5 Grey Mesa

[This is a small, low-res, work in progress. We plan to do some narration and more editing after that. The finished product will be saved to DVD for finer viewing. If you wish to receive a copy when it's ready, let me know.]

The morning was beautiful. The sun did not make it into our side of the mesa until almost 10, but it was worth the show.

Paul, JoAnn and Ed decided to downsize the load in Paul's truck, so they made a cache at Marble Camp. They left behind such luxuries as a 3-burner gas stove, extra water, extra gas, camp chairs, and who knows what else.

Someone, Ed I think, had walked up and discovered the other party in the next camp spot. They had had some trouble on the road between us and them. A narrow tippy spot that drops off to the bottom of the canyon. No room for error.

A motorcyclist came by as we were packing up and running around. Kent talked to him briefly. He scurried on.

We took the warning to heart about the tippy spot and spent much time doing road building magic with extra rocks on the low side. Everyone got through fine, except for Joy and I couldn't watch, so there is no video of it. Kent was losing gas out of his spout. After he made it over the tippy spot he discovered his cap was on crooked.

Right after the horrible tippy spot that hardly gave us any trouble there was a class 5 rapids going uphill, of course. Huge stair steps. I could hardly hike it myself, although my legs are exceedingly short. It was so hard to imagine the wagons and animals going over these rough roads. Kent's tailgate bounced off and so did much of the load--his was much smaller than Paul's, thankfully, or we would have been there all day picking it up off the road. Only the tailgate itself was broken and Kent fixed it with a piece of firewood. He reloaded and roped everything down, including the tailgate and didn't have any trouble after that. I think that was our roughest spot, though.

Grey Mesa was incredible. Flat, incredibly flat, in this land of never ending bumps. Sand and sagebrush. The road was so smooth. Wind graded, we decided. We buzzed right along, until the view stopped us. To the south the San Juan River come right up the mesa in a goose neck. We felt like birds looking in. So expansive....Navajo Mountain in the distant west. Colorado River to the north, although not visible because we were on the southern side of the mesa. We could see this incredible huge canyon over there to the north, by the Rincon, that we finally identified as Iceberg Canyon. It's beautiful, but only accessible by water, as far as I can tell. You can see pictures people have posted on Google Earth.

We had lunch on a nice flat spot after descending Grey Mesa. Just after lunch we ran into the party ahead of us, as they were coming out. They had been as far as the Chute. They said it didn't look hard, but they had to get back. They were impressed with the roughness of the road in general and were enjoying their 4x4 trip.

We had lunch and mosied on to the Chute, confident now, after the latest report. The lone motorcyclist passed us on his way out. I guess he didn't stop for much.