Feels Like Home

Our home for the 8 days we were in the canyon.

On Wednesday February 9th, after picking up my 11 volunteers from around the world, I drove off in the dark towards the Grand Canyon. It was like driving home after a long time in unfamiliar places. It is difficult to describe the feeling that the Canyon evokes in you when you spend so much time there. When you are 3500ft below the rim with no worries from the outside world it is a place of extreme tranquility and unrelenting beauty. This of course is tempered by the fact the weather can and does change in a moments notice and one can never ignore the power of the forces that created such a place.

We arrived at the trailhead at 8:30. Right on time to meet the mule packers. One of whom was one of my supervisors from the previous February. It was good to see her there and doing well. After loading the mules with our food for the next 8 days we headed down over the rim. It was a stark difference from last February when the trail had over a foot of snow on it. This time there was no snow whatsoever after a very dry January.
It was enjoyable watching the volunteers who had never been here experience the Canyon for the first time. They had endless smiles and would stop to take pictures at every turn.

I have ever been down in the canyon with such perfect weather for 8 days in a row. It was 50-60 degrees every day and we didn't see a cloud in the sky until the last two days. Most surprising of all was the lack of wind. It is normally very windy where we were camped, but we saw none of it.
I had a very diverse crew with 10 countries represented within our crew of 12: America(1 native american), England, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Italy, and France. Overall it was quite the cultural experience and I a blast learning from all of them. They were all very hard workers and a pleasure to have on my crew.

Of course the canyon was not without its wildlife encounters as well as amazing sunsets.

Scorpion we found at the worksite

It's somewhat camouflaged but there is a big buck near the foreground in this picture

A red fox roaming around down by the Colorado River

Sunset on Monday night.

Ledge from which I enjoyed the sunset


Work itself was pretty straight forward as we mainly did general trail maintenance work with some people doing rock work to armor one of the steep sections of trail as well as put liner rocks on the side of the trail.

My crew hard at work

Putting in some liner rocks

Armoring the trail with riprap.

All smiles after finishing their liner rocks


We finished work early and on the second to last day we went hiking down to the river. I had heard of a big horn sheep trail that miners used in the old days to get down to the river. So I took the brave people, who for some reason trusted me to get them to the river, on quite the adventure. We almost gave up right away because we could not find the cairn marking the entrance to the particular canyon we were trying to get down. Luckily our patience paid off and we found our way in. Now we just had to find the rest of the way.

Happy we found our way into the canyon

The going got quite steep

From there we somehow made a number of very good decisions at possible junctions and made it safely to the river, except for the Austrian girl Nora who was hit by a falling rock. Luckily it was just a flesh wound and we patched it up and continued on.

Nora just before being struck by a falling rock

Yoann picking his way down the ridge.

This is a picture looking towards the route we went down to the river.


After hiking out I took my crew to a secret location that was shown to me last year where there is a very cool sinkhole on the canyon rim that you can climb down and it pops you out on a ledge on the side of the rim no more than 1 foot wide.

The Italian Samuele climbing down into the sinkhole

Samuele and Andrew on the edge of the canyon after climbing down the sinkhole.

Also nearby the sinkhole is an overhang on the rim with indian drawings on it.


Following this I took them to see the Grand Canyon IMAX which capped off an amazing 8 days.

I am now back in Flagstaff for 6 days off. I am currently getting over a calf injury I sustained on my birthday, but I hope to be able to start running again tomorrow. A storm is rolling into town and should dump a good amount of snow so I hope to hit the slopes as well.

That's all for now.