Day Six Miles: 7.8
Cumulative Miles: 50.5
October 31, 2011
South Rim
8:50pm
Made it out. Nearly got eaten by a mountain lion last night. Hike up wasn't bad - under three hours before breaks. Car was dead but got a jump. More later.
November 1, 2011
South Rim
7:30am
Ok... Now I have a bit of time to write! So, back to Plateau Point, sunset on October 30. We had dinner out there and chatted with the Ranger and "the Boys" for a while. We'd just missed seeing a condor on the rocks! Eventually, everyone left and we spent a happy hour or so doing star traces. A little after eight we packed it up - it had taken us 40 minutes to get out there and we were guessing it would take an hour to get back in the dark. Once we were off the Plateau and into the drainages, I caught some mule deer eyes in my headlamp. They were very obviously mule deer, even in the dark - you could see the ears and they didn't so much as glance at us. On we went.
A few hundred yards downwind, I caught a new pair of eyes with my light. These were lower, closer together, and shaped differently. No mule ears. And - worst of all - these eyes watched us, tracking and following. Without discussing anything, we both started booking it our of there, so fast that we made it back in 30 minutes! Only then did we start talking and realize that we had both independently concluded that it was a mountain lion! I guess we'll never know for sure, but I know what my cat's eyes look like in the dark. I spent the whole night trying to convince myself that I was ridiculous and it had been a deer, but I just couldn't. And that is how we nearly got eaten by a mountain lion.
November 1, 2011
Marble Canyon
8pm
Ok, so, back to Halloween. We rolled out of bed late, around 6, shoved food, water, stove and cameras into our packs and headed back to Plateau Point for dawn. We had breakfast out there before heading back to Indian Gardens to break camp. No more mountain lions tried to eat us but we did get the stink eye from a mama mulie, beautifully silhouetted against the dawn, who we disturbed! We hit the Bright Angel trail again at 10:30 for the final 4.5ish mile push to the Rim.
Our hike was broken into even thirds by two rest houses. The first leg was the worst - steep, and we'd skipped our usual midday snack! We rested an hour at the rest house for lunch though. Second leg went fast - not as steep. We stayed 45 minutes at that rest house, snacking and finally toasting with Baileys before the last push. It was steep, but we were so close it didn't matter! We reached the Rim at 3! We did it!!
Shortly thereafter, we lost our buzz upon finding out that the car was dead, but a nice ranger gave us a jump and we were off to steak dinner.
Today we drove to Lees Ferry to camp prior to Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon tomorrow. The wind was epic! We were eating dinner in the car when our tent collapsed! So we called it, stuffed the tent in the car and got a room here in Marble Canyon to enjoy a good night's sleep (and the three B's, Booze Bread and Butter).
QotD: "Our tent was just like, 'screw you guys, I'm going home!'"
No comments:
Post a Comment