Re: O.T.

From: George (george_at_wtfiswrongwithyou.com)
Date: 12/24/04 

Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:43:24 GMT

"Jo Schaper" <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote in message
news:10snapm3krff6e7@corp.supernews.com...
> Barbara Hughes wrote:
>> Where is everyone? I occasionally see posts by my cyberkid, Jo
>> Schaper, Stuart Weinstein, Gerard Fryer, and Jean Paul---but where are
>> Don Quixote, both Alans, to say nothing of that thorn in my side,
>> Charles Cagle?
>>
>> To be politically incorrect, Merry Christmas---or Whatever. I also
>> still eat French fries.
>>
>> Barbara
>>
> Merry Christmas Cybermom, and to all rational beings on the ng.
>
> Am back from the Grand Canyon. Made it 3/4 mile down a snowpacked Bright Angel
> Trail, then aborted the descent when we hit a steep downslope corkscrew
> covered with about 100 horizontal feet of glare ice, with dropoff immediately
> to the side. My husband slipped and fell on the trail, superficially split his
> chin, bent his hiking stick, jammed his camera and bruised both arms, but
> neither of us had much stomach to continue down after that--we found out via
> radio with the rest of our party that the icepack extended to the 1.5 mile
> rest house. Couldn't see many trail rocks close up, 'cause they were all
> covered with snow and ice. We actually came up the trail in about half the
> time it took us to go down. Rim temps were between 18 at night and low 50s
> during the day, with some days never getting out of the low 40s.
>
> I did a lot of notetaking and colored pencil sketching, even though my fingers
> were freezing from the cold wind. (And 7.5 rolls of slides waiting for
> development...)
>
> Spent the rest of the week Rim-hopping, learning the geology by sight,
> quizzing rangers about the geology-- (we had bad luck here...glad I had the
> Hiking the Grand Canyon's Geology book)-- doing dayhikes down some trails
> until we hit ice again. On Wednesday, we had a really interesting view--the
> Canyon was under a thermal inversion, filled with white/gray/blue/purple fog
> just to about a couple hundred feet below the rim. All the temples, buttes,
> mesas etc. showed up as stone islands in the ever moving. slowly sloshing fog.
> Then, when it finally burned away about 3:30- 4 p.m. we spent the rest of
> daylight looking down on the clouds in the Canyon. Very impressive, very 3-D
> and took LOTS of photos.
>
> Also visited Barringer Crater, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest this trip,
> (none of which I had ever seen) then took the train back home via the Red Rock
> Country of New Mexico to Raton Pass, So. Colorado, KS at night and finally to
> Missouri.
>
> Glad to be home again. Still up to actually go into the Gorge; perhaps in
> early October. I'm not a keen fan of heights, but now that I've got a feel for
> GC under pretty miserable conditions, it looks quite doable if all I have to
> contend with are mules, and not snow and ice. We now know many of the
> mistakes not to make, and the knowledge came with a fairly cheap price tag.
>
> Jo

Hi Jo. Glad to see that you made it back in one piece. Sounds like your
husband took quite a fall. I'm glad to hear that he is ok. Sounds like with
all the ice and snow, you guys were lucky. Did you get any of the snow from the
storm we had this week? I just got finished digging out my driveway and
sidewalk today. It took two days because there was a 3 inch layer of frozen
sleet beneath the 8 inches of snow that fell. I had to use a pick axe to break
it up then toss the ice/snow boulders aside. Oh, the joys of winter!!!

P.S. We will all be anxiously waiting to see those photos!

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