I woke up around 5:30 but stayed in the bag until almost 6:30. I got up, had breakfast, packed up my gear, talked with Hank and Mike a little, took some photos and generally just vegged out for most of the morning. We were going to spend most of the day at the beach and head up to the Esplanade late in the day but after talking it out we decided to leave earlier and just go slow and take our time about it. Staying at the beach all day would have been a bit boring in my mind anyway.

We left camp around 9:30 and headed for the Esplanade. Mike took the alternate route, up towards Tyndall Dome, so that he could complete the last stretch of the Tonto Trail that he was missing. I was in the lead and ran across Sally's GCFI group in between the Tonto east and west junctions. They were hanging out in some shade beneath some ledges and we joined them and stayed there for lunch and talked for a while.

I ended up talking a little with Jesse, a river runner who is currently working for Holiday up in Idaho. She was taking this trip with her uncle who was also from back east... New Jersey I think. It sounds like she leads a very interesting life and does river trips from late spring through early fall and then spends the rest of the year doing whatever she can to make ends meet. Sounds like a true river rat to me and it was nice talking to her.

We left around 12:30 and started back up the South Bass Trail. Sally's group headed down to the river to spend "an afternoon at the beach" and also to get more water for the evening and the hike out. They were planning to return to the same spot with the ledges to camp for the night. It looked like a pretty good campsite and had obviously been used many times.

I did fine for most of the way out and was only a few minutes behind Hank. Mike and Steve stayed behind in the rear. At some point in the upper Supai though I lost the main trail and ended up on some sort of short-cut route to the Esplanade rim. I started out on it, said "No way", and then went back a ways to look around. I could not determine how far back the main trail was and then I remembered Hank talking about an alternate route out of Bass Canyon. I figured this must be it so I said, "screw it" and started back up. It was a very steep and rocky scramble but there were plenty of places to get good foot and handholds so I was not really worried about it. It was actually a lot of fun as I like doing something different now and then and this was definitely both. The route appeared to have seen some recent use and the closer I got to the top the easier it was to see what it was doing. The only real problem was a 9 or 10 foot cliff very near the top of the route. There was a log wedged into a crack in the cliff that got me up just high enough so that my head was looking up over the cliff top, but I could go no further. There just were no foot holds to climb any higher, nothing on top to grab with my hands and my arms were not strong enough to raise myself plus my backpack over the edge. I finally ended up unbuckling my pack, pulling it up over my head and then pushing it over the top of the cliff. I then took off my camera bag and pushed that up ahead of me as well. Without the extra weight I was able to pull myself up and over the top of the cliff edge. From there it was a very easy walk to the Esplanade rim. Of course now I was about 1/2 - 3/4 miles away from where the real trail came out but that was a nice easy walk as well.

I finally got there and I met up with Hank and told him about my little adventure. He was wondering what happened to me because he had been seeing me behind him and then all of a sudden I disappeared. It was now about 4:00 and Hank told me he found some nice campsites for us, just below the Esplanade rim, that were sheltered from the worst of the wind. He wrote a note for Mike and Steve and left it on the trail where they would be sure to see it and then we went to setup camp.

Mike got out around 4:45 and Steve was a little behind him. It was very cool and windy and it looked like it was going to be a very cold night up there. After setting up camp I wandered off to take some photos and update my journal. I then went back, ate dinner and waited for sunset.

Sunset was not very impressive as Canyon sunsets go. We stayed up and talked for a while after dinner until the cold finally drive us into our tents/bivys/sleeping bags. I felt much better once I got inside the tent but I knew it was going to get a lot colder as the evening progressed.

I hooked up my backup charger to the Pocket PC and tried to get a good charge back into it. I tried the solar charger while we were at the river in the morning but I don't think it is working right... I didn't have nearly enough time there to get a complete charge anyway. In a couple of hours I had most of the power restored and was able to listen to some music.

It had been a very nice trip but I was happy that it was coming to an end and would be very happy to get out to the rim again. I had about a week's worth of journal entries to catch up on and I also wanted to try and put together a summary that I could post to LiveJournal when I got to Chuck's place at Indian Garden.