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Walking the Washout

Hiking the Grand Canyon!

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On Febuary 25, shortly after 7am, Josh and I hit the trail. Although it is not recommended to go down to the Colorado River and back in one day, it is possible but difficult! We hiked down the South Kaibob Trail.

 

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Starting off the hike in subzero weather made us thankful for microspikes!

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From a distance

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Close up look at the same rock formation you see on the picture above and below this one.

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Looking back to the South Rim where we started.

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Skeleton Point!

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Continuing to descend

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A mule train. This is how many people come into the canyon, how food and supplies are hauled down to Phantom Ranch and how garbage is hauled out!

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Looking back to the South rim from the plateau

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And the North Rim

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First view into the inner canyon. Might look close but still a long ways to go!

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Met a friendly Longhorn Sheep!

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Red mud on the trail was the story of most of our way down.

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We got to cross two suspension bridges. The first: Kaibab (Black) Bridge which was made in 1921. It is 420 ft. long and about 60 ft above the river!

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The second supports the Trans-Canyon pipeline which supplies the park. It pipes water from a spring on the North side all the way up the South Rim! To give scale, if you look carefully you can see me on the bridge.

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The “burning” bush!

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You can barely see the rim of the canyon rim from the river!

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On our way up Bright Angel Trail.

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In the background of this picture you can see some bent brown rock which shows that this rock would have bent while it was still soft because if it is bent after hardening it would only crack and shatter.20150225_135551 20150225_135544

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We made it! 10 hours later, 27 kms and over 9000 ft of elevation change PTL!

 

Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:   Jeremiah 32:17

Camelback Mountain!

Monday morning, February 23rd, around 10:30 a.m. we started our ascent of one of Phoenix’s mountains with our friends the Johnson family who are doing concerts in the southern states.

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By 11:30 a.m. all the boys got to the top of Echo Canyon trail.

 

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Jesse:) The big city of Phoenix and its suburbs. It went almost as far as the eye could see on all sides!

 

Andrew & Jesse

Jesse & Andrew in front of one of the many cacti.

 

The Micah Cave

The two cavemen also known as the Micahs:)

 

The Cave

The giant Cave!

 

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The kids on the giant rock. After we finished hiking, all of us went to Chik-Fil-A for lunch, and swam for the rest of the afternoon.
 
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.  Psalm 90: 2

A Hike Into the Depths of the Earth!

On Wednesday, February 25th, around 7:20 a.m., Dad & I dropped Jesse and Josh at the S. Kaibab trail head to do a rim to river and back to the rim hike, while Dad & I maneuvered our way to Bright Angel trail-head to do a round trip of about 12 miles to Plateau Point. The original plan was for Andrew to join us also, but since he was sick at the hotel, Dad & I did it ourselves.

Starting the Hike

As you can see, it was pretty cold out…around -5C. It had snowed the day before so the upper trails were quite icy. We were glad we had ice grips on our shoes, and poles in our hands for the first half.

 

Starting the Hike

The beginning of Bright Angel Trail.

 

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Well, we’re moving, it took us about 30 minutes to an hour in between each 1.5 mile rest stop. As you can see we are into some partially frozen red mud. When I was taking my yak-tracks off mid- trail, I found out that only one was on my foot, the other must have gotten stuck in the mud. Some friendly guys were passing us at this point, so we asked them to be on the lookout for the other one.  It turns out we think mine got picked up by someone else, and brought down to Phantom Ranch, which is a cabin- camping ground in the bottom of the canyon.

Do the distinct layers on this picture suggest a quick deposit or slow deposits building up over millions of years? The layering looks the same as we saw at Mt. St. Helens which happened in hours and days in 1980 not over millions of years.

 

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1.5 miles yet to Plateau Point, which will make us half done our hike.

 

On Plateau Point

We made it to Plateau Point at 11:00 a.m., 6 miles in around 3 hours. Here we visited with a bunch of people, took pictures, and ate lunch.

 

The Mighty Colorado River!

The mighty Colorado River some 1300 feet below us!

 

We made it down!

We look back and see how far we actually dropped down into this washout:)

 

A squirrel

These little critters were very friendly always looking to snatch food away!

 

Green trees? In the middle of winter? In the middle of a desert? In the bottom of one of the world’s biggest canyons? Yes, Indian Garden, a wonderful rest stop, that provides drinking water and camping!

 

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The view of the north rim which is a thousand feet higher than the south rim in some places.

 

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Well, we have to start hiking up sometime! After spending an hour at Plateau Point, we started back on the upward journey.

 

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We are just about done! As we were QUITE tired, we didn’t do much but push back up to the top with a break here and there!

 

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We made it around 3:45 p.m.! The whole round trip took us about 8 hours,  we were hiking for around 6 of them. After 2 hours of looking around and getting lost, we finally found Josh and Jesse as they hiked Bright Angel Trail up. They had been looking for us for 1/2 an hour!

We are thankful to God for the safety, experience, and endurance we experienced on that day!

 

 

Singing Cowboys!

This morning we went to an old western movie set to film “Do Lord”! Over 200 movies have been filmed here including an old one we have seen called, “Lost in Silver Canyon”. We had to get special permission to film here. It was quite fun although the noise of the shooting ranges right beside was PRETTY loud.

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Mom snapped shots of our behind the scenes crew!

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Josh and Dad were our camera men.

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Jesse operated the van’s sound system and…

 

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He also enjoyed playing fetch with the dog to keep it away from the filming.

 

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Here is our happy photographer!

 

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Jesse made sure no one got out of jail to bother the filming:)