked back down to the spring.
The spring looked totally different than I remembered, too. I'm going to have to go look through my old photos to see if it's really as different as I remember.
Our hikers cooled off and played in the spring (Photo 37, 38). The force of the spring was so strong that the only way to reach the mouth of the spring was to approach it from the side, clinging to the rock wall. Once I got close to the mouth, my feet would fly out behind me from the force of the water, and when I let go with my hands, I'd quickly float back away from the rock wall. The sky started clouding over, so that and the wind made the swimmers more comfortable to stay in the water.
After lunch, we started the hike back out of the canyon (Photo 54, 57, 63). We had some spurts of rain, and Charlene worried that the rocks we had to climb to get out of the canyon would be wet and slippery. The top part of the route is much steeper, in general, than the lower part of the route, and the rocks did get more slippery in places, but the sandstone at the bottom of the canyon and the limestone at the top of the canyon were both quite grippy, even when wet.
By the time we reached the top, it was quite windy, and we could see rain in the distance. We hoped we weren't going to have trouble on the long drive back to pavement. We had driven 18 miles off road to get to the trailhead and were not looking forward to driving up the switchbacks, even dry. Perry, however, had driven quite a way down the forest road we camped on, and Rogil had originally intended to try driving that road when she was searching for a route to the Blue Spring trailhead years ago, so we decided to try driving back that way. We succeeded, and it turned out to be a much nicer road, with plenty of camp sites along the way. That route was 21 miles but much easier to drive.
When we reached the pavement, we said goodbye to Perry, Bruce, and Debby, who were going to stay in the area. The rest of us headed to Flagstaff for dinner at Cilantro's and then headed back to Phoenix.
The hike had taken about three hours each way, requiring lots of climbing. I've barely been doing any rock climbing lately, and back when we first did this hike, I used to at least go to the rock gym once a week. The day after the hike, I could sure tell I hadn't been keeping my climbing muscles in shape. My quads were the most sore, causing me to stagger a bit whenever I stood up after sitting awhile.
Thanks to Rogil for organizing this hike! We had a great group of fun hikers, and the canyon was spectacular, as always.
By the way, we didn't match up to our road log very well. And I got a sore neck from straining to see over the hood of my truck during our off-pavement adventure!