Waldron Canyon Trail: Grand Canyon Moderate

TRIP REPORT:

The Canyon was awesome. I am so happy I feel drunk. The kind of temporal phenomenon that reminds me WHY I seek the outdoors. YES, I am alive and earth is a fucking first-rate planet! The companionship was ideal, the weather stellar, the scenery mind-blowing, the exercise worthy, the night hike novel. I think a 12-mile intermediate effort excusion, en toto.

We left here at noon, me, Tory, Scott, Bryan, Corinna, all crammed into the Sexterra. Drove to the Waldron Trailhead, (which was an adventure just finding it, on those fire service roads). We had a three and 1/2 mile cut-across (each way) on the plateau - Kaibab LM - just to reach the "trailhead". Barely used, no maintainance, very lush. Eventually the path drops in to join the Hermit Trail at Waldron basin. We took a snack and acted goofy, very typical, at the tipoff. Top of the Supai Group - my favorite layer to descend in the GC, because of all the cool red ledges and picnic rocks.

A half mile drop through Inna Godda Da Vita (our name for that inspiring cliff walk stretch) to the Santa Maria Spring/Resthouse.

We splashed in the trough and moved ahead to the Eating Rock (you know it when you see it). Here everyone's obligatory Fosters came out: all part of God's grand plan. We toasted the view, ate deer sausage and lolled about til way after sunset. More hijinks. Bunch of crazy weirdos. Good thing we had the entire canyon to ourselves.

As we hiked up at twilight (leaving the Spgs at 8pm) the sandstone radiated great heat. We lost the skies' glow back at Waldron Basin and climbed out using the Force, scorning the crutch of fresh headlamps tucked in packs, just in case. Jupiter and Venus were proximal, brilliant, benevolent. More stars than the usual nightly allotment. Glowworms shined thier rutty blue-white pin lights in the brush underfoot. Hobbits peered out from gambel oak groves. We crawled up by feel, a line of jedi in training, and sang Bohemian Rhapsody with bursting hearts and lungs. [I see a little silhouett-o of a man - scaramouch, scaramouch, will you do the Fandango...]

I LOVED hiking up in the dark. Amazing sense of tingling extra-sensory awareness. It was like living in a video game, or that I became less human, more wolf. It was like being Deets, the black scout in Lonesome Dove. I think I was in an alternate state of surreal ecstacy by then. I skipped joyously up the steep, loose trail in pitch dark (no moon). I navigated by footfall sounds, relative compactness of trail and peripheral differences between light and shadow. Visual acuity plays little part here, unlike in the light of day.