Close to 2 PM on Saturday, we saw storm clouds gathering in the distance behind us. Of course, this scared us and we had to take a call about whether to continue hiking in the gulch and risking getting caught in a flash flood, or to climb out and make our way back to the trailhead along the rim. The decision was almost unanimously (me being the lone dissenter) to get out of the canyon.

We started our climb out of what’s known as the Middle Route. This is a Class 3 or a Class 4 scramble, depending on who you ask. Most of the difficulty comes from the generous amounts of sand at all heights and nooks and holds. I optimistically started climbing with my backpack, but realized very quickly that that was not going to work out. Leaving my backpack down, I made it to a halfway point, followed after a while by Anti. The two of us together found a bolt on the ledge. We tied webbing to the hold and pulled up the backpacks one by one. Then, the others used the webbing to help themselves up as well.

This was all very exciting to me since I’d never done it before. Caught up in a rush, I yanked quite hard and broke the strap of my backpack.

Once we were all at the ledge, the second stage involved climbing out to the top of the canyon. We chose a narrow gap to get out. Again, I tried climbing out with a backpack, got stuck, slipped and got a bad cut on the ball of my foot. I made it out limping and not so excited any more. We daisy chained the backpacks up and then everyone else came up one at a time.

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Hiking up to a beautiful view

August 2014