Here's the list of who went on the hike:
Submission from Kathy Sharp:
I think we saw more wildlife driving to and from this hike than I have ever seen outside a zoo. While driving up to Flagstaff we saw twenty-one elk! Most appeared to be in groups of two, so we figured they were does and... is calves the right term? We saw no antlers, so either there were no bucks or they hadn't grown enough new antlers for us to see them yet. We followed the same driving route for several trips this spring and usually saw no elk at all.
Both days of the trip we saw elk and antelope. We haven't seen any antelope since then. The first day we saw some penned llamas, too. Rogil pointed out two Dalmatians, which Jef later called dobermans, and then, somehow, any animal that wasn't an elk or antelope came to be known as a doberman, and any of those that had spots of any kind came to be known as Dalmatians. This terminology appears to have stuck, so I thought I'd explain in case you're ever riding with us and someone points out a spotted horse and calls it a Dalmatian. Now you'll understand.
On this trip we established a regrouping place that we would use on several more trips this spring. The first Chevron on the east side of the road in Cameron got a lot of business from us. (By the way, we didn't try the showers out, and they look real old, but the gas station restrooms have showers in them.) After meeting up there, we headed for the Grand Canyon and Rich showed us a campsite off a dirt road that goes north, just east of the east entrance to the Grand Canyon.
In the morning we headed into the park, took the first right, and began our four-wheeling adventure. Sheri and Norm were in Norm's new Jeep Wrangler, and the rest of us were in Jef's Jeep Cherokee. Finding the trailhead is not trivial! Fortunately, Rogil had done it before, we had topos, and someone, Rich or Rogil, had some pretty good notes to follow. For awhile Rich thought he could have done the road in his two-wheel drive pickup, but later changed his mind. We drove for hours, maybe two or so?, to get to the trailhead. Rogil had been there once before, but it took so long to get there that they couldn't do the hike. We had passed out of the park and into Navajo land for most of the drive, I think. (A sign and fence marks the boundary. Rogil had written for a permit from the Navajo Tribe.)
Based on the photo and description of this hike in The Hiker's Guide to Arizona (by Aitchison and Grubbs), as well as a description from Rogil and from the Navajo Tribe, I wasn't sure I was up to it. The book recommended bringing a rope for belaying one section of the route. I had brought a magazine to read in case I decided the "trail" was too hairy for me. You can see how vertical it is right from where we parked.
However, I found once I got going that as long as I went real slow I felt safe enough. I probably looked like I was trying to sneak around most of the time, carefully taking each step and clinging onto holds on the walls. Some of the others in our group really scared me, though. All it would take would be one trip, and it was a LONG way down! Norm was the only non-climber in our group, but he did fine. We debated whether we would ever bring an average non-climber on this hike and decided in the end that we would not, because climbers are used to avoiding sending rocks down on people below them, and there were plenty of loose rocks here. Rogil was the only one of us with the presence of mind to bring a helmet.
Eventually we got to something more like a trail and I got to see how beautiful the Little Colorado River Gorge is from within it. (There were lots of pesky foxtails, though.) After the river had been in view for awhile, we could see where crystal clear blue water was spurting into the muddy river.
It took us awhile to find a way to the spring. I guess the river is often dry, so the trail led to a place upstream from the spring. Rogil and I headed back up the trail and to a wash where I thought we could get down. I was wrong. Rogil stayed at a point on the far side of the wash and gave me directions for where on the near side she thought she saw what might be a route down. By that time Rich had arrived, and he found that Rogil's route worked. We put up some cairns, but they'd be hard to see.
The spring is a beautiful little place. The water comes gushing right out of a wall in two different spots. Rogil tasted the spring water, so we all did. It was definitely very mineralized. It tasted kind of salty, sort of, to me. We had a nice time at the spring, but we couldn't spend too much time there because, even though the "trail" was only 1.5 miles long, it took us hours (three or four?) to get down to the spring!
None of us had needed a belay on the way down, but on the way up Sheri and I both took a belay in two places. The first place I felt kind of silly afterwards; with my long legs I could have stepped across something twice as wide. At the second place, I was surprised I had already done that part without a belay; that spot was much scarier coming out of the canyon.
But I really enjoyed this trip and am glad I went. I couldn't believe how fast the time went by! The "trail" must not get a whole lot of use, because Rogil found a perfect little arrowhead right on the trail.
(On the way home, we saw a car that had hit an elk. Bad news. It appeared that the passengers were okay, but from the way the car looked, the accident must have been pretty bad.)