9 October 2015, Friday

We are the first to be packed and ready to go this morning, except for
Mike and Sue. They leave early to give Sue a head start. Years in the
army have taken a toll on her hips and knees. It is a pleasant
morning; cool, but not too cool in the shade of the canyon walls,
brilliantly bright and sunny and a bit warm where the sun reaches the
bottom of the canyon along Bright Angel Creek. We walk downstream all
morning. The contrast between the cool shade and the bright sun is
startling and makes photography difficult with my little camera.

Today we stop to look at an “unconformity.” There is a gap of 600
million years in the rock story of Grand Canyon. The lowest layer of
twisted metamorphic rock is 1.8 billion years old. It has a new name
now, but I only remember the old name: Vishnu schist. The next layer
up is igneous and is 1.2 billion years old. What happened to the rock
in between? No one really knows. The wavy, contorted layers are
beautiful to look at.

We also have a bit of a botany lesson, looking at sacred datura, also
known as Jimson weed or spiny apple. We learn that the leaves and
stems have high levels of atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine.
Sound familiar to any medical people out there?

We continue down the canyon at our own pace, arriving at Phantom Ranch
about 12:30 or 1 pm. We buy a large cup of lemonade for $3.00.
Refills are only $1.00 each – so we refill twice. After our
refreshments we have time to set up camp and sit by Bright Angel
Creek soaking our feet. It’s a great opportunity to put on clean
socks!

After our break we walk down to the Colorado River. It is a muddy brown
from the rain earlier in the week. We walk up to the Black Bridge and
cross to the other side where the South Kaibab Trail either begins or
ends, depending on your direction. Then we all sit together on the
sandy beach back on the north side of the river. We get another
geology lesson about the setting of the stage for the carving of the
canyon: the uplifting of the Colorado Plateau during the Laramide
orogeny that also created the Rocky Mountains, and then the carving of
the canyon beginning only about 7 million years ago, although there
is some controversy surrounding this theory. Apparently the dating
has to do with some basalt flows over sand that allows radioactive
dating. O has bought yet another geology book and we can read up on
this later. We’ll also be reading up on augen or “eyes” in the
rock walls by our camp which were created during long slow periods of
metamorphosis almost 2 billion years ago.

Most of the group goes off to a ranger talk, but I am still washing dishes
from supper. O and I, along with Sue, elect to stay at camp and
relax. As I am journalling O is stretched out on his back on the
picnic table watching the night sky. He sees a brilliant shooting
star. Sue goes off to the bathroom. (It seems rather incongruous to
have flush toilets, soap and air dryers for hands down at the bottom
of the canyon and in the middle of a five day backpack trip, but I’ll
take it.) Sue lucks out and sees a ringtail by the bathroom. I guess
I’ll finish journalling and see what I can spy.