![]() ![]() “Shouldn’t we ask permission to leave our car?” I remember someone asking. As we’re driving to the put–in point, we pass a hogan. The ranger gives us permission to park a car at Grandview Point, so for the next three hours we ferry people and our other car to a side canyon, about two miles west of Cameron, that we’re using to enter the Little Colorado canyon. None of us has ever heard of Harvey Butchard Michael Kelsey’s warning that the Little Colorado is a ‘quicksand deathtrap’ from Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau is still five years from being published. We know nothing other than that the gorge is about fifty miles long and looks wild. Do we think about injuries? No more than usual. We’re in our mid–twenties and think of ourselves as experienced mountaineers and desert rats. To be honest, that’s the kind of response we’re hoping for. You’ll be on your own in the Little Colorado-we won’t rescue you in there. I won’t give you a permit for any part of it. “I’m not telling you that you can’t do it, but I am telling you that you shouldn’t. It’s taken a while.Īrriving at Grand Canyon National Park at around 10 AM, we inform the ranger at the permit desk what we plan on doing. A while back, I had the idea of gathering my remaining thoughts about it. But the way the various aspects and components added up together have made this trip indelible. No individual part was as frightening as, say, a long free rappel off a single bolt, and no single day was as individually memorable as a couple of others I’ve spent in the boonies. Nevertheless, many of my memories from this trip remain utterly vivid. It’s been a long time since this adventure, and the six of us are now a long way from being who we were then. During the last three days we were in the Little Colorado River Gorge itself, the river flooded and stayed above flood stage almost until we got to the Beamer cabin at the confluence with the Colorado. Gary partially tore his ACL on the fifth day and completed the trip using a jerry–rigged splint and crutch. Along the way, we crossed the Little Colorado almost a hundred times and encountered deep quicksand. The trip took us fifteen days from start to finish, four more than we expected. In January, 1980, Charlie L., Gary W., Ron W., Frank V., John B., and I hiked from Cameron, Arizona, to Grand Canyon National Park by descending the Little Colorado River Gorge, traversing the Beamer Trail, and ascending the Tanner Trail to Lipan Point. The Little Colorado River Gorge, 1980 by Rex Welshon ![]()
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