Diamonds in the Rough
In February 2001, my friend Jane and I were huddled
under a narrow overhang jutting from the Supai formation in Grand Canyon.
Perched some 1,500 feet below the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and 3,000 feet above
the Colorado River, we were waiting out a surprise spring storm. Fat snowflakes
and grape-size hail spiraled past our faces. A hulking gray cloud sailed in
front of us like a schooner on the ocean. Thunder rumbled in the distance and
then moved in close.
A few hours earlier, we had
said goodbye to my husband Mike and my four-year old son Austin. Mike had driven
us down a gut rattling 30-mile dirt road on the Havasupai reservation to get us
to the remote South Bass trailhead in western Grand Canyon. He was not thrilled
about the 5-day, 48-mile backpacking trip that Jane and I were embarking on.
But he also knew I was determined to do it, whether he approved or not. Over
the last 10 years, while working as an editor for Backpacker, I had hiked all over the West, including many trails in
Grand Canyon. But all those trips had been in the company of a group of experienced
backpackers, and often with Mike. Jane had never hiked in Grand Canyon; she had
never been backpacking at all.
“What are you doing?” Mike
asked me the day before, perplexed at why I would hike into one of the most
rugged and remote sections of Grand Canyon with a hiking partner who had zero
experience.
And I could not explain why,
exactly, except that I felt I wanted to know more about myself and also about
Grand Canyon. To do this, I had to go in on my own, without a safety net. There
would be no cellphone or satellite phone to call for help. No rangers or expert
hikers to bail me out. I would rely completely on my wilderness skills, which I
had methodically honed over the last two decades.
But on the second day of our
trip, as Jane and I walked across the parched Tonto Plateau under a blistering
sun, I wondered if I was in over my head. We did not make it as far as planned
on the first day. We ended up camping on the lip of the plateau, some 2,000
feet above the Colorado River, at a site with no water. We packed up camp that
morning and headed to Serpentine Canyon one mile away expecting to refill our
bottles there, but the tiny spring was dry.
With one liter of water between
us, we hiked through the Tonto’s black brush flats toward Ruby Canyon, just
short of five miles away, where we hoped a spring would flow. Our boots
crunched on a fine pavement of gray-green Bright Angel shale as we pushed east
beneath the sun, too nervous about water to make any kind of small talk. The
route we hiked was called “the Gems” for the side canyons, each named for
precious gems, that harbored seasonal springs. The Jewels offered spectacular
views and adventure but it was also potentially dangerous. Dozens of hikers had
died of heat stroke over the years on this exposed, waterless stretch across
the Tonto.
We contoured around hulking,
orange Havasupai Point, which jutted from the South Rim. We stopped to marvel
at the bright pink blooms on prickly pear cacti that dotted the plateau. There
was no clear trail and we searched for rock cairns here and there signaling the
way. Navigating across the Tonto reminded me that I knew how to do this, to
find my way. Sometimes in the civilized world I felt lost, but whenever I
ventured into wild places my inner compass kicked in.
When we reached the top of
Ruby, we anxiously peered 400 feet down into the sinuous canyon. At the barely
visible bottom, a string of clear pools glinted like jewels in the sun. We
heard the faintest trickle of water gently dripping onto rocks.
“Yes!” said Jane, fist pumping
the sky.
We slid down steep scree to the
canyon floor and sprawled on smooth, warm slick rock next to the pools. We had
landed in a riparian oasis fed by an ancient aquifer that also nursed springs
in Havasu Canyon and Indian Garden. These were all sacred, life-sustaining
places for Grand Canyon’s native peoples. Water seeped out of Ruby’s walls and
flowed in narrow channels over rock. It was soft and green, full of ferns and
monkey flowers, fluttering with damselflies and canyon wrens. A trip that at
first threatened to be lethal had turned out to be luscious.
“I think the Grand Canyon is a
woman,” said Jane.
I agreed, noting that she was
tough on the outside but tender underneath. And we were definitely in one of
her sweeter spots.
From Ruby, we connected the
dots to other jewels, camping and lounging in canyons named Turquoise, Sapphire
and Agate. Each canyon harbored its own unique oasis that pampered us and sang
us to sleep with sounds of water.
On the last night of our trip,
we camped on the Tonto where we could drink in the view. Just a few feet from
our tent, the canyon dropped thousands of feet straight down into a tight
corridor of black schist and green river. Some 20 miles distant, an archipelago
of buttes and temples rose against the North Rim and turned every shade of pink
and purple in the day’s last light. In between was nothing, just a
soul-stirring spaciousness.
Annette McGivney is Southwest Editor for Backpacker magazine and teaches journalism at Northern Arizona University. Her most recent book is Pure Land, a memoir from Aquarius Press.
