What a run! We will never top this scenery on an AZ run. Weather cooperated with us wonderfully and for those of you who left early, you REALLY missed out on the Friday night camp. It was stunning.
Anyhoo....here's a sampling.
Camp at Alstrom Point, Lake Powell. The road out there was SLOPPY!
J Crossing the first creek from Big Water:
Dustin coming out of the creek
Yes, that's an X5....
Gunsight Bay with Navajo Mountain in the background
Jaime working hard to get camp set up
Camper's Row
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Sunrise over Alstrom Point. This is one of the best places I've ever been to watch this. Other participants agreed as cameras were snapping everywhere.
The road dried out a bit Sunday morning. Everyone's trucks picked up a couple hundred pounds of alkali salty muck.
After a quick refuel in Kanab, UT, we started down the Great Western Trail and crossed over into Arizona for the official start of the run.
Your trail host
Night one campsite.
Day 2 - the long drive to Toroweap. We did 140+ miles of dirt this day.
This is the narrowest point of the grand canyon. The river is 3000 feet below us. Here's Georgie's backside for perspective.
Rafters way the hell down there.
J posing for us on a ledge
Day 3 - we rode through a very muddy canyon coming out of the previous night's camp. What a glorious trail that was. Off to all the west side USFS points.
FR250 is the connector trail to all the point roads out here and it's stunning. Blue spruce, Douglas Fir, Quaking Aspen, Ponderosa pine all clustered together through these canyons. Pictures don't do the place justice, but then again they don't do any of it justice. The group was all split up and spread through the points.
Night 3 camp overlooking Stine Point. Our original site turned out to be in the national park boundary and we didn't have the proper permits, so this plan B was hatched, and it turned out to be a better spot.
My artsy photo from Stine Point
Layers of the Grand Canyon at dusk
Day 4 was Point Sublime. This is in the national park and is accessed by an awesome two track that goes deep through the North Rim Forest. The lead group saw a large herd of bison on the way out.
Survey marker at Point Sublime...just under 7500 feet, and we drove down country to get here
Jaime doing what you do at Point Sublime
Night 4 camp out at the park boundary near Fire Point
Brent found a water leak in the stainless tank on the new trailer. Water jugs were borrowed and the leak welded up.
Day 5 was a ride back down the Point Sublime road, then on the two track that sneaks you into the park around the pay station. Gas and ice were procured by many, and we checked out the points in the park for those who had never experienced the North Rim. Point Imperial and Cape Royal were the highlights. Pics below are from the Cape Royal area.
Bison herd on the way out of the national park
After the park on Day 5 we had to deal with another change of plans due to road closures and a forest fire in the area...not that anything was really burning any more due to monsoon rains....but our new site was Dog Point overlooking Marble Canyon on the east side of the Kaibab Plateau. This campsite was our highest at about 8500 feet. Right as we got there the skies opened up and poured on us. Attrition was starting to cull the participant herd. Mike and Kathy headed home. Travis headed out to go camping with other people not as cool as us. Georgie's transmission was acting up and a trailer came to rescue her on Friday morning. Those that remained had a nice camp here and a late start on Friday morning to let stuff dry out.
Views out towards Marble Canyon 3000 feet below.
Spectacular scenery!
Friday was day 6. We left Dog point and took some nice two tracks up Tater Canyon and connected to FR220 which switchbacks off the plateau down to the flats by the Buffalo ranch and Marble Canyon. This is some remote country. I expected Friday night to be hot due to the lower elevation (5600 feet), and thought this would be one of our less spectacular sites. Boy was I wrong. Friday ended up being by far the coolest campsite, and mother nature put on an incredible show of lights, storms, clouds, and shadows for us.
Tater Canyon:
One of the views from FR220....looking north east to Vermillion Cliffs
A look back at FR220 coming off the plateau and dropping 3000 feet
Storms began popping everywhere
Finally we arrived at the edge of Marble Canyon. What a place.
Sunrise on Saturday morning over Vermillion Cliffs
As we headed out Saturday the plateau was engulfed in several mean looking storms. It was a long 330 mile trek home in an overloaded Blue Meany, but this one is one for the books.
Outstanding... and Standing out!!!
Other than that pretty dang good.. Don S..
..
Did the dog also do the headlight?
I too am envious.. Don S..
Andy! Nice writeup! I had to keep some notes each day just to keep up with what we did so I can re-tell it later. Thanks for all you did to make this run awesome!
So I got home a couple hours ago. LONG drive. LONG. But I did manage to upload all my pictures to a Google Photos album:
There are almost 900 pictures so it is hard to pick the best ones, but here are a few:
Not sure if Google will let me direct link but I will try.
google site where you hosted is denying access due to a login needed.
Hmm. Can you see the pictures in my post above? I logged out of Google, cleared my cache, and all of my cookies and I can still see the album.
Nice write-up and a pat on the back for organizing this run, Andy. I will definitely be back to that area. Production company said they need a week or two to compile the video. I delivered something around 150Gb of data to them....:-)
Great writeup and pics Andy. Superb trip once again.
Thanks for putting it all together!!!!
Awesome! Hate that I missed this.
Awesome PIC... so wish I could have been there. Maybe next year.
