8 Hiking to 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.]

We were sad to be leaving, but Ana and I had a plane to catch on Saturday and we didn't want to miss it. The weather was getting progressively worse and it seemed prudent to start back. This morning the wind was so strong that we all had to put on some sort of protective head gear. I had on both my hats and even Kent put on a bandanna to protect his ears. I have never experienced wind like that except at the beach and at the top of a mountain.

Getting up the chute was no problem. I don't even remember getting up the bank at the top, so that wasn't much of a to do either. We all paused at the top of the Chute to take a group photo with a timer. (It's on film and I have yet to scan that one in and add it to the video.)

We zoomed back across Grey Mesa, stopping again to ogle the beautiful view of the San Juan River. So irresistible. We had lunch just off the top of Grey Mesa, coming down toward Marble Camp. We named it Lunch Bowl, for its shape. We sought the bowl's shelter from the wind. Ana enjoyed climbing around on the slick rock in her socks.

We got back to Marble Camp so early that we decided to explore the pioneer road up to Grey Mesa. The road we used was built by miner's around the turn of the century. We had read about the descent off of Grey Mesa, so we wanted to see it first hand.

Not to be caught at dusk without any roofs and beds, we set up camp before we went. Paul's cache was undisturbed.

We started at the interpretive sign and followed the cuts. Obviously this road had not been used in many years and was in no shape for wagons. They must have filled in certain holes with debris and built up edges for a little extra width. These cuts rivaled the class 5 rapid that broke Kent's tailgate. I was having an even harder time imagining the wagons coming down these crazy "roads" without careening out of control and busting up. But they didn't, according to the accounts.

We had a hard time following the trail over the slick rock where there were no cuts or tracks. We just kept exploring and searching for clues and finally found it all the way to the top of the mesa. We didn't find the abandoned wagon box that was reported to be at the top of the mesa, but we did finally connect back to the road we had used. The weather finally blew in and it started to snow on us. We were well prepared this time, except for the teenagers, who were impervious to weather.

We had a wonderful dinner of campfire stew and orange cakes. Joy is an excellent camp cook. We didn't get to play music for very long before the rain sent us to bed early.