A few minutes later I was at the Red Canyon trailhead. It felt good to get into the car for a while and warm up a bit. It wasn't bitterly cold on the rim but it was cold and it would be days now before I would really have heat again. I went over, fetched my stuff and headed off through the Pinon-Juniper-Ponderosa forest for about a 1/2 mile to the actual trailhead. Looking out on Red Canyon from the top of the trail gave me the jitters. This would be my longest hike to date and so much could happen. Do I really want to do this?

When I finally got started it was about 8:00. A few steps into the trail and the fear vanished... the Grand Canyon is after all Heaven on Earth. The view of Coronado Butte set against a bright blue, cloudless sky, with the rest of the Canyon spread out behind it was incredible. The top of the trail was steep but easier than I remember and I made great time going down. There are a few places where you have to climb around or over some large boulders, and one fallen tree, in the upper sections but there was nothing particularly nasty about it. Robin and I did not have any problems with the section the last time either though.

After about an hour or so of some pretty steep downhill hiking the trail started to level out a bit. This is where the trail reaches the actual bed of the drainage that flows down Red Canyon. The trail is still going noticeably down but it is much more gradual for the next mile or so. There are a lot more boulders to content with in this section and some small falls that you have to either go around or be careful going down. Towards the end of this section I came to the campsite that Robin and I used on that last hike, after she broke her ankle. We had hoped at that time that after a good nights rest everything would be fine... wrong. I dropped my pack and rested here for a while as I knew that the section was coming up was the one that really worried me.

After about 10-15 minutes I was ready, at least physically, and headed back on down the trail. The trail is much more level at this point as it contours around the lower sections of the Supai Formation and heads for the break in the Redwall Limestone that leads you down to the floor of Red Canyon. The problem here is that sometimes the trail gets pretty close to the edge and sometimes it cuts across areas of old rock and land slides where the trail is slanted down to the side into the canyon. It is one of these areas that claimed Robin's ankle last time, so I was very careful crossing them now and took baby steps across most of them. Once past the point where Robin took Her fall I felt a little better. I knew that I was very close to the Redwall break and the trail improved for a short distance. When I finally got to the point where the trail headed down through the Redwall I had to hold my breath.

At this point I knew where the trail had to go but I couldn't see how it did it. No point in worrying about it though as the trail in front of me was fairly obvious and I just had to hope it would remain that way. The guidebooks I had read said that you crossed multiple breaks in the Redwall before you came to the right one for the descent and I just hoped that this was the right one. The trail here did a power dive down into Red Canyon. It was incredibly steep and rocky and had sections of scree that did not want to support me on the way down. You have to constantly search for larger rocks that you can use for anchors. It takes a long time to go down this section and you have to be very, very careful. When I figured I was about halfway down I decided to take a break. I stopped, dropped my pack, sat down on a large rock and took a good look at the place. The view was magnificent. The sky was still cloudless and the sun was almost due south and shining right down into Red Canyon. I could see how it got its name as the primary colors near the bottom of the canyon were about a hundred different shades of red. Some sections of the walls looked like a rainbow painted only in red and I found it hard to believe that all of these were technically one primary color as they appeared to cover a full spectrum in themselves. This rest stop turned into lunch... the location was perfect and a longer rest would feel good.

After about a 1/2 hour rest I loaded myself back up and took to the trail again. After another 1/2 hour or so I was closing in on the floor of Red Canyon and the trail wasn't descending nearly so rapidly. I passed just above a small section of rather misplaced junipers that shouldn't really exist this far down into the Canyon and beyond that the trail got a little steeper as it headed for a major drainage coming down from down from below Moran Point. The trail levelled off here for a bit and then started the final plunge into the floor of Red Canyon. There is a slope of crumbled shale near the bottom of the descent that I remember would have been easier to descend on skis. I could not see the trail going down through it but I thought I could see the trail below it. I headed down the side knowing that I had missed something. The crumbled shale below me was constantly giving away beneath me and each step ended up being about twice as long as it should have been because of this. The descent through this section went very quickly mostly because I was afraid to try and stop.

Once I finished that descent I was in the floor of Red Canyon. There was actually a trickle of water flowing here and realizing that the worst was well behind me I stopped for a rest and took some pictures. From here it was any easy walk down along the bed of the canyon to the river. You can hear the river or actually the rapids from maybe a 1/2 mile away. That's when the adrenaline really starts to flow and I realized that I was travelling at a pretty good clip during this last section.

I finally reached the river about 2:30, there was no one else there and I had the place to myself. The view of the rapids was awesome though they were quite noisy. I decided not to camp right next to them for fear of not being able to sleep and headed upriver a short distance to make camp. After setting up camp I wandered off with my camera to explore the area. Later in the day another party of two men came down and camped on a dune just above the rapids on the other side of the Red Canyon drainage.