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.

7 Hiking to Cottonwood

[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 weren't sure what to do next, so as usual, we scouted around. We didn't see a good road from there. The most obvious one was straight up and had this large crack to straddle. It looked like a good place to get a wheel stuck. While the scouting party was out, Ed drove the Jeep up it. The suction cups had no trouble with the crack.

We were all out scouting and pretty far away from the vehicles. We decided we must be close enough that we could just hike out to the top of Cottonwood Canyon. We weren't sure, but we thought we could make it to Little Hole in the Rock in the time we had. We decided we would hike as far as we could in half the daylight left and then turn around and come back. We had 2 water bottles, some trail mix, JoAnn's goodies and various coats and sweatshirts. Not exactly prepared, but we thought it was okay for a few hours of hiking.

The road was great on the other side of the big steep hill with the major crack in it. We could've driven all the way to Cheese Camp if we had known. We found the easier road around the big steep hill on the way back.

Well, it was further than we thought, but we made it all the way down to the bottom of Sand Hill. We peered down at the road at the bottom of Cottonwood Canyon. It was spectacular to see the whole canyon with the Hole in the Rock in the background. I was thrilled to see that this canyon was similar to the large canyon I had been longing to look at, Iceberg. The red rock walls were huge and they had all kinds of beautiful formations and side canyons. We saw the most beautiful amphitheater up high in one side canyon; it had a spring in it! That was where the Native Americans would have started a village.

The Little Hole in the Rock was unimaginable for the wagons, but it was the cut at the top of Sand Hill that was most amazing to me. Sheer rock with a sheer drop off on one side. The pioneers had built all these cuts for the road. We knew from family history that people had had accidents there, and had lived to tell about it. I still couldn't imagine.

It was a major push getting back before dark. I taried too much taking pictures. My camera battery was almost gone, so I was being very discerning. But then it was just hurry, hurry, hurry, as it was getting dark and threatening to storm. My feet were starting to go numb. They felt like beef jerky.

By the time we arrived at the vehicles, it was starting to rain and the wind had increased. It was getting dark and someone suggested we just sleep in the trucks. I wasn't going to sleep in the truck without a fight. We decided to make the best of where we were since it was too dark to drive the vehicles anywhere. The wind was so fierce that Ana and I had to have help from Joy in putting up our little tent. (Joy and Kent's tarp on the back of their truck was much better in this situation. Kent managed it on his own while Joy was helping us.) We finally got our tent in a tent shape, with the wind twisting it this way and that and pelting us with huge drops of rain. I made Ana get in the tent to keep it from blowing over the hills because we were set up on slick rock and there was nothing to stake to. Still the wind was threatening to take them both from me, so Joy got a cooler full of food, while I put the rain fly on. I got in with the cooler and we didn't get out until morning. We snuggled in our warm sleeping bags, listened to the wind whistle and the rain smack, snacked from our cooler and told each other stories.

This was the most exciting part of our whole trip. There is no photo documentation because it all happened in the dark. The next morning we heard from the other half of our party. They had managed to get the larger of their two tents up and had staked it down creatively with a truck, a Jeep, a hi-lift jack, a hammer and other heavy items. I knew those things would come in handy but I didn't imagine for that use. They had also had a snacky dinner and gone straight to bed.

6 The Chute

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The Chute didn't look hard, but it had a sharp approach. We had to drop into it off a 6-7 foot bank at an odd angle. We couldn't possibly entertain thoughts of how we going to get out of that coming back.

But The Chute itself was easy. Just a narrow, smooth canyon. Nowhere to go but down. It had been extremely hard for the pioneers because the animals couldn't get traction. They were going up.

A bit of tricky spot on the bottom, negotiating between two water holes.

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.

4 Where's the Road?

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It is a bit hard to tell where the road is sometimes, when there is only solid rock and no tracks.

As happens whenever you get a little confident, we had a little stumble. There was a bit of a glitch which is not properly documented on film. We got off the road somewhere. Jed had even warned us about this too. The road goes up a cut instead of off on the smooth inviting slick rock. Well, we missed it the first time and went several hundred feet before wondering where the road was. That's where Paul was studying the map. No amount of maps and GPS could guide us like seeing eye dogs through the "elephant butts" of slick rock. (Paul's term) We had to use good common sense and tracking skills to find the road. It wasn't that hard, but we had to be patient and look hard until we were sure. I even came home and traced our whole route on Google Earth. Once you get the idea, you know what to look for.

We knew we were getting close to Grey Mesa because it kept looming at the top of the skyline. At the base of it, right before the only interpretive sign, we encountered another tricky spot in the road. It was a steep step up in a narrow canyon--no way to go around this one. We piled rocks against the step to lessen the angle. Kent got some uncharacteristic air. Paul had to try several times and put up with coaching from Kent. The Jeep went everywhere like it had suction cups.

The step down out of the little narrow canyon was also quite steep and the pickups scraped their rear bumpers going down. We fussed a little about how we were going to get back out that way, but decided not to worry about that until we needed to.

It was getting to be late afternoon, so we decided to make camp at a nice flattish spot, before the grade up to Grey Mesa. This turned out to be a wise choice, as we learned there was a party just ahead of us that was using the next camp spot. We had a hunch we were following someone because the tracks looked fresh.

This area is known as Marble Camp for the little sandstone marbles that grow out of the round sandstone hills. It looks like a fungus attacking the slick rock. You can see them forming in some spots and, at some point, they detach themselves and go rolling around. It made for very bad traction for the pioneers, I'm sure.

Ana and Katy had a wonderful time playing in the little canyons around camp. They came in for dinner half soaked, so I guess it hadn't been too long since it had rained.

We had a little trouble finding sufficient "soil" to stake the tents in. The sand is really only a byproduct of the sandstone and the wind, so it is not usually very deep. I suppose there must be a modern fix for this lack of staking medium.

We celebrated Joy's birthday with soggy graham crackers and marshmallow with a candle stuck in. Joy was having the best birthday, having finally gotten to go on a Hole in the Rock trip. She had been made to stay home on the last opportunity because she was nursing a baby. Her younger brothers Paul and Ed had gone with Grandpa Lyman.

After dinner, Kent and I played some fiddle tunes. The instruments were traveling well in their cozy, snugly-packed box.

3 Old Pros Now

[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.]

Okay, so we made it through the big washout. Like I said, Jed had made it sound like a pretty big deal. We had set our expectations pretty low so as not to be disappointed if we didn't make it all the way to the Little Hole in the Rock. But we made it past the washout. What was around the next corner?

We felt like we could make it as far as we hoped now.

You'll have to pardon the section on the video where I'm walking along looking at the ground and talking. I didn't know the camera was on, but I like the audio, so I've left it in for now. Don't watch if it makes you dizzy.

2 First Challenge - The Washout

[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 on the lookout for the washout. Jed had given us great detail of he and his wife trying to ascend it on their ATVs and it didn't sound good.

It was steep and sandy too. There was much fussing about the road, using the shovel and moving rocks. Those not involved in the engineering were ogling the sites. This is where Uncle Albert built a small cabin which has since deteriorated back to the land. The tin roof is all that remains. Apparently the cabin site was part of the slide and it is now in the bottom of the canyon. Uncle Albert was a historian from early on and carved his name, initials and date in the slick rock bank behind his cabin, which turned out to be alongside the new "road." He went on to write elaborately of the local history.

The Jeep went up no problem (suction cups, I tell ya.). Paul had a bit of trouble getting traction, and after several attempts, finally made it, but not without leaving a souvenir on his front fender. He hit the wall briefly, almost damaging Uncle Albert's graffiti, and left a nice sandstone scrape where his pristine fender had been.

The old tan Toyota workhorse was unfazed.