We get an early start on our hike along Deer Creek. After breakfast, we pack sack lunches because we'll be away from the boats most of the day. After landing at Deer Creek, we first take a peek at the falls, which are the tallest and biggest we've seen yet. Then we backtrack a bit and start up the well-marked path that will take us above the falls. The most difficult part of the hike is this first section, which is like a staircase for giants. However, there is only one place that we had to scramble up. Mostly it is just trudging up hill.
I don't realize how lucky we are to be climbing this section in the relative cool of the morning, until we descend in the heat of the afternoon. Coming down the black rock is so hot that it hurts to use my hands against them to keep balance. We were advised to bring gloves for climbing, but I never thought it was because the rocks would be too hot to touch.
The path turns away from the river into a narrow, sinuous gorge of Tapeats limestone. Here the path is even, but slippery with loose rock. And it is only one to three feet wide. It would seem like an easy walk if not for the sheer drop to Deer Creek below.
We stop at The Patio at the beginning of the Narrows. Here is a wide, flat oasis, where Deer Creek runs shallow, forming little pools before plunging over a 20 foot drop to the Narrows. I spend a lot of time just lying in the clear, cool water letting it flow over me watching the clouds drift by. I feel like I could stay here forever.
Wordsworth expressed my feeling so much better in "A Few Lines Written Over Tintern Abbey". I could remember the sense of his words, but not the words themselves. Here they are.
...that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Above the Patio, the Narrows give way to a wide flat-bottomed valley. We walk through cottonwoods and tall green grasses, an easy walk, though dry and dusty. I wet my bandana and tie it over my nose and mouth to breathe. We cross the creek and climb up to Deer Spring (aka Dillon Spring) to have lunch. It's easy to get up behind the waterfall and I sit there looking down the valley. We fill our water bottles with fresh spring water. This reminds me of going to Cimarron Canyon as a child and drinking from the river. On the left is a large space protected by an overhang, where people have stacked rocks to resemble thrones. We eat lunch and laze around napping, not anxious to hit the dusty trail again.
Walking here is very different than fellwalking. On the fells, is green and moist, filled with becks and bogs, and we spend a lot of time walking in mist or fog. Here the ground is either stone or dusty sand and the air is so dry I can hardly breathe it. The wind dessicates us. We look for any spot of shade and when we find fresh water, we jump in it, exulting.
We make camp on the left below Doris Rapids. This is a narrow site, without much beach but with beautiful views up and down canyon. A sheer wall rises behind us, but this one is of Tapeats Sandstone and riddled with holes. This makes a great shelving system. And if you poke a stick in a hole, you've made a clothes hangar. SAM uses this opportunity to wash out his clothes.
AJM and I settle in a nest of rocks above the kitchen. Our site has a front door and a back door and is easy to climb up to. Its best feature is the large flat boulder that I perch on to read. AJM reads a book o death in the Grand Canyon. Apparently, the most dangerous aspect of flipping in a rapid is death by hypothermia. Unlike slowly freezing to death, the sudden plunge into very cold water can make your body shut down within 5 minutes. The book also had an interesting-sounding section: "Death by Sex" which made us wonder what kind of exotic sex people were tempted to try in the Grand Canyon. However, the heading was a misnomer; it was merely a breakdown of death by gender.
Our campsite's worst feature is that there is no place to lie down. We do a split-level arrangement. We are close to the cliff face and lie on top of our sleeping bags wondering if there are more rock-scatterng bighorn sheep in our future. The night is hot and windy and the sand blows ceaselessly. We are more sheltered among our rocks than the others. I wash my face with a wet-wipe before going to sleep. In the morning I wash it again and looking at the dirty rag, you'd thing I'd been mudwrestling in my sleep.
