Niches in Time: Adventures in the Grand Canyon

NICHES IN TIME Side-Trip Adventures in the Grand Canyon

Where wonders never cease: Colorado River runners discover the majesty of Deer Creek tributary and its 125-foot falls.

A steady, easygoing push up North Canyon, which opens into Marble Gorge 20 miles below Lees Ferry, brought us to a shimmering pool cupped in reddish brown sandstone. It was perhaps 30 feet long. A thin wash of water, cobalt blue in the light reflected from the towering walls, slid down the voluptuously curved rock into the pool's upper end. What lay beyond that lovely brink we could not see; of course we were tempted to look.

Our boatman understood, and smiled. "The rafts will wait," he said, stepping into the pool. The rest of us, clad in T-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes, promptly followed. The water was temperate and not quite deep enough to require swimming. Boosting and pulling each other, we surmounted the water-polished stone beside the ribbon of blue. The bowl we came to was much like the one we had left, though somewhat more rounded and cut away from the sky by larger bulges in the roughsurfaced cliffs overhead.

A torrent of music greeted us. A canyon wren, scarcely more than five inches long, was darting from one knob of stone to another, pausing to announce itself with a cascade of falling whistles, a beautiful sound common throughout canyon country. But here some magic of acoustics replicated each note, flinging it from wall to wall and back again until the bowl was flooded with a paean of morning joy.

Too soon the wren flitted off. Back to the river we went, across the lower pool and among red boulders to the throaty roar of North Canyon Rapids. Anticipation built again. Rafting was what we had come for-excitement, the majesty of the Grand Canyon, the feel of the Colorado River's power. But now, thanks to one small wren, we had added still another element to the bonus rewards that await hikers who leave their craft long enough to take short treks through the Canyon's multitude of side niches.

Our next adventure came at Shinumo Wash, which breaks through the left bank of the river nine miles below North Canyon, or mile 29 as measured downstream from Lees Ferry. (Shinumo Wash should not be confused with Shinumo Creek at mile 108.6, where river runners can wade up a bright, clear stream to a gorgeous waterfall with an enticing cave behind it.) The entrance to Shinumo Wash is not easily spotted, and reaching the landing place below the opening requires tight maneuvering.

When we were there, the river was running at about 32,000 cubic feet per second, high for these days when flow is controlled by the arbitrary spinning of release valves upstream at Glen Canyon

Dam. The rush of water was cold, too, for it came from near the bottom of Lake Powell at a numbing 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The foresighted ones among us kept on life jackets during the strenuous efforts that followed.

We started out wading upriver, close to the sidewall, until the deepening water made us swim, stroking furiously to a small island in the tributary's mouth. After shivering violently while boatman David Lowry fixed a climbing rope to the first cliff, we plunged again into the icy waters, thrashed to the first narrow chimney, and struggled up the rope.

The chain of pools above the chimney called for more wading, swimming, and scrambling; but Shinumo's water, blessedly, was not as frigid as the river's. Finally we reached a pocket that ended in an utterly smooth wall perhaps 10 feet tall. A few members of our group and three kayakers who had joined us tried to top the barrier by running full speed on a rising diagonal course along the curving side wall of the pocket, hoping momentum and centrifugal force would carry them to the rim before gravity jerked them back into the pool beneath. Some succeeded. Some didn't, and plummeted down with a mighty kersplunk. All attempts were greeted with rousing cheers.

The Silver Grotto, as the upper chambers are called, is associated with a famous musical "first." In 1976, boatmen led by Ron Hayes put a chamber ensemble's instruments into special waterproof cases and nursed them and the musiciansinto the Grotto's farthest pocket. The exquisite resonances of the concert that followed are still discussed by those who heard it. Since then similar events have taken place in this and other charmed grottos within the Canyon depths.

It is not possible to float through the Grand Canyon without being awed by the enormous spans of time that passed during the laying down-in ancient seas, river deltas, and wind-scoured desertsof so many thick, multicolored, multiformed bands of horizontal strata. All the while, moreover, life also was evolving.

One particularly fine reminder of this is found at the end of a steep, boulderchoked hike up Nautiloid Canyon, 34.5 miles from Lees Ferry. The exhibit: a clearly imprinted skeleton of a nautiloid, green on a greenish rock. Touch it gently. With that gesture you have reached across 310 million years or more to a creature then alive and hungry and eager to reproduce as it thrust ahead, much as today's squid do, through the warm, shallow seas that covered the area.

But even 310 million years proved relatively insignificant in Carbon Canyon,

NICHES IN TIME

mile 64.6. It was interesting going-jumps, stretches, and pulls through a jam of surrealistically sculptured tan boulders that looked as if they were violently hammered from the surrounding cliffs by unimaginable tectonic forces; indeed, this may have been the case. On gaining open land at last, we came across what seemed to be a big, rough, wrinkled chunk of stone. Actually it is a stromatolite, a massive clot of fossilized primitive algae-initially mere green scum-the age of which has been estimated at close to one billion years. Clearly, the strange pulse of energy we call life has been around for a long time.

Other energies have left their marks on the area. Observe the hogbacks of rock visible from the stromatolite. Their strata have been forced back on themselves until they look like pieces of hard-used gear wheels rimmed with mutilated teeth. Altogether, it is a violent contrast with the normally placid, flat-lying layers of strata that are a hallmark of the Canyon's geology. But no part of the earth is ever entirely placid. About 25 million years ago, the Butte Fault cracked its way across here, creating such monstrous compressional forces that solid rock bent, like putty, into semicircles without breaking.

Farther downstream at Blacktail Canyon, mile 120, there came another shocker. The day was hot. In search of a cool place for lunch, we waded up the shallow stream carrying a folding table on which to set our food. Beside us in the narrow canyon, ancient Tapeats sandstone rested unconformably on even older dark Precambrian gneiss. Unconformably? Geologically, the word means an interruption in the normal order of sedimentation. Either the expected material didn't happen to be around here during the depositional period-unlikely-or it was whisked away during a time of erosion. Either way, the unconformity in Blacktail Canyon represents a lost record of roughly one billion years the age, give or take a hundred million, of the stromatolite up at Carbon Canyon. Such a time gap is all but incomprehensible. Still, try this: put the heel of your hand on the dark metamor-phic rock below the joint and your fingers on the brown sandstone above. Your palm spans, figuratively, a thousand million years, and there is nothing to show for it. So? Well, we, too, live in a period and place of widespread erosion. In the dying years of the world, will the record of our era have vanished as completely?

phic rock below the joint and your fingers on the brown sandstone above. Your palm spans, figuratively, a thousand million years, and there is nothing to show for it. So? Well, we, too, live in a period and place of widespread erosion. In the dying years of the world, will the record of our era have vanished as completely?

In spite of the river's frigidity, the summer sun can broil a rafter like a sausage on a grill. Temperate waterfalls in shady side canyons are cherished then. So back up the main canyon we go, in memory, to Clear Creek, mile 84, in upper In spite of the river's frigidity, the summer sun can broil a rafter like a sausage on a grill. Temperate waterfalls in shady side canyons are cherished then. So back up the main canyon we go, in memory, to Clear Creek, mile 84, in upper Granite Gorge. Getting into the slit formed by the tributary demands an uncomfortable trade-off. The landing place for rafts is above the canyon's mouth, and one can reach the gulch only by climbing over a ridge of knife-edged black schist so hot it sears the hands-and rear-unless they are wet down beforehand. But then! A short, ankle-deep splash brings one to a cool cataract that zings down a chute, hits a chockstone, and sprays sideways like the jet of a giant whirlpool bath. The massage finished, you can loll on the sandy creek bottom.

Another powerful jet comes at Deer Creek Falls, 136 miles below Lees Ferry. The falls are high-125 feet. The blast of spray from the plunge pool at the bottom makes all but the most hardy soakers back off. That's just as well, for seeing only the bottom of these superlative falls is not enough. So tackle the steep trail on the downstream side of the plunge. Your reward: a narrow ledge from which you can look down into the creek's chasm, an extraordinary series of tight "S's," an entrenched meander, geologically speak-ing, that coils through exquisitely laminated bands of Tapeats sandstone. At the upper end of the twisting canyon is a gnarled cottonwood tree-a rarity in the Grand Canyon-and a small cascade for bathing. To avoid the crowds that often congregate there, try easing yourself into the bottom of the laminated gorge. It can be done, though caution may suggest using a rope while you are at it. Like Deer Creek, Elves Chasm at mile 116.2 is often crowded. Although flash floods every now and then rearrange the huge chockstones in the creek's steep, narrow course, the bottom pool remains deep and inviting, with fine stone perches to jump from. Because the pool is the only one in the creek where swimming is allowed, and because the tiers of crystal cups above, banked with ferns and scarlet monkey flowers, are attainable only by a precipitous trail (during one stomach crawl, your left elbow protrudes over a void), most people hang up at the bottom. Each new jewel-I have reached four levels and there are more above-is an invitation to find a cool, comfortable seat and dream.

Pensiveness-it brings to mind Matkatamiba Canyon at mile 149. Matkatamiba Creek winds, like Deer Creek, through a tight, laminated slot. Here, however, the rock is Muav limestone (Muav means "many springs" in the Paiute tongue). Human flies relish the challenge-true chimney climbing-but there is a less hairraising stretch around the right side of the coils. Whatever your route, you emerge into an amphitheater that has been used,

like the Silver Grotto, as a site for concerts. The place needs no musical instruments to lull you, however. A tiny stream whispers close at hand; the gently sloping sandstone is seductive. I've seen as many as half a dozen people napping there, their books and journals fallen by their sides.

So far we have been talking of intimate canyons and small creeks. But there also are tributaries that elsewhere would be major canyons in their own right: the Little Colorado at mile 61.4, Tapeats Creek (mile 133.7), and that wondrous stretch of massed greenery, Havasu Creek (mile 156.7).

During rainless periods, the canyon-cramped streambed of the Little Colorado is bone dry (and hence carries no color-smothering mud) until it reaches Blue Springs, about 13 miles above the Colorado River. Those springs and related upwellings create a hiker's delight. Well, a semi-delight. In summer the path at the base of the talus slopes is hot. Wear a hat; take plenty of filtered water. (The creek itself contains natural chemicals that would purge a rhinoceros.) To cool off, sit in the stream while examining its unearthly aquamarine colors. The hue is enhanced by sunlight reflected from the whitish mineral deposits on the creek bottom. The deeper the pool, the bluer the water. Where the stream enters the Colorado, the sky itself is outdazzled.

You may glimpse, in boulder-shaded pools along the lower part of the stream, some of the fish-daces, suckers, perhaps hump-backed chubs, and huge catfish-that cannot tolerate the frigid waters of the main river and have retreated into the Little Colorado to escape extinction. By continuing four more miles, you can walk into legend: a travertine dome a dozen feet high or so, with a hole in the top through which water once bubbled. This is the sipapu (or a symbol of the sipapu) through which the ancestors of the Hopi Indians, the Ant People, emerged from the inner earth. It is a holy place, so treat it with respect.

Still farther on, perhaps too far for a day trip, are shallow caves in which almost pure salt has been deposited as stalactites and stalagmites. Until recently the Hopis, after conducting secret ceremonials, followed a difficult trail down the canyon walls to harvest the deposits. (There are other salt caves just below the union of the Colorados. Because the caverns are sacred to the Hopis, landing there is prohibited.) A journey up Tapeats Creek is more arduous than going up the Little Colorado. You begin by puffing up several hundred feet of zigzags to the left of the creek's mouth. From there a narrow path skirts the lip of the creek's deep howling gorge. Eventually creek and trail intersect. While crossing on the slippery boulders, it is well to steady yourself by holding hands with companions or by using a rope.

This is Sonoran Desert country, a contrast that makes the glinting waters seem all the brighter. Soon you reach the point where Thunder River cascades into Tapeats Creek from the left. (Strange that a river should flow into a creek!) More steep zigzags lead up a broiling hill toward massive Redwall cliffs. Suddenly you see the falls bursting from caverns high in the crimson rock. Your step quickens until you feel the dash of cold spray across your face and are shaken by the bellow of the ledge-splintered waterfall as it plunges down through almost tropical vegetation.

And so to Havasu Creek, blue-green like the Little Colorado because of sunlight refracted from calcium carbonate, some in bits, some in solution. This water, though, is clearer and the emerald glints are stronger. Curving little travertine dams, made by the creek itself, create miniature waterfalls. (Travertine is a solidified calcium carbonate, often formed by the evaporation of limestone-laden spray.) Willows, cottonwoods, box elders, and hackberry trees crowd the space between the red cliffs and blue water. Dense grapevines seen against the sun seem almost to glow.

The crowds that land at Havasu thin out along the creek's lower reaches, leaving the trail pretty much to you and those sharing your adventure. Adventure it is. Just before you reach broad, low, ragged Beaver Falls, you see a deep pool overhung by a 30-foot ledge from which bold hikers love to jump. Bold swimmers, meanwhile, dive beneath the silver curtain of the falls.Beaver is just the beginning. Farther on, if schedules allow, is Mooney Falls, 200 feet high and hung about with extraordi-nary tapestries of travertine. Then come the delightful curlicue pools at the base of turquoise Havasu Falls, with the Indian village of Supai not far beyond.

But whenever you turn back to your waiting rafts, you will be convinced that there can be more to a Grand Canyon float trip than the encounter with the river alone, rich though that experience most certainly is.