It rained last night and I had to get up and move my camp up the drainage and under one of the ledges to get out of it. It took three trips to move all of my gear and it was not fun. I slept pretty well after that though. I must admit that I was a little concerned about sleeping in this canyon during a rainstorm though, as far as flash floods go. Luckily the rain did not last long.

I was up around 6:00, ate breakfast, packed up my gear and was ready to go by 6:30. Hank was ready as well but not Mike or Steve. We finally broke camp around 7:15 and continued down the drainage. My thighs were a little sore from all of the work they had been put through in the prior day and it took a while to work out the kinks in them.

Around 7:45 we reached the spot where the Royal Arch Route leaves the drainage and starts to climb up and away from it. We left our packs there and continued down the drainage toward Royal Arch. A little further down we met up with Sally's group coming up from the arch, where they had camped the night previous. We talked a while, planned to meet them over near Toltec beach, and continued down to the arch.

Royal Arch Creek was now flowing and we had only one creek crossing to make on the way to the arch, at a fairly sizable pool. We had to take off our boots and wade across and this made me very nervous with my camera. We finally reached Royal Arch at 8:40 and I was simply awestruck by its dimensions. Pictures just don't do it justice and cannot portray the size of this thing. It's huge... really, really huge!

We stayed there for about an hour and Hank and I wandered all around, taking photos from all different angles... lots of fun. It was very cool to finally be there.

At 9:40 we left the arch and headed back up creek to where we had left our packs. We got back to them around 10:10 but decided to hang out in some shade for a while and not leave right away... we were in no hurry today after all. While we were waiting Mike and Hank gave us a little demonstration of how to put on the harnesses that we would use for the rappel later that afternoon and explained exactly how the equipment worked. It is a pretty simple concept.

After more than an hour's rest, at around 11:30, we headed up and out of the drainage along the Royal Arch Route. The trail climbed steeply for a short distance and then leveled out and contoured along the top of the cliffs overlooking the creek. At just around noon the route broke out above the drainage and we could finally see the Colorado River in the distance... our destination for tonight. Around 12:15 we reached a magnificent view of the creek, the arch and the colossal tower next to the arch. At some point along the route we rested for about an hour in the shade of a huge rock.

At 2:10 we finally reached the cliff with the 20-foot rappel. Twenty feet does not sound like much but looking down the cliff at the ground below I must say I was a little concerned. This bothered me a lot more than the ledge. Mike checked out the rope that was already there and decided that it was safe for us to use. Hank went down first and of course he made it look easy. We then lowered down a couple of our backpacks and then it was my turn. To my own utter astonishment I went over the edge and down the cliff face without even giving it a second thought. As I learned back over the edge of the cliff what was once a wall was simply now a floor... You just have to trust the equipment. Hank was doing a bottom belay anyway and could always have stopped me himself if he needed to. In no time at all I was at the bottom of the cliff and now I was wishing that the cliff could have been higher. After I got to the bottom Mike sent down the other two packs and then Steve and Mike came down.

At around 2:45 we were all down the cliff and we continued on down the route. The route descended slowly at first and then got steeper as it approached the Toltec drainage. We arrived at Toltec beach around 3:30 and Mike immediately set to work at trying to identify the two campsites we needed to locate there. The beach had undergone massive changes since 1996 and vast amounts of sand that had been there then did not exist now. We found one of the two campsites but the other apparently no longer existed as the sand on which it was located was long gone and now somewhere at the bottom of the Colorado River or Lake Mead or part of some other beach somewhere further downstream. At 4:1 we gave up and headed to the other beach further upstream to make camp with Sally's group.

At 5:30 I had my campsite setup. I filtered some water from the river, washed my hair, cleaned up as best I could ad tried to make myself look presentable. There were, after all, ladies in camp tonight. We all ate our dinner and then headed over to socialize with Sally's group who were all huddled around the small lawn that Hank had claimed as his campsite. We talked and joked a lot and Sally made us strawberry cheesecake for dessert. She had been on a river trip a few weeks prior and had cached the ingredients for the cheesecake at that time. It was simply yummy! Some people told stories. We watched as the space station and shuttle reflected the last of the sun's rays for the day, back to Earth for us, as it streaked by overhead. We finally called it an evening and retired around 9:00.