Hiking and waterfalls — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

After Elves Chasm from the last post, we were granted a layover day where we stayed at the same camp for 2 nights. Everybody was thrilled to not have to pack everything up right after breakfast, as we had been doing for over a week. After a leisurely breakfast, we went on our longest hike of the trip (6-7 miles) to and from Stone Creek Falls. It was pretty tough hiking/scrambling but there was a series of gorgeous falls along the way.

Again, the little people for scale:

This second fall is where Steve tapped out, choosing to wait and read, rather than scrambling on and wading barefoot through the river to reach the third fall.

He was doing fine with good ankle support in hiking boots, but around camp in flip flops, he continued limping.

So, those of us hiking on, went up and around that little fall you see in the picture above to reach the third (and most beautiful) fall -

To reach this point, I had to climb up and over some really big rocks and wade through thigh high cold water barefoot!

As we hiked back to camp, we saw someone being carried out over somebody’s shoulder, fireman-carry style. We learned that he had been climbing in that same canyon we were in, and fell and broke both ankles! A Medivac helicopter flew in to take him out, and actually arrived very quickly - within an hour of him reaching the main river. He apparently was doing some serious free climbing, not the hiking and scrambling we’d been doing. He was on one of the private trips that we had seen occasionally on the river. We learned from our guides that during the main season (Apr - Oct), there was a helicopter evacuation essentially every day for either hikers or rafters. In case you were wondering, no one in our group was injured during our entire trip, and no raft flips occurred either. It was awesome! On our hikes, we all suffered lots of scratches and scrapes, and one man sat back against a cactus (and begged us not to have photographic evidence).

Back on the river the next day, we stopped at the Granite Narrows (the narrowest point of the canyon at 76 feet) to hike around that corner in the picture above, just below that beautiful blue rock layer. We walked for 3 miles along an Indian trail and were treated to awesome views of the canyon and river.