Family Trip to the Grand Canyon

Liz, Ellie and I jumped in the car earlier Saturday morning for a little family get together at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We got there about 1:00, and met up with my dad, Aunt Vickie, Aunt Mickie, Uncle Walter, Cousin Cheryl and her husband, Ryan, and their son Jack Ryan. The weather was awesome, low seventies. Nice change up from the heat in Phoenix.

They camped at Trailer Village in the park, and Walter flamed up a huge stack of burgers. TASTIE!

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, Ellie, Liz check out of our hotel and made our way back into the national park to meet up with the crew again. And from there we jumped in our rigs drove up to The Desert View Watchtower. Dad hadn’t been feeling so hot the past few days, so he decided to opt out from the rest of the camping trip and head back to Phoenix with us.

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Here's a link to a High Resolution version: Grand Canyon H264 Quicktime

Goat Camp XC: White Tank Mountains - Phoenix, AZ)

Another great day out on the trail. Last Sunday (5/4/08) the posted MTBR ride lead us out to White Tank Mountain Regional Park for a long ride up up Willow Canyon, then (I believe) we spent some time riding up Mesquite Canyon, then we tied into Ford Canyon, and then road up to the top of Goat Camp. Our group was evenly split between the out-and-back riders and the Goat Camp downhillers. I elected for the less death deifying out-and-back. I gotta do the Goat Camp ride, but yesterday was not going to be that day.

We split from Waddell at about 7:45 and being the beginning a May, in the desert, it was already warm. We were on the trail about a minute before the comments of how warm it was already started flying.

The first half mile has pretty substantial hike-a-bike section, that on return qualifies a downright gnarly. After that, it is pretty sanitized trail that gains loads of elevation over about 9 miles.

Some of the highlights of this trail are that it has a 45 minute climb at the beginning, then a little bit of downhill that provides a nice relief, then it has nice flat to gentle climb for another 15 minutes, and then its onto another hour and half of climbing. There is nice grotto at the midway point that has a rare to see in the desert pool of water in it. Chongoman was the first of group the head back to the oasis for a look, and he spotted a really big Great Horned Owl perched on the cliff. It split before the rest of us got the grotto. Su Ling and I were about 10 minutes from the turn around point, when we spotted Black-tailed Rattlesnake stretched across the trail. He was about 2 and half feet long. We didn’t wanna harass the rattler, but we did encourage him to move along.

The five cross country riders gathered up at the turn around point, before enjoying the sweeeet, sweeeet single track return. It was a hoot. Fast and swoopy is what this trail is all about. A few technical spots, but all in all pretty tame (other than the bottom).


The heat didn’t end up being to big of a problem, but the bugs were out in full force.

Here's a vid of the day:

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Two Javelina at Pima Canyon - South Mountain

I had my alarm set to wake me up at 5:00 am and be on the trail at 5:15, but I forgot turn it on. Starring at my alarm clock at 5:20, I say to myself, "Am I supposed to be on the trail right now???". I scrambled outta bed so I could at least gets some goods in before I work. Upon rolling into the parking lot at 5:30 I saw a rather large animal scurrying behind a boulder, and I had a hunch it was a Javelina. I rolled a little closer, and yep it was. I hadn't seen any Javelina since last summer up on the Corona Loma trail at the other end of the park.

Javelina or Collard Peccary aren't pigs, but the sure do resemble 'em.

I had my digi-cam with me, so I quickly grabbed it from the back of my car. I flipped it on, only to find I had no available memory left. I used it up on filming the sunrise on my previous post. I quickly deleted everything the drive, and started shooting. At this point I noticed it was a pair of Javelia, but I only had small glimpses of 'em.

Don't expect much, but here's a one minute vid:

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Sunrise over Desert Classic: South Mountain - Phoenix, AZ

Not much to see here, but a sunrise over the desert. I shot this, this morning on my ride. I set out about 5:15 am, and got to my vantage point about 5:30 to set up for what I knew was gonna be pretty neato sunrise. I left my camera recording for about 20 minutes, while 5:40 came and went. Don't worry, I sped it up so takes under 4 minutes.

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Six Shooter Canyon Trail - Pinal Mountain: AZ

Paul B., author of Mountain-Bike-America-Arizona: Arizona and I split from Tempe at around 7:00 am and headed east on US 60 to Globe for a little sufferfest riding to the top of Pinal Mountain. We parked here , at the junction of S. Ice House Canyon and S. Six Shooter Canyon. And here's a map of the area. We started our 14 mile slog up at 8:40, and 3.5 hours later we ready for our decent. Our route consisted of Heading up S. Ice House Canyon Rd for about 1.8 miles, where we veered right on to S. Kellner Canyon Rd. Pavement turned to dirt, and then I believe we spent a short time on FR 55 to get to FR 651. FR 651 took us to the top. The climb showed us some pretty amazing views, although there was a pretty nasty haze that obscured our view of Phoenix.

We didn't kill ourselves getting to the top, and I plenty left in the tank for our wicked fun decent. We opted for taking Six Shooter Canyon Trail down, and from what I'm hearing, its probably the tamest trail off the top. A little exposure, and few techy switch backs, left us with miles and miles and miles of swoopy forest single track. Actually this trail has three distinct trail composition. Loads of forest at the top, followed by loads of gravel and rocks in the middle, and classic desert cinder at the bottom. I was just amazed at how fun this trail is.

I believe this is probably the longest big mountain descents in Arizona. With about 4,500 vf descent from the top of the mountain to the bottom you are left with two windows for riding this trail(spring or fall). You've got to hit it between snow and heat.


Here's a short vid of the Day:

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Kayaking on Blue Ridge Reservoir - Coconino National Forest

I really wanted to get some redemption over last weekends horrid skiing conditions, but it looked like weather was gonna repeat itself. Skiing was out, so considering I hadn't paddle since last summer, I decided to load the kayak up and find some water.

I've heard of some kewl flat water paddling on the Blue Ridge Reservoir in the Coconino National Forest

I loaded the car up the night before, and was out the door at 5:30. It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from my place in Phoenix. And I was on the water by at about 8:30. It was really breezy, which I new was gonna happen. And the elevation of the lake is about 6,700 vf, so I knew it could be a little chilly still. Even though there were patchs of snow and ice around, I still felt comfortable in my shorts, although I did end up putting some paddling pants on one of my pit stops. I believe the FR 751 had just opened for the season, and there were a couple of other groups heading out for a little fishing. The lake has 10 hp limit on boat motors, so this is pretty tame lake to paddle on. The only other people I say on the lake were between the boat ramp and the dam. And even then it was only a couple of other users. Not a bad chunk of solitude.

It was nice to see trees again. And seeing the snow around added some nice contrast to the shoreline. This other charm of this lake is that it's narrow with lots twists and turns, so it has the feel of a river without the current or rapids. Still more benefit are that the twists and turns didn't put the wind in my face very often. In fact it seems like it was at my back for most of the paddle. It blew so hard, I actually pulled out my umbrella for a little sailing. I ended up getting about 1 miles worth of kite time.

In talking with the couple at the boat ramp, they had never seen the lake level this high. I'm sure there are other place to bivy at, but I did pull and found a pretty nifty place I'd look forward to staying at on an overnighter. My 7.5 mile tour left with the other half of the reservoir to explore another day.

I spotted the compulsory osprey nest you'd typically find on a lake like this, and I saw several ducks. I had my eyes constantly peeled for other wildlife, and about halfway up the east cove of the tributaries, I spotted a critter down by the waters edge. It kinda freaked me out. It was roughly twice the size of a racoon, and man did that thing have skills climbing up the wicked steep hill. I'm hearing it was probably a coati. It is also rather rare to see 'em. I did get a short clip of him with my cheap DV camera.

Here's a vid of my trip with loads of stage shots, for my own vanity:

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Update:
Here's the response I got from a Forest Biologist from the Coconino National Forest -


Sam, cool video! It sure looks like a coati to me! We have had a few
sightings of coati on the Mogollon Rim district, but it's a very rare
observation. Great job, and thanks for asking us so we could see the
video! I'm cc-ing the current biologists on the district, so they can see
they have this rare mammal in their area.

Thanks again for sharing this exciting news!

Cecelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cecelia Overby
Forest Biologist, Coconino National Forest
1824 S. Thompson St.
Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
ph: 928-527-3460; fax: 928-527-3620

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a seperate vid of the critter:

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Snowbowl & Kachina Peaks - Flagstaff, AZ

No corn harvest yesterday, when Jrock and I braved the elements to ski the excrements.


It was nice to be up on the hill again. After watching a great season of snow fly on bye, I finally got an opportunity to head up Snowbowl – Kachina Peaks for some late season turns. Thanks to Jrock we had a couple lift tickets, so we got a few runs in on the groomers. This allowed me to check my systems to make sure I could still crank a turn or two.

It was tad bit breezy in the resort, and we could the poofy white clouds quickly moving over the ridge above the resort. Even though we knew the wind was honking up there, we could see lotsa blue sky. We also figured that the sun would be loosening up the frozen slopes in the Inner-Basin.

We grabbed our packs, transceivers, shovels and skins from the car, and proceeded to do a little lift assisted accent to the top of the ridge. We did a direct line up the snow filled gully above Snowbowl’s “Logjam Run”. The avi crud on this slope left us with some nice steps and ramps to walk up on. The slope was also super-duper frozen, so we took our time boot packing up; in hopes that temperatures would rise to loosen up this slopes we wanted to rip. It took us about an hour to get up to a major scree path we needed to traverse near the top (low point) of the ridge. The scramble across the rocks left us pretty exposed to the wind, and when we were within about 10 minutes of sitting on top of the ridge (12,000’ level), a major cloud layer moved in. This left us with pretty much no visibility, and the wind was blasting us with a constant 50 to 60 mph winds. I did walk over to the very edge of the ridge to see what the Inner Basin looked like, but the white-out conditions left me a little weary that I might actually be standing on a cornice. So I took a few steps back and said, not today. Jrock and I hid behind a rock from the elements, and I nibbled on my nearly frozen Sonic Burger. The wind sounded like a freight train, so we shouted out our plans for our descent. Directly below us, and between us and the resort was a major rock garden. And I certainly wasn’t into skiing down the frozen mess we walked up. At the time I couldn’t see the snow covered slopes to the north of us on; just below Humphreys.

We ended up scrambling down and to the north a couple of hundred yards to the thin strips of snow, to make our way down. With the cloud layer above us, we strapped on the boards for the crusty ride down. We descended about 1,000 vf on an open slope, before getting into the glades. Now the snow was marginally smoother, but still dangerously frozen. Skiing in survival mode, we clumsily made our way through the trees down to Harts Prairie. I was really relieved to be outta that mess; however, I still had a smile on my face knowing that even rough day on the mountain is still better than the best day on the golf course.

Here's a vid of the day:

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And here are some pics taken by Jrock: