I was up a little after 530 but it wasn't until around 715 that we were out of camp and heading towards our first goal for the day, Tilted Mesa. There was one more "scary spot" early on that which again was no big deal. I think the second one was a little more dicey than the first though. We ended up taking one long break and a couple of shorter ones before finally arriving at the top of Tilted Mesa a little before 1100. We ended up taking a much longer "lunch break" there under the shade of some junipers to prepare for the long and arduous descent to Nankoweap Creek.

It was around 100 before we finally started down the trail again. This was one part of the trip that I was least looking forward to as the descent from Titled Mesa to the creek is the worst part of the Nankoweap Trail as far as I am concerned. It's just very, very long with several steep slopes that are covered in scree which does not afford good footing. It was slow going with several short rest breaks along the way.

By around 300 we were most of the way down and at least through the more difficult portions of the descent. There were a couple of sections that were familiar from previous trips but there were also a couple of sections that seemed totally unfamiliar. It felt good to be done with the steep and lose descents and back on more level terrain again. There was an amazing number of flowers blooming in the lower regions: beavertail cactus, maiposa lily, globemallow, aster... flowers everywhere.

Down at Nankoweap Creek I was amazed by the amount of water flowing in it which was considerably more than I had ever seen before. At that point I was getting very nervous about some of the other hiking we would need to do along the creek as it would not be possible to walk in the bed and we would have to constantly move from one bank to the other as the brush dictated.

We got to the creek right around 400 and had several hours to enjoy it before it got dark. At one point there had been some talk about trying to do the day hike down to the river but I knew we really did not have enough time for that and we would be hiking back in the dark. It felt much better to just kick back and enjoy being at camp. We were able to clean up a little in the creek and also rinse out some of our sweaty clothes.

The night was beautiful again and we had a clear sky with lots of stars. The moon came up about an hour later than the previous night so we had a long period of dark sky to enjoy them. The temperature was somewhat warmer than it had been up at our Marion Point camp and it was a very comfortable night for sleeping.