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Sunday, by Dennis Foster Sunset view of the El Tovar Lodge. |
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For many years now, at the behest of my colleagues, I lead an autumn hike into the Grand Canyon, and this year we went down the Hermit trail to Dripping Springs and back, for a total of six to seven miles. You can see (most of) the assembled group below - Lena, Kathy, Eric, Russell, John H., T.S., John E. and Dennis (Cara Lynn was taking the picture). We left from Flagstaff at 6:30 a.m. and were parked at the Bright Angel Lodge at 8:10 a.m. Just as we were pulling our packs from our vehicles we could see the nearby West Rim shuttle bus leaving, which meant that we had to wait another half hour to get the next bus, which we did at 8:50 p.m. For more on our trials and tribulations with the transit system, read my blog on the The West Rim Shuffle. We were out at the end of the line - Hermit's Rest - and ready to begin our hike at 9:40 a.m. There were two things I wanted to do during this hike. One was to see the small natural arches that are near the trailhead, and the other was to visit the old, abandoned, Sweetheart Spring. As to the arches, I will have try again, as we could not find them in the time I allocated to this detour. We headed down the trail and, just before you come out to the canyon-facing cliffs, a few of us headed into the ravine we had been paralleling. Then, we headed back up to look for these arches. We reached a fork in the ravine and opted to go north, and I still don't know which direction is right from here. But, as we ran out of time, we found that we were less than a hundred yards from the restrooms at Hermit's. So, we scampered up the hillside and returned to the trailhead to continue our trek to Dripping Springs. [When I try to look for these arches again, I'll just go down the hillside behind Hermit's Rest and check out that ravine more fully; if I come up empty I'll try the other fork.] As we switchbacked our way through the Coconino sandstone, we stopped to look at the dinosaur tracks. They aren't very big, and probably 90% of the people who pass by here don't see them. I am sure that I didn't see them the first few times I headed down this trail! At the bottom of the Coconino, John E. and I meandered along to the south of the trail, looking for the seep spring that has been referred to as Sweetheart Spring by local author Scott Thybony. We didn't find it, but, then, we were heading the wrong way! Although I read the directions out loud, and it was clearly stated that the spring was to the north, we headed south. So it goes. At about 12:30 p.m. John and I arrived at Dripping Spring. Kathy and Lena were about 10 minutes behind us, and everyone else was already there. We had seen quite a few hikers on the way down - but, they were all heading up. For about an hour we had Dripping Spring all to ourselves. In fact, at least half of our group had already started on the hike back to Hermits Rest before a few other hikers arrived at the spring. It was a pleasant fall day, warm in the sun and still comfortable in the shade. For lunch, I brought along some liverwurst in a can. It tasted fine to me, but Eric thought it tasted somewhat suspect. He noted that the date on the can was 2002. I commented that I had seen episodes of CSI that were older than that, and they were still good.
On the way back, we all stopped at the spot that John and I had picked
out to resume our search for Sweetheart Spring. From the trail near
Dripping Springs, we had a good view looking back on this spot and had
picked a couple of likely places along the Coconino/Hermit interface where
a spring might be found. This spot turned out to be exactly
right. John H, T.S., Eric, John E and I contoured over to the
spring in just a few minutes. We found an old cement trough, with a
pipe leading into in and another pipe leading out, and down the hillside
at least 20 yards. I didn't continue to follow it, but wondered if
it leads to a lower trough that might have been more accessible to horses
and cattle more than a hundred years ago. We also came across some
old tin The last of us got out to Hermit's Rest at 4:15 p.m., caught the 4:30 p.m. bus and were back at the Bright Angel Lodge at 5:00 p.m. By then it looked like rain was falling in upper Bright Angel Canyon, although nothing fell on us during the time we spent along the rim, nor while we were having dinner in the AZ Room. |
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