or
"Love means never having to say you're thirsty"

by Bob Ribokas

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On the way in I cached 2 liters of water near the junction of the South Bass and Tonto trails to pick up on my way back from Elves Chasm. My first re-supply of water came at the Colorado River which was running very dirty during the entire 8 days of the trip. Luckily I shared Bass Rapids with a river party that first night and borrowed their heavy duty water filter to top off my bottles. I now had enough water to get me to Garnet Canyon which was supposed to have water itself. I was not aware that Copper Canyon, about midway between Bass and Garnet, also had water flowing. The water at Garnet was pretty nasty stuff. I had heard this before but some hikers that I met on the way over to Garnet said that it tasted OK. It was drinkable but had a very bitter aftertaste it I always felt thirsty afterwards.

After drinking the water at Garnet the stuff at Elves Chasm was like ambrosia, a drink fit for the gods. This water was divine and I could not get enough of it. I filled all of my water bottles and relished in the thought of being able to drink this wonderful water for the next day. Now I wished I had that other bottle with me. Elves Chasm was a special place and it held some fond memories for me, having stopped there almost exactly one year ago as party of a two week river trip. The main focus of this backcountry trip had been to complete the last leg of the Tonto Trail that I was missing, the segment between Boucher and Bass, and the side trip to Elves Chasm was just a perk. I was glad to be here again but I would have been much happier if my wife, Robin, could have been there with me. She was here with me during the river trip and now it seemed very lonely with out her. I could picture her climbing up behind that big waterfall at the back of the chasm, leaping into the huge plunge pool beneath it, and having the time of her life. I tried to get her to come on this hike with me when I first started to plan it but she can’t handle the longer trips that I do and would have no part of an 8-day trip. If only I could bring Elves Chasm to her...

I made it back to Garnet using only my little, side-pocket water bottle which holds about 2/3 liter. When I got back to camp I used water from Garnet to cook with that night and refilled the small water bottle to drink that night. I was hoarding the water from Elves Chasm. The next morning I finished off the water from Garnet and refilled with water from Elves. Ahhhh, that was really good stuff. I drank that water all day on my way back towards the South Bass Trail and enjoyed every drop. When the day started to warm up I felt very bad to have to pollute it by adding Gookinade to it.

It was during my lunch stop, still about two or three miles west of Bass Canyon, when the idea hit me. I was sitting in the shade under a huge over overhang, gazing out over the western canyon, thinking about Elves Chasm and wishing that Robin could have been there with me. I was drinking the water from Elves, straight-up, right from the big two-liter bottle, without any Gookinade to pollute it and the idea just flashed in my mind. This bottle was still half full and I still had one that was completely full. Maybe I could bring Elves Chasm to Robin. I had about a liter right here, I still had some mixed with Gookinade in my small bottle and I was only about two hours away from my cache at the Bass Trail junction. It was a plan and now I was on a mission. I thought about carrying this two-liter bottle all the way through the Canyon, bringing it home to Robin and being able to give her the best souvenir I possibly could. I wondered if I was breaking the law here. Everything in the park is protected and you’re not supposed to remove anything from the Canyon, no artifacts, no rocks, no plants, nothing... But, what about water, did it fall under this regulation. I had no way of knowing, hoped that it didn’t, and decided that my "mission" was more important at this point anyway, and above the law.

And then I finally reached western edge of Bass Canyon. I had just refilled my small water bottle, added some more Gookinade, and still had a little more left in the big bottle. This was going to work, my cache was right down there. And then the unimaginable happened, a backpackers worst nightmare come true, the gods were laughing at me... I could not find my cached water. I knew I had a problem when I descended into Bass Canyon because nothing at all looked familiar. I came in at the junction of the Tonto west and the South Bass Trail and looking around I did not remember it. I headed slightly north until I found a cairn marking the junction with the Tonto east and that didn’t help. "I don’t remember this". I looked around. "Where are those huge boulders that I cached my water between?". I saw my mission going down the tubes. I took off my pack and wandered up and down Bass Canyon, thinking I had missed something, hoping there was another route in there that I used on my way through it previously. I found nothing, it just did not look the same. In utter despair I walked back to my pack and prepared to leave. This was not an emergency, I still had the water from Elves Chasm and that would get me through today and part of tomorrow and there was supposed to be water in Serpentine Canyon, the next drainage to the east. I thought briefly about trying to get to Serpentine on what was remaining in the small water bottle and then immediately dropped that idea. It was still a long way off and risking my life was not part of the mission.

I took one last look around, shook my head in disbelief and prepared to don my pack. And then I noticed some low rocks, concealed in the grass and the brush, off to the west of the trail. It still didn’t look familiar but I knew that the water had to be here somewhere. I headed over to investigate. As I got closer my hopes dropped, this wasn’t right, this was just one big flat rock. As I moved around to the side though, a gap opened and I could see that it was not one rock, it was two and what were all of these small rocks piled in between. Was that a glimmer of polystyrene that I saw under there? Success! I found my cache. The mission was still on. I dug out the bottle and hugged it to my chest as I made my way over to my backpack. I headed out of Bass Canyon changed by the experience, the gods were still on my side.

I felt so good that when I reached the boundary between the Bass and Ruby Use Areas, the place that I was supposed to camp tonight, that I decided to push on a little further and camp in Serpentine Canyon. I drank a great deal of water on the way because I knew that I hadn’t been drinking enough during the rest of the day. And besides there was supposed to be water flowing in Serpentine and I could have a wet camp tonight instead of a dry one. But as I got closer I couldn’t see any water flowing in Serpentine, it was bone dry down there with no sign of water at all, not even the pools like Garnet had. Oh, no! It was late and getting dark and I was tired. I rounded the final bend and headed into the backside of Serpentine and heard the unmistakable gurgling sound of running water. Yes! I found a place to camp and set to the task of refilling the water bottles. The water in Serpentine also had a slightly bitter aftertaste though not nearly as bad as that of Garnet. I was so exhausted from the long trek all the way from Garnet that I simply crawled into the tent and went to sleep, without making any dinner. I dreamed of water that night, cool, clear Elves Chasm water.

I felt great the next morning. I now had four liters of water in addition to the two liters from Elves Chasm. This was going to work. There was supposed to be water available in all of the side canyons between here and Boucher Creek and I should not have any problems with water. When I got to Ruby Canyon there was plenty of water there so I topped off the water bottles. This water tasted good, a lot better than Serpentine. I drank plenty of water during the day because my camp for the night was going to be at Turquoise Canyon, one of the more reliable water sources. Some guide books list it as a perennial source but I learned recently from some contacts with the Park Service that this was no longer the case and it frequently dried up completely in the summer. Since I was doing the trip in the spring there should be plenty of water there.

Later that afternoon I arrived at Turquoise Canyon, and guess what? You got it, no water. I was a puppet, just part of a show and whoever was watching was having a great time. I walked up Turquoise a ways to check it out. Nothing, not a drop, bone dry. There was a large pool of rather putrid looking water just below the first drop off where the trail crosses the creek bed. There was some film on the surface and lots of dead stuff floating on it. I climbed down to take a closer look. The sky was very dark up near the south rim and it looked like rain. I knew that I was not in a good place if a flash flood should come and checked for my escape route. On closer examination the water still looked bad but there were still some tadpoles in it that were alive so it couldn’t be that bad. I did not relish the thought of drinking this "water of death" but it was water and we would see what my PUR Explorer water filter could do with it. The filter kept clogging as I tried to fill my empty bottle. When I finally got it full I knocked it over and into the "pool of death" as I was trying to put the cap back on. "Go ahead, laugh it up!" A clap of thunder resounds down the canyon. I frantically try to clean off the bottle, dumped its contaminated contents and start pumping again. Filter keeps clogging but I don’t want to stop to clean it. I pumped slower, filled the bottle and got the heck out of there. Amazingly enough the water did not taste that bad, a bit on the salty side but not really bitter like Garnet or Serpentine. There were no good campsites in Turquoise so I headed out, back onto the Tonto Platform to camp for the night.

The next morning was glorious, as was just about every morning, afternoon and evening on this trip. The weather had been a little on the warm side but there had frequently been lots of white, fluffy clouds in the sky in the afternoon to provide some shade. I saw little storms crossing the Canyon here and there and hoped for a good soaking once or twice that never came. I again had full water bottles and my mission looked good. Camp tonight was supposed to be at Slate Creek a true perennial water source. On the way there I discovered water flowing in Sapphire but did not take any, didn’t even sample it. When I got to Slate and started back into it, it looked like it was going to be a repeat of Turquoise. There was no water down there, the bottom of the canyon was again bone dry. If I had to I could stretch the water I had to get me to Boucher Creek, and probably still save the stuff from Elves, possibly. When I got to the backside of Slate it was pretty dry but there was some water flowing. There were no pools but here was a healthy trickle flowing over a ledge just above where the trail crosses. I used a pot from my mess kit to gather water to filter. This water tasted real good, the best since Elves Chasm, and I consumed about 1.5 liters while I was there during lunch. Slate again did not have any great campsites and so I again headed out to the Tonto proper to camp.

The next morning I still had plenty of water, even after cooking dinner and drinking a lot the night before. Boucher Creek was just a little more than a mile away, it always had water, and I remembered it as tasting pretty good. I got to Boucher Creek refilled the bottles and drank all I could hold to super-hydrate myself for the hike out. Today would be the last day and it would be a very long and hot hike back out to the rim. I drank plenty of water, used two packets of Gookinade, took plenty of rest stops and ate lots of food. The leg from Boucher Creek up to the top of the Supai was steep and hard but I still felt pretty good when I got there. I had already consumed almost two more liters of water and would have to start in on the next bottle soon. The next leg, from there to the junction with the Dripping Springs Trail, I expected to be easy but it was not. I was starting to get tired and felt my energy waning. The hike along the Dripping Springs Trail over to the Hermit/Waldron trail junction was very bad and I stopped to rest before continuing the hike out. I forced myself to eat even though I really wasn’t hungry and also drank lots of water. When I started the final leg out, on the Hermit Trail, my small bottle was full of water, with Gookinade added, and I had enough to refill it one more time. This just barely got me back to the rim and I felt like I was crawling most of the way out. That last 1.5 miles took about 1.5 hours and when I stopped to rest it was very difficult to get moving again. I could have used some of that water from Elves Chasm during that last leg of the hike but I was too close, and had been carrying it for too long, to even consider it. When I finally reached the rim the mission was complete. The bottle made it back to South Weymouth and as I write this it is still sitting in the refrigerator. We’re saving it for May 23, the one year anniversary of our visit to Elves Chasm on the 1997 river trip.