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Trip Report - October, 2005 - Indian Hollow, Cranberry Canyon & Kanab Canyon |
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The members of this trip were:
I don't have much to complain about as far as this trip goes. No, it wasn't perfect but as far as backpacking trips go it was definitely a good one and ended up weighing in with many more positive than negative events. We had a great group of people for doing it and many of us had hiked together in the past so there was a definite camaraderie.
The weather, although questionable during that first night at Indian Hollow on the north rim, ended up being absolutely perfect. We had some rain on the way to camp and then one final shower as we were packing up camp the morning we were getting ready to start, but that was it for rain and we were not bothered by it again for the remainder of the trip.
The only real problem with the trip was that Bolek was carrying way too much weight in food and that slowed him down a bit. Another result of this was that his feet got beat up pretty bad that first day and later that day Chuck and Mike took efforts to lighten his load and redistribute some of his "canned goods" among the rest of the party. He had a lot of canned goods, which was where most of the weight came from. In the late morning on the second day Chuck flagged down a river party and asked if they would take Bolek's pack and drop it off at Kanab Creek for us. After that we all did our part in helping Bolek consume some of his excess food stores, which was actually quite good.
The only real disappointment for me was not getting over to Deer Creek, which was part of my original plan. The party was originally supposed to split below the Redwall descent coming out of Cranberry Canyon and Mike, Chuck and Dave were going to go to Siesta Spring and Jasek, Bolek and myself were supposed to head over to Deer Creek. Mike and Chuck talked Bolek out of doing this to save him some extra miles of hiking and I basically bailed out because we were behind schedule and I knew I was not going to have any daylight left for photographs by the time I got over there, and that was the whole point. I've been to Deer Creek before and I'll be there again so I didn't miss anything, and this way I saved some extra miles for my feet as well. Jasked ended up going to Deer Creek alone.
My feet got quite soggy as a result of all the creek crossings going up Kanab Creek. There was a lot more water in there than I expected. I ended up with a blister (my first in about 2 years) on one foot because of the wet socks but it was not a bad one and healed up pretty quickly after we were through with the wet stuff.
There were many positive points to the trip...
I am very glad that I never made the mistake of attempting this trip as a solo hike as I serious doubt I would have completed it on my own. I probably would have been stopped at the Redwall coming out of Cranberry Canyon. I don't think I could have down-climbed that upper cliff without a rope and there was nothing at the top there to affix a rope to. Having extra people to act as anchors as well as roping down the packs made all the difference there. The rest of it I probably could have dealt with though I don't know about the Obstacle Pool in Indian Hollow. Had there been more water in that it could have been a problem. There is a bypass and a way around this problem as well though it would have taken a bit of backtracking and additional time to do it.
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Photo map
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