I went to bed early last night so the 5:30 wakeup call this morning for coffee is not too bad. The crew fixes us pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Everyone packs up their gear in the large green dry bags and smaller yellow dry bags. A line is formed so putting all the gear on the boats is a little easier. We cast off just before 8:00. Bec points out that the water level is a little low because the discharge rate from Glenn Canyon dam at Page, Arizona, is around 6,000 cubic feet a minute instead of the usual 9,000 cubic feet. A little ways down the River we see some other oar rafts at the side where that group is camped.
We later pass by several core drillings for what was to be one of two dams in the Grand Canyon. The Sierra Club brought suit and eventually stopped the project in 1968.
In a little while we pass by Stanton's Cave and Vasey's Paradise. Stanton's Cave is named for Robert B. Stanton, leader of Frank M. Brown's ill-fated 1889 railroad survey project. Next to it is Vasey's Paradise, a water source that normally gushes out of the Redwall, named by John Wesley Powell for his botanist friend, Dr. George Vasey, who accompanied Powell on his first trip through the Canyon. Today Vasey's Paradise is nothing but a dribble of water. The second and third pictures of Vasey's Paradise below are from my 2012 and 2009 raft trips.
In just a short distance we come to the Redwall Cavern. It is huge and there are lots of rafts and people here. I find a fossil imprint on the side of a rock. It also looks like part of the back wall or roof has collapsed. One of the people on our raft is Elizabeth. She is an opera singer and gives us a demonstration at the back of the Redwall Cavern. Wow!!
We leave around 1:30 and motor by Traci's favorite place, "Bridge of Sighs," near mile 36.
We stop for lunch at Redbud Canyon just past mile 39. We have turkey, ham, and roast beef sandwiches. After that we motor toward Saddle Canyon at mile 47.5 for the night.
The group does a hike there. I have done that on a prior trip, so I remain in camp. When I last did that hike, the water was waist deep and the waterfall at the end was tiny (see picture below). Apparently that is now reversed as the group said the last part of the walk was only moist and the waterfall was large.
On my three previous raft trips, we either brought our own personal folding chairs or sat on the sand. On this trip they are providing all of us with folding chairs. We form a circle with the chairs, sit down, and talk after dinner. Traci tells us about her grandfather, Louis Schellbach, who was the Chief Naturalist at the Grand Canyon from 1941 to 1957. Schellbach Butte, just east of Haunted Canyon and Phantom Creek, is named after him.
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