Day 4: Tonto, I Hate You

We woke around 6 the next morning, having slept without sleeping bag cover for the majority of the night, given the heat near river's edge. Peter and I were beginning to realize the importance of starting out early every morning, yet hadn't done much at this point to actively follow up on this realization. I ate some fruit leather and dry granola and we scurried around, trying to break down camp and get started.

One thing that slowed us down every morning was my foot preparations. The first day's descent had ensured a slow, steady development of blisters on my toes, and that morning, as I set up my makeshift bandaging station on a boulder, I asked Peter if he thought I should clip my nails back more.

"They look pretty short already," he said. But still, they seemed to be digging into my toes, so I went for it.

The first nail I clipped produced a small amount of clear liquid. As did the next one. And the next. Every nail, it seemed, had a blister beneath it, that wept as I clipped the nail back. Really, really gross.

I moleskinned and bandaged and tea tree oiled and swaddled my feet, and then shoved them into my boots, which were rapidly beginning to feel too tight given the excess packaging on my feet. We packed up gear, pumped more water (22 liters!), and headed off.

The first leg of hiking took us through some really unfriendly volcanic rocks and boulders that bordered the river. It hurt to put your hands on, but I kind of had to put my hands on it because it was impossible to pull my body up over 8-foot boulders without the use of hands. And the rocks were already beginning to get hot at 8 a.m. We scrambled and climbed and cut across canyons as we made our way up, away from the river. As the sun climbed, along with the temperature, I had the irrational desire to drop my pack and plunge down into the Colorado below, which, with its icy cold temperatures, would relieve the sweaty heat that was prickling down my back and turning all of my clothes into sweaty, sticky clumps of ickiness.

We made a wrong turn when we couldn't find the cairns and ended up backtracking through some really bad terrain, and then backtracking/sidetracking our way up onto the tonto level. There were pieces of obsidian or obsidian-like stone, mixed with malachite, that shimmered with heat at our feet. It was hot, people. Over 100 degrees hot at this point. Peter was dragging, which is unusual for Peter. Every so often he'd stop to wring out his headband and it a deluge of salty sweatwater would drop onto the ground. I was impressed with his sweating ability.

The tonto sucks. I hate it. It is hot and scrubby and there is basically absolutely zero shade to be found. We hoofed it for several more hours through this gunk, trying to conserve water, which is hard given that every time you take a breath your throat dries out due to the lack of humidity in the air, which in turn makes you want to drink a lot of water. Coupled with the fact that the tonto is marked by deep canyons that you must traverse your way around in order to get to where you're going (even when you can see the edge of the tonto, 50 feet ahead of you (and a thousand feet down, which explains the need to follow the edge of the damn canyons), and you may begin to understand why I hate the dang tonto.



At 12:30 we found an awesome overhang in the rocks at the end of one of the canyons, and Peter and I dropped packs, pulled out our thermarests, and fell asleep for 2 1/2 hours immediately. There was a light breeze passing over us, and it was a blissful, merciful force on our skin. We woke up (I to eat more dry granola, Peter to indulge in by now hideously greasy cheese and salami on a bagel) and gathered our wits about us and set out again.

After hours of hiking, just as it was about to get dark, we saw--water! There was seemingly potable-looking water in a few granite hollows in a stream bed at the back of a canyon we were traversing.

"We should get that water," I said.

Peter considered it, then shook his head. "It's tough to get down there, plus it's a 300 foot drop off the end of that dry waterfall, which it's right by, and also if we get all the way down there and the water isn't potable, we're going to be really discouraged."

I really wanted to get that water. But I deferred to him, since, well, this was his 7th time doing a Grand Canyon loop. However, as Peter may well attest, listen you oafish dunderheads, if there's water somewhere in the desert, freaking filter that shit, stat.

Because otherwise you may have a minor situation, as we did the next day.

So we walked on. It got dark. I ran out of my supply of potable water. So we stopped and Peter filtered some of the liters we were carrying but hadn't filtered yet. We turned on our headlights. We trekked some more. I realized that the trail that I was hiking on was about 4 feet from the edge of the tonto, and then 2,000 feet away. That was disturbing. Lizards zipped around under my feet. Not so disturbing, but it made me worry about rattlesnakes, which may also be zipping around under my feet? I pushed on, and Peter yelled at me to stop when I saw the first decent looking flat spot to camp. This was no small task. The tonto was dotted with blooming cacti and icky rocks and poofy sagebrush. Finally, we found an okay place to stop a little after 9 p.m. I set up the tent as Peter pulled out some food. We were both dead tired, and getting a little goofy.

"This Trader Joe's fruit leather is better than Stretch Island," Peter jabbered. "It is so delicious, I want to eat it. It's the only thing that tastes good." He ate about 10 pieces of fruit leather. We climbed in the tent and drank water and ate Tiger's Milk and Clif bars in the dark. I told him I loved him. He told me that he loved me. He said I did a good job today. I felt a little belly glow. I was glad I was finally kicking a tiny bit of ass. My feet hurt. I wriggled my toes. I kissed the sweaty, salty, sticky back of Peter, whom I loved, and started to fall asleep. We'd decided to wake up the next morning between 4 and 4:30, to try to beat the heat. We were both concerned about our dwindling water supply. There was almost certainly water in Copper Canyon, only an hour's hike away from where we were sleeping. At least there was six days ago, according to the hiker dude from South Carolina we'd talked to at the trailhead. Please let there be water in Copper Canyon, I prayed to whomever was substituting for my version of God at that moment in the tent. Please let there be water.....