I forgot to mention the wind and the wind-blown sand. It blew in gusts during most of the day yesterday, last night and again today. There was literally sand in everything.

I awoke around 5:30 but stayed in bed until almost 6:00. I ate breakfast and then packed up my gear and just left it at my site. We left for our day hike to Elves Chasm around 7:30 and arrived there around 8:30. Steve decided to save his strength for the afternoon and skipped the day hike to stay back at camp. The route to Elves Chasm was well worn and easier than I remembered to follow. Some parts of it were familiar, even after almost 4 years. The limestone along the route is as sharp and nasty as it was back then and this time I didn't have gloves.

We stayed at Elves until around 10:00. Sally showed up with about half of her group around 9:30 just after a river trip arrived to invade the place. We hung out and talked with them down by the river while they waited for the river party to depart.

Mike and Hank stopped to rest on the way back but I continued straight back to camp. I did not bring any water or food with me to Elves as I wanted to travel light but now I was starting to get a little thirsty. I arrived back at camp at 11:00 and Mike and Hank got back around 11:30.

We hung out at the beach, had lunch, and talked with the rest of Sally's group. I tried to drink as much water as my body could hold because I didn't not want to have to taste any of that nasty stuff they call water in Garnet Canyon - bleech!

We finally left upper Toltec beach around 1:00 and headed for Garnet Canyon. We took a couple of short rest breaks along the way and arrived there around 2:30. Mike discovered an old metate in one of the little side drainages we went through and in another we found some interesting salt formations along the back wall - soda straws and something that sort of resembled coral. We did some campsite monitoring on a couple of sites just outside of Garnet, on the south side, on the way in.

We took a short rest in Garnet but it being so early we decided not to camp there and continued on up to the Tonto Trail and started east along that to look for a campsite for the night. Steve took the wrong route out of Garnet, the one I used last time I was here. We beat him up to the Tonto even though he started out well ahead of us.

We made good time once up on the Tonto and found some nice ledges with some pools of rainwater in a large side canyon about a mile away from Garnet. We decided to make that home for the night.

I tried to filter water from one of the scummy pools but my filter was not working. I had Steve take a look at it and we discovered that a little rubber ball that was part of the valve assembly was missing. I had taken the filter apart before leaving Toltec to try and clean some of the sand out of it and must have lost it at that point. Luckily Steve had the same kind of filter and I borrowed his rubber ball to get mine working. The filter still clogged up because there was just too much junk (algae) in the water. After cleaning it I tried the lower pool and managed to get a liter of water. Way cool... an extra liter of water that I hadn't planned on having... life is good.

After the ordeal with the pump I setup camp under one of the ledges and had dinner. It would be another tent-less night.