Grand Canyon--Almost R3

[steelfrog]

Last weekend the Boy and I went to the Grand Canyon and attempted the R3 which is 44 miles RT from where we had to park our car, and 11k of gain.  We flew to Amarillo and drove from there.  Started Fri night and hiked with headlamps throughout the night.  Got to the river, went 7 miles past it to Cottonwood campground and decided to turn around there, having heard that the South Kaibab is a beast going up on the way back, which was prophetically true.  Having never run anything more than a 5k, I knew this was biting off more than I could chew, but it was a fantastic experience.  We ended up making a really cool side trip to Ribbon Falls, and ended up with total mileage of 32 miles and about 6600' of vertical in 14 hours.  No worse for the wear, we also stopped at El Malpais Nat Monument on the way back and climbed around on the Sandstone Bluffs and went up into La Ventana Arch (the Window), which is the second largest arch in New Mexico.  Not a bad weekend!

Took us a little over 2 hours to get down to the river; 2.5 up to Cotttonwood campground; 3.5 hours back to the river (including over an hour playing around at Ribbon Falls); hung out at Phantom Ranch for a while and then FIVE HOURS for the 7 miles and 4600' gain up South Kaibab.  Maybe we should have gone up Bright Angel--but the views we got were spectacular!

[chisos muse]

I got tired and sore from just reading that! Sounds like a blast! Any photos?


PS....I'm way jealous of your vacation time. 

[homerboy2u]

Let me know, Rana de Acero..... , if you need anything from the corner store. Just so you are ready to post your pics...

[steelfrog]

Vacation Hell.  I just take a day and drive like a madman or whatever.  In this case, we flew to Amarillo on those $39 flights and drove from there.

I am planning maybe to go to the Wichita Mountains this weekend.

Dec 3 weekend, doing BB South Rim with some newbies.

Dec 29 weekend, hopefully, am doing a loop into the Solitario via Lower Shutup and out via left hand shutup.

Yes, I have some pretty good pics, but I can't figure out how to post here.  You can see on my facebook album if you want.  PM me and I can link you.

I prolly need to create albums somewhere else such as Picasa.  Any suggestions on that?  Lance I think said use Picasa, which is google related if I'm not mistaken.

[homerboy2u]

I prolly need to create albums somewhere else such as Picasa.  Any suggestions on that?  Lance I think said use Picasa, which is google related if I'm not mistaken.

 Webshots....Photobucket.....Smugmug. flickr, ibelieve has the feature too (Not sure about this one, though).