Day 5 was full of rapids. One of the boats actually got squarely stuck amongst two rocks in Unkar Rapid (John Dunn’s boat along with all the kids). Luckily John was able to put all the weight in the front of the boat and use an oar to pry the boat off the rocks, all with the parents (former Marines) watching from the shore. No pressure… The day hike was a stop by some old Indian ruins that were pretty well preserved. Don’t have any great photos from that stop, but very interesting how the bases of the structures are still preserved and shards of old pottery could be found around the site. Night 5 was our first great sunset.
The following morning we woke up before sunrise and caught an amazing cloudscape before starting the day. Day 6 was the end of the journey for most of the people on our trip as that ended the upper portion of the river. We camped at Zoroaster so that we could get in early to Pipe Creek for them to hike out on the Bright Angel Trail. For the rest of us who were staying, we did a short day hike to Phantom Ranch. Later that day we had some gnarly storm clouds form in the distance that I was able to snap a photo of, almost like small puffs of cloud being stirred up. That night we arrived at camp Granite at mile 94 and quickly setup camp just before a thunderstorm rolled thru pouring rain and hailing flash flooding areas around the camp. Seeing the canyon in this state was amazing. Waterfalls appeared above washes and streams appeared and roared out of nothing. After about 30-45 minutes the storm passed, but that wasn’t the end of the storms, later that night another rolled thru around midnight.
Quite a different experience from inside the tent.
- Allie and Jonathan