I’m on upriver beach of the Kwagunt delta deep in the Grand Canyon. I have started taking voice notes using my phone. This is the first time that I ve ever kept a hiking diary and I m excited to try this. No promises it will turn out interesting, but given prior hikes along the Grand Canyon, it might. I ve already been in the woods a few days. So let s rewind for a bit to see how I got here.…
When you re uploading images to WordPress, WordPress is going to make some changes to your file before it is stored in the WordPress media library. Namely, it is going to resize, smush, and scrape the image for data stored in EXIF. Then WordPress is going to generate thumbnails. Most people are not aware this is being done quietly in the background. Naturally they are confused why their images…
Some of the bays on Lake Powell are actually narrow canyons, and impossible to find beaches on at certain water levels. However, if you have enough bumpers, and some skills placing climbing protection (cams in particular) in iffy sandstone, then you can attach to the canyon wall. I was sort of surprised he wanted to do this given it s a pretty nice boat, but it worked well. It was his first ever…
If you had told me in 2019 when I was hiking and packrafting around the mouth of Labyrinth Canyon that someday I d be exploring the canyon deeper in a much larger boat, with a man and a dog, and that I d be starting to enjoy it, I d have laughed in your face. Lake Powell was at that point pretty depressing, I thought. Laughing in the face of a conservationists dilemma, their collective pain my…
We spent quite a bit of time setting anchor here (two anchors, actually) because weather was coming. And boy did weather come! At one point we had hiked about 1000 feet above the boat to sight-see. Looking down on the boat, while wind gusts pushed us around like little sails, we prayed it would stay in place. When we got back it was just how we put it, the anchors buried under about a foot of…
Today was my second time up on top of this mesa, and definitely the windiest! HOLY SHIT! We felt really bad for anyone launching a boat down the Colorado River on that day! As you can see (if you zoom in) people are preparing to do just that. I was having a hard time standing up in the wind, and then it started to rain. I m glad this time I drove most the way up this hill, and was not backpacking…
We found this spot using one of Kelsey s books about hikes along Lake Powell, but only barely. It was hard to find at the lake level this march. We motored past the steps a couple times before finally catching a glimpse on the way back to the boat. In the spring light, no shadows were cast by the steps, which in other lights, must be more obvious, because they are definitely well cut into the…