Flagstaff station
2011hrs
Sunrise over the Grand Canyon.
A sky ablaze with yellows and reds, as the glowing ball of the sun raises its head proudly over surely God's greatest creation. Shadows as long as time tear across the landscape, almost bursting from the straitjacket of three dimensions.
At least, that's what I reckon it would have looked like if it wasn't so cloudy.
Even though the sun wasn't up yet, it was light when we arrived at six a.m. Since the horizon was blanketed in cloud, we didn't actually see much of the sun rising, just a red tint to the clouds moving roughly upwards.
We checked out of our cabin, left our backpacks in the safe, had some breakfast, and set out into the Grand Canyon.
At this stage, which was half past seven, I had every intention of going all the way to the bottom, and Colin had every intention of not doing. He planned at least to get to the Indian Garden, about five miles down, and possibly further.
I had brought with me two bottles of orange juice, Colin something along the lines of lemonade. We had most of a large bag of crisps, eight bread rolls, a tube of squeezable cheese, a box of crackers and two packets of Skittles. Most of these were being carried in a plastic bag, and it was perhaps inevitable that after five minutes, one of the handles snapped. Not long after that, a bottle fell through the bottom, and the bag no longer looked much like a bag at all.
Shoving as much as we could into pockets and holding the rest, we continued undeterred. At half past five, when we'd got up, it had been pretty cold out, and taking this to be a good indication of the day's conditions, I had put on a tee-shirt, a shirt, and something which is a cross between a jumper and a coat, as well as my still unwashed jeans. Of course, it is probably pretty cold out at that time of morning on even the warmest days, and as the morning progressed it got hotter and hotter, until we were both very inappropriately dressed.
We arrived, without much in the way of further incident, at the Indian Gardens. What was Indian about them, and in what sense they were gardens, I don't know. It was just a load of cacti really.
Somewhere around there, or possibly a little later, Colin said that he planned to go as far as the end of Plateau Point Trail, namely Plateau Point. This isn't far from the bottom of the canyon, and offers a good view of the Colorado River at the bottom.
I still wanted to go all the way down, but this would have meant splitting up and me taking a different route, one and a half miles longer. Instead I agreed to continue to Plateau Point, hoping to find somewhere where I could scramble down to the bottom.
By the time we reached Plateau Point, it was very hot indeed. My shirt and jumper-cum-coat were completely inappropriate, but I didn't want to have to carry them, so I sweated on.
The drop down to the river was very vertical. I searched around for something bearing any resemblance to a staircase. The best I found wasn't very good, but I had a go, and scrambled a little way down. Soon I came to a long drop with no means of descending. It went down to a fairly small platform, beyond which were more vertical rocks. I convinced myself that the drop wasn't that far, and the platform wasn't that small, and jumped.
The drop looked a lot further from the air than it had from the top.
I managed at least to land on the rock below without breaking anything, though the impact was greater than I had anticipated, and I hurt my knee.
Reminded of man's mortality by this near-death experience, I wisely decided not to go any further, and went to climb back up to Plateau Point, only to find that the wall of rock past which I had jumped, had no more handholds going up than coming down. I thought that I might very well be stuck, but I somehow managed to scramble back up.
The view from further down would have been too close anyway, and this was a pretty good vantage point from which to view the Colorado.
I can't understand how a river that small can carve a canyon so big. It's one of life's unexplained mysteries.
I saw a couple of tiny lizards down there, scuttling between the rocks. The guidebook we bought promised sheep on Plateau Point Trail. I didn't see any, and I think they would have been difficult to miss.
Other than these lizards, the only wildlife we saw in the canyon was the occasional raven and a lot of squirrels.
There were signs everywhere saying not to feed the wildlife. The animals become dependent on human food, these signs said, swallow containers which get lodged in their stomachs, become unable to eat and are shot. Actually the signs were really taking about deer, but the gist applied also to squirrels, and it was made very plain that you shouldn't feed any of the wildlife.
Nevertheless, I saw several people feeding squirrels, and if their habit of begging is anything to go by, the practice is common. It's hard to believe that none of these people saw any of the signs, but I suppose we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they were blind. Certainly an inordinate number of hikers were walking with sticks, but if this were the case, we must ask ourselves how they knew the squirrels were there in the first place, or indeed why they'd come to the Grand Canyon.
Whatever the case, the people we passed were certainly friendly. Nearly everyone said hi. I don't think I've had hi said to me so many times in such a short period ever before in my life.
The return journey was fraught with difficulties. We were exhausted, our legs were aching, it was uphill, and pretty soon we ran out of drink. At great length, and after about a hundred rests, we arrived at the Three-Mile Resthouse, where we were finally able to refill our bottles from the tap. Not orange juice this time, but water's more refreshing than orange, and by now refreshment had infinite priority over taste.
I had by this point at least taken off my jumper, but it was so hot and we were so tired, and the going was hard. From the Three-Mile Resthouse to Two-Mile Corner took well over the odds, and from the Indian Gardens to Three-Mile Resthouse, supposedly one and a half miles, had taken an hour and a half.
It was therefore nothing short of a miracle when from Two-Mile Corner to the Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse took just ten minutes!
By now I was completely out of water, very thirsty, and greatly in need of the loo. This at least I knew they had at Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse, having used it on the way down, and I was banking on water as well.
When I saw the sign saying 'No Water Here', therefore, I came close to hurling myself into the canyon and ending it all (which, incidentally, is how I'll commit suicide if I ever do. The only way to go). So desperate was I for liquid that I seriously considered combining the two processes of fulfilling my bodily needs - drinking urine is supposed to be very good for you, after all, and it wasn't as if I had any alternative.
In the event I couldn't quite bring myself to resort to that, but it did seem such a waste to watch so much perfectly good liquid trickling away.
