Driftin' Too far From Shore

When I blinked my eyes open this morning to drink in the first light of the day the sky had been limpid and electric blue. Stunning. Crystal clear. But beneath the sprawling azure was a snapping desert wind, the telltale sign that just beyond the majestic sandstone temples that line the canyon, a wicked storm was brewing. 

We were half way up Juno Temple, with a good 6 to 8 hours of hiking still ahead when the temperature began to drop. The wind picked up from a warm scurry to a cool cracking whip. The sky went dark quickly and turned from bright blue to a faded gunmetal grey, a color pregnant with moisture and rich in disorder. I tipped my head up to steal a glance at the saddle, the top, and noticed the ashen clouds making heavy turns above my head, howling in distant rumbles, and sealing the sky shut.

“Shit!”

I said as I continued my crawl upward. The cool wind battered my exposed legs, and the promise of the impending storm pressed firmly on my nerve.

“Faster- hike faster” , I thought to the rhythm of my own labored breathing. I forced my legs to tell my feet to blast through the rough terrain, while the strength of my arms found purchase in the network of tall manzanita branches before me. I pulled hard, scaled upward, and bushwhacked my way through. There was no trail to follow, and the only identifiable path was by way of sparse clearings, small windows of negative space between bristly desert undergrowth. That, and, my solitary assessment whether or not I could defy gravity by thrusting the soft shell of my body, and my full backpack, through the small windows of space.

Edward Abby once wrote an eloquent description of cross country bushwhacking,

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”.

Bushwhacking, a necessary way of life in the backcountry, is the art of finding your own way forward, creating your own crooked path of least resistance. You stand before a pathless mess of vegetation and boulders. You take a deep breath to syke yourself up. Lie to yourself by saying ‘it doesn’t look that bad’, and press on -relying on your hands and arms as much as your feet and legs. During the first few steps you will tread lightly, and try to pull back and push away the sharpest and strongest looking parts of the unyielding wall of vegetation before you - a futile attempt to make the journey less perilous. But before long you’ll adopt the tried and true method of tucking your chin to your chest, squinting your eyes into wrinkled slits, and, with a kiss and a prayer that nature will not claim too much flesh, you’ll fight your way straight through. The path of least resistance - ‘the trail’- becomes the route that draws the least amount of blood.

Spending time beneath the rim of the canyon is a bloody business and, make no mistake, you do not come back the same person. Walking miles through small forests of thorny mesquite trees, trudging across unending bluffs thick with acacia, blackbrush and sharp cacti is the kind of living that challenges normalcy and obliterates the status quo frame of mind. You have to be tough and a bit stubborn to survive out here. Maybe even a little crazy to want to be out here in the first place.

Tough with grace, stubborn with grit, and crazy with curiosity.

Through grunts and grumbles I continued to hustle my way up. The storm moved in more quickly and, like a sledgehammer to a tiny nail, began to drop its wrath down upon us.

“Oh shit.”

Cold and hungry, I watched white pellets of hail drop from the sky and roll down the side of the sandstone formation I am climbing up - clinging towards. My own misery and sublime joy dance together and entertain every cell in my body.

“WoooooHooooo! SPRING BREAK! Bahahahahah!”, I hollered up to Zack.

He shoots me down a smile before hollering his own similar rally of encouragement to our trip companions above him. We have no idea of the monster of a storm this will turning into. Ignorance is bliss, right?

By the time we reached the top of Juno Temple, the hard round hail turned to soft sparkling snowflakes. I love seeing the white dust of snow blanket over the rich red desert ground. We headed down the other side of the saddle towards Unkar Valley, and the temperature changes once again. The light dust of snow turns to fat, heavy droplets of rain. The descent is steep, very steep, and in the pouring rain and whipping wind it is a slip and slide. Drenched and shivering, I slide my way down muddy rocks and slick remnants of an ancient waterfall drainage. The sound of the heavy rain echoing through the hood of my rain jacket, reverberating through my skull. Good rain gear will protect you from the harshness of the wind and some of the wetness of a hard rain, but it does nothing to protect you from the cold, muddy reality of hiking through a nasty storm.

There are many truths about the Grand Canyon that are overlooked and misunderstood, temperature oscillations being one of them. The temperature changes are extreme. Contrary to popular belief, depending on the time of year, the temperature down in the canyon can get as frigid cold as it does up on the white capped mountain peaks.

By the good grace of something - god, mom nature, karma- we made it to the bottom of Unkar Valley relatively unscathed, albeit freezing cold and soaking wet. Desperately we searched around for a place to set up camp. We needed shelter from the storm, a respite, an opportunity to warm up our icy hands and dry off our wet feet. But there was no room for us here. Scattered across the ground is a matrix of round muddy potholes flooding with rain, and patches of hard lumpy mounds of dirt. Huge over grown yucca and cacti are closely stitched into the ground, like an intricate Native American tapestry. Cement like clumps of rock are strewn everywhere. There is not a bare patch of land small enough to sit on, little own one large enough to pitch a tent on.

“Shit.”'

Clearly my chosen mantra for the day.

After a good hour of scouring the ground we settled on a spot that was ‘not the best, but definitely not the worst’. We set up the tent quickly and ducked down beneath the thin fabric roof right in the nick of time. Mom Nature was cooking up a storm that would batter us for hours. Relentless rain, and gale force wind that screamed as it rolled down from the top of Unkar Canyon, and boomed as it ricocheted off the surrounding sandstone walls of the valley below. Every few minutes a fresh gust would cry out as the wind began to build intensity and move down the canyon towards us. First the walls of the tent would start to whip and shake. We’d smile with a ‘here we go again’, silently hoping that the 200+ pounds of piled rock on the tent stakes will do the good work of keeping our humble home on the ground. we’d listen in as the deafening sound of the monstrous wind got closer and louder. Just as the thunderous sound hit its crescendo, we’d spread out our arms and legs across the tent floor and brace ourselves for the monumental gusts, hoping we don’t become airborne and float like tumble weed across of valley floor and off the nearby cliff. Then, there would be a moment of quite right after it swept through, as if mom nature herself was taking in a deep long inhale, filling back up for her next blow.

“ WHOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOO!……SPRING BREAAAAAAAAAK!”, we’d yell to and laugh to each other above the stormy sounds.

The violent stormy monster of Unkar was alive and well. She gave us a piece of her mind that day and made her wager known; if we could survive her ferocity then we were worthy enough to pass through. We were granted access to visit, but unwelcome to stay.

And that was all the hospitality we needed from her.

For many, dare I say for most, the challenge and the roughness of this place makes it extremely hard to appreciate and almost impossible to love. But for me, all the challenges and struggles and rough edged beauty and storms and lost comforts are what I love most. It seems only fair that a place gives me so much life and inspiration, asks for so much of me in return.

Reciprocity is the language of nature, and it most certainly is the law of the land in the canyon.

Words and photos by Erin Cookston