The backpacking total is extremely short. The two-backpacking-day
backpack total, as-the-crow-flies, is less than ten miles.
Features (positive and negative) of this trip:
Car shuttle. (45 miles)
All off trail. But on claimed "routes".
Short backpacking total. Ten or so miles over two days.
Only hits a small area. Does not get to Colorado River.
May have to get wet going down Saddle Canyon in a couple of
pools below drop-offs.
Day one:
Car shuttle. One car at Swamp Point or Fire Point(*), one car at
Monument Point or Crazy Jug Point or South Big Saddle(**). The
shuttle distance is about 45 miles; you could cut that to about 20
miles by using far-worse roads, but you don't want to.
Camp at the rim. Car camp or perhaps camp at the cute CCC cabin
at Mauv Saddle just off the rim at Swamp Point. (Swamp Point is the
start of the North Bass Trail. At Swamp Point, you get to do the
drop through the Kiabab on the North Bass Trail.).
(*) Talk is that a rental car cannot make it out to Swamp Point.
Hikers have parked and walked the 6-14 miles. An alternative is the
better road (it is on a ridge) to Fire Point, which is a couple of
miles from Swamp Point. The "walk" from Fire to Swamp is feasible;
I've done it. It might also be possible to start the route off Fire
Point.
(**) These are three possible exits. They are all along one piece
of the North Rim -- same road -- and not very far apart.
Day two:
Down the Mauv Fault, which is down Saddle Cyn, through the Kaibab,
Coconino, Supai, Redwall. Camp at the junction with Stina Cyn or the
junction with Crazy Jug Cyn another mile on. (Both good sites per
Steck.) Some water available en-route. This piece is in Steck's
Grand Canyon Loop Trips I. Four miles from Mauv Saddle to Stina.
This backpack took Steck 5 hrs once and 8 hrs in heat once.
[And took another group twelve hours once.]
Day three:
Day-hike explore down-canyon from camp. (Move camp the mile
from Stina to Crazy Jug if necesary.) Explore up toward Tepeats
Spring, the main water source for Tapeats Creek(*). This is the day
that we get very close to the area that is directly below Thunder
River.
(*) Tapeats Spring flow comes in from the North and suddenly Tapeats
Creek and Tapeats Canyon is full of water. The mile between here and
where Tapeats Canyon widens out is the mile that we probably cannot
day-hike. If we could, we would get to the place where Thunder River
hits Tapeats Creek, just below Thunder River Spring.
Day four:
Day-hike explore lower Crazy Jug Canyon and the exit that climbs
the Redwall there. (All close to camp.) Perhaps move camp to a
dry camp at the top of the Redwall in the evening.
Day five:
Out to car. This is again a short distance day -- 4-6 miles -- but
involves finding the way from the top of the Redwall to the Rim.
There is no water on the way out.
Up-and-out may be hard two places:
Wandering up the Supai. Recall that the Supai is a flat and
slopey formation with occasional small cliffs and gullies. We
started our last day (last trip) at the bottom of the Supai --
our dry camp with the mushroom rocks and the great stars -- and
wandered on the Supai a long ways before we hit the steep-cliff
out. Our travel on the Supai was easy 'caus we were following a
use-trail. It would have been a lot more time-consuming if we
had had to figure out our own route thru all those gullies.
Exiting up through the Coconino and Kiabab. The Coconino in
this area is more-broken than in other places, and I have done
the version that goes to Crazy Jug Point. Still, it is tricky,
from a distance, figuring out a route that goes.
|