Tom Grundy's Marble Canyon 2008 Travels Page
Mid April 2008, Julie has some time off, and we hitch up the mini trailer and head up to Lees Ferry. From there we plan to stage some daring day hikes and maybe even some canyoneering and a bit of boating.
Mini trailer's shadow follows us to Marble Canyon
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Aerial "map" of trip location (marble canyon, Glen Canyon, Lake Powell)
(move cursor over picture for helpful text)
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Badger Canyon
This was one of the longer more involved canyon hikes we had planned, so we started with it. Unfortunately it involved 3 rappels that we had to leave the ropes on and ascend for the return. Although they were short, I only had full length and really short sections of climbing rope, so with much wailing, moaning, gnashing of teeth, and grimmacing, I decided to sacrifice one of my many old climbing ropes. We headed down what turned into a scenic canyon fairly quickly with a few downclimbs and fixed a 50M (overkill) rope on the first rap. On the second, I cut my rope. waaah. Then for the third, we had the other half of the cut rope.
Julie on the first rap in Badger Canyon
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I am unhappy to cut the rope in Badger Canyon (Julie's photo)
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Julie on the last rap in Badger Canyon
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The rapids at the end of Badger Canyon (and Jackass Canyon on the south side) is called Badger Creek Rapid. It looked like it would be pretty exciting in a pack raft or other small boat, but the one heavily loaded mega raft we saw go down it made it look pretty tame. The river is still green and clear here today. On the way back up Julie steps in a mudhole landmine and dirties her new shoes and socks.
Panoramic view of Badger Creek Rapid in Marble Canyon
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Cathedral Wash
This is a mellow hike down to the Colorado river through a nice canyon with a few scrambly bits. We saw some California condors flying overhead down by the river. One was tagged #02, another #50, I suspect the third was #73, but I didn't get a decent view of its tags. They really are very distinctive and BIG birds. We saw other people on this hike and down at the river here.
After spending the morning in Cathedral Wash, we inflated the pack raft and paddled a bit up the Colorado. The water was cold and clear. Then we floated back down. I just might have floated down the river through Paria Riffle to the beach below it and walked back up to the campground. Since this is probably frowned upon by the NPS, I probably didn't really do it, but I did do some clever photoshopping to make it look like I did. It would have been a lot of fun, although the water would be really cold in your lap from the rapids.
I allegedly paddle past a great blue heron (all photoshopped)(Julie's photo)
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more alleged packraft action (photoshopped)(Julie's photo)
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Water Holes Canyon
This is an interesting slot canyon on the south - east rim of Glen Canyon about 8 miles south of Page. It was quite a long drive to get there, although it was really not far from our campsite. We headed down canyon following the Kelsey guide descriptions past some downclimbs, rappels, and nice slots. Some sections were particularly intestinal (lots of squiggly passages). The water was all dried out so we didn't even have to get our gear or ourselves cold and dirty. Somehow we miscounted the raps and so left our rope and continued on without the rapelling gear (we were planning to ascend the last rap and walk out to avoid the 300 foot rappel and trip down the river (that we would like to return for)). I think that we did an extra rap that we could have skirted by climbing up and around that section of canyon. In any case, the actual last rappel before the big one went into a pool, so we wouldn't have done it anyway. We could see the streaks in the mud where a previous party had tried to skirt the water but then slid in. There was some interesting climbing (suitable only for "expert hikers" according to the guide) and narrow narrows and scenic slots before that though. The crux was keeping my camera from banging and scraping on the walls. The one pothole I am stemming across in the picture would have been hard to climb out of on the upstream side (you can see Julie coming down that side in the previous pic). I boosted Julie out, and then went back to full body stem around it. I was glad not to have my backpack full of stuff for the skinniest slots. Then I had to backtrack to ascend the rope to untie it and grab the rest of our gear before returning back down canyon to the scramble-hike out.
Julie exits a slot in Water Holes Canyon
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Julie downclimbs in Water Holes Canyon
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Julie downclimbs into a pothole
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I stem across the same pothole in Water Holes canyon (Julie's photo)
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The path up out of the canyon was cairned and not too bad. Once back on the rim, we walked west towards Glen Canyon to a spectacular overlook. Then a long slog across slickrock and sand back to the car for a trip to Page for gas and to look at the dam and canyon. Then we stopped and hiked a little upstream in the same canyon looking for good slotty photo-ops. Unfortunately there weren't any great ones as far as we went. There were some interesting pebbles eroding out of the wall with ridges eroded downstream from them though.
Julie looks up through an arch in Water Holes Canyon
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old bolt (lots of erosion)
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Julie walks across the slickrock
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I perch on the rim
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cactus flower above the canyon
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smooth cross bedding in the upper canyon
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Spencer Trail
The Spencer trail heads up east from Lees Ferry onto the plateau. It is a bit of a slog with mostly good trail work and nice views, there was even a summit register. From the top of the plateau, the views are amazing. We also saw condors (tags 50 and 73), vultures, merlins, ravens, and some other sort of hawk flying around above and below us. We cleverly did most of the uphill hiking in the morning shade, but there was very little shade for the descent. A cool shower helped to refresh us and empty the trailer water tank for the drive back to Flagstaff.
view upstream from the Spencer trail
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view downstream from the Spencer trail showing the boatlaunch etc.
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Cactus flower at Lees Ferry
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California Condor soars below us in Glen Canyon
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more California Condor action in Glen Canyon
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Lees Ferry ruin
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Panoramic view of Glen Canyon from near the top of the Spencer Trail
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