"The hour of truth approaches" - Dave

Yeah... what he said.

We were all up a little after 5:00. I showered and shaved for what I knew would be the last time in 10 days. Oy! We had an awesome breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bagels, orange juice and coffee. Everyone pitched in to help with the cooking. Now we are just about ready to go and are just giving the ranger station a quick tidying up.

20:22 - Clear Creek camp

We are over at Clear Creek and the moon just rose over the eastern wall of Clear Creek canyon, flooding everything within our sight in a strange, twilight-like glow. It is quite beautiful and very hard to describe the scene before me. We watched the glow spread down the cliffs on the western side of the canyon and across the creek bed until it finally reached our camping area on the western bank. We stayed up for several hours just talking after dinner and now it is time for bed - our first backcountry sleep.

We had a nice hike coming over here today and I feel only a little worse off than when I started - just a little soreness in the upper shoulders and neck caused by carrying a heavy backpack for a long time. It didn't bother me at all while I was carrying it and I really felt very good for most of the day. I started to feel hot and somewhat run-down a couple of times and it seems that whenever I got to that point Mike called for a rest break. It was just perfect timing. We took several rest breaks on the way over. It was good but it made for a long day.

We left the ranger station about 7:40 or so and Mike and I stopped at the Phantom Ranch canteen to buy T-shirts while Chuck and Dave went on ahead to the Clear Creek Trail. The canteen did not open until 8:00 so we had a little bit of a wait. We ended up meeting up with them again at the Phantom Overlook on the trail and that was or first rest break.

The next rest was when we finally reached the Tonto Platform; again just east of Sumner Wash; another just west of Demaray Point, for lunch; another in Zoroaster Canyon; and the last just a little ways from the final descent into the Clear Creek drainage. We ended up getting here around 4:15 and decided to stay here rather than continue on to East Clear Creek. That was fine by me as there is plenty of water here and there would have been very little up there.

After setting up my tent I filtered some water for tomorrow and then took a little sponge bath to wash away some of the sweat from todays hike. That felt good and it will probably be several days before I get the chance to do it again. I also rinsed out the T-shirt I had been wearing and put on a clean one. At some point I will probably have to use the one I rinsed out again but I think I will keep this one on for tomorrow. Ive still got two other clean ones in reserve but we still have 9 more days to go.

It looks like we will actually be hiking out on the Tanner Trail on Thursday, the 16th, instead of Friday, the 17th, but that could change depending on when the rafts drop us off at Tanner. If we do go out on the 16th I will probably stay at Chucks place in the village that night since my reservation at Maswik isn't until the 17th.

We had an absolutely gorgeous day for hiking over here and the only times I really felt hot were on the uphill sections. The rest was warm but not uncomfortably so. There was lots of bright sunshine with only a smattering of clouds over the south rim. I took lots of photos and kept dreaming of the day I would get to bring Maggi over here.

Tomorrow I will be in virgin territory once we climb the Redwall ravine to the Wotans Throne and Angels Gate saddle and then move off of it along the top of the Redwall on the other side. We are planning to have lunch up there tomorrow and should be in the shade for both the ascent on the Clear Creek side as well as the descent on the Vishnu Creek side. The total mileage for tomorrow will only be something like 7 miles but with all the climbing it will probably be a long day. Mike says there will probably be spotty water over at Vishnu Creek so we will be stopping at a spring on the way down to replenish our water supply. I drank about 5 liters today.

Time for sleep...