Yeah, I decided on the Overhang Camp after all. This is a great campsite and I didn't feel like hunting around and possibly not finding a good one... so here I stay... for 3 days. Plus, the Overhang Camp has shade for most of the day except for about an hour or so in the late afternoon and that's pretty nice.

I was up around 5:15 this morning and packed up camp and had breakfast. I was out of camp and heading up the Utah Flats Route at 6:45.

I hit the cliff again! What's up with that? The first time I did this route with Robin I was worried about the cliff and we never saw it. Neither have I seen it during two descents coming down from Utah Flats. There's another way up and I keep missing it. I don't like the cliff. It would be fine with a day pack but with a full 40 extra pounds back there it is not fun. I need to pay better attention on the way down this time.

I stopped at the top of that first section for about 15-20 minutes to take the trail out to the river overlook and take some pix. It was awesome.

The section up to and through Piano Alley was a lot easier than I remember. The key seems to be hugging the northern cliff face in the lower portion and the southern cliff face in the upper portion.

Going across Utah Flats itself was also pretty straight forward but then again I've done this twice before now and I know exactly where I need to end up on the other side. The section of the trail over to the Phantom Creek descent was hard to follow at first but got better the closer I got to the descent. The descent itself was nasty as usual.

I got down to the creek just before noon and spent the better part of two hours hanging out there. I ate some of the trail mix and other snacks left over from the previous hike for lunch. I had a great time watching all of the lizards hunting insects along the creek and found some very interesting frogs as well.

I setup camp here around 3 and then went for a little hike up into lower Haunted Canyon, just to scout out the route for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be along one. Assuming I can get above the Redwall back there I don't know how far I will go.

I had dinner next to the creek tonight watching the sun set in Phantom Canyon. The view of the south rim from here is awesome.

I did some repair work on the tent with some duct tape before setting it up today. It seems to be holding up pretty well. There is still a lot of wind here today, and it's picking up now that the sun is going down, but hopefully it won't get as bas as what I had at Bright Angel yesterday. That was pretty fierce.

I realized today that I forgot to pack a few things. I forgot my coffee mug, my extra pairs of hiking socks and a cord to hang my food sack. The coffee mug is no big deal and I can use the small cups I have. Stuff doesn't stay warm in them very long though. I found a couple of pieces of line in the tent that are used for the rain fly and used them to hang my food sack. The socks are a bigger problem and that sucks. I will have to rinse out the ones I have with me tomorrow and hope they dry tomorrow night. I don't want to risk it tonight.

The weather was awesome today... high 70s, maybe low 80s, nice breezes. It's getting a little cool right now and it will soon be time to retire to the tent for the evening.