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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
After breakfast, we moved to cabin 7, which is on the other side of camp and has two sets of bunk beds. We will sleep on the bottom bunks and use the upper ones for stuff.
Once we got settled into the new digs, we headed up Clear Creek Trail a ways. The first part of this trail is fairly steep, so we went slowly.
Part way up the trail, I stopped to take a picture back towards the mouth of the canyon. That's the photo to the left. To the right is the resulting photo. The cottonwoods in the foreground are at Phantom Ranch. The faint cliffs in the distance mark the South Rim.
There is a nice overlook that we missed last time that has views down into the north end of camp. The photo to the left was taken at this overlook. The four buildings in a row are the hiker's bunkhouses, two male, two female. The cabin at the right side of the photo is cabin 1, our home for the first two nights of this stay.
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A little farther on, is Phantom Overlook which looks into the main part of the camp. The three photos above were taken at Phantom Overlook. The photo on the left is the view of the inner canyon and the South Rim from this overlook. The center photo is an overview of the main part of Phantom ranch. The large building near the center of the photo is the shower house. The even larger one on the left side is the bunkhouse for the people who work here. The photo on the right zooms in on three of the cabins that are hard to see in the center photo. The cabin on the right, almost obscured by trees, is cabin 7, our home for the last two nights.
Just a little further, we stopped for lunch just below the point where the wind was kicking up and turning it cold.
The photos above were taken at our lunch spot. In the photo on the left, I'm getting started on lunch. The center photo has Carl getting the camera ready to take the photo on the right!
After lunch, it was back down the trail to our favorite overlook, which includes views both up and down river quite a ways. And you can see almost all the lower part of South Kaibab. Still a favorite. The photo to the left is one of the ones taken at this overlook. It shows the Black (Kaibab) Bridge, the Colorado River, and part of the South Kaibab Trail snaking up the far rock wall.
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The photo on the left shows me descending Clear Creek Trail, heading back to Phantom Ranch. This is Carl's normal view of me on the trail...
The photo on the right was taken near the hiker's bunkhouse, where someone had strung some Tibetan prayer flags!
It was a nice day with a high of 52! Unfortunately, this was the day that Phantom Ranch went on water restrictions. No showers. No water in any of the cabins. Drinking water can be obtained readily at the canteen, however. And they had rigged a gravity fed pipeline to bring creek water in to a faucet in camp. This faucet will be used to fill the “flush buckets”. To flush a toilet, fill a bucket with water and pour it into the commode. Flush! Then refill the bucket for the next person.
We got a couple of beers when we returned to the canteen. We tried Tecate this time. Not bad! Then we resumed the cribbage match before dinner.
Tonight was chili dinner and there were just five of us at the table total! Phantom Ranch was no longer taking last minute reservations until the water turned back on.
Walking back to the cabin, we turned off the flashlights at one point. Man, were there a lot of stars!