[pct-l] GRAND CANYON EXPEDITION

[Reinhold Metzger]

Switchback,
I read your Grand Canyon Expedition after action report.
I have been hiking the baby for 25-30 yrs, done every trail some six times
or more rafted it and have to say if there is an area that I have hiked as
much & love as much as the Sierra it would have to be the Grand Canyon. Two
totally different animals but each equally beautiful and
challenging......totally hooked on both.....cant get enough of either one.
Kind of sounds like I'm talking about women, does it not?
What I can't understand is why a hard-core backpacker like you would hike a
beginner trail like Bright Angel designed for tourists and inexperienced
hikers with water fountains and bathrooms.
Had-core backpackers like you belong on the more primitive and challenging
trails like Thunder River, Kanab Canyon, North Bass, Deer Creek Falls,
Nankoweap, Shinumo Creek etc. just to mention a few.
But, I understand, you were not the expedition leader you just followed the
leader but the tourists and beginner hikers, seeing you march by with
military precision and equipped with all the latest high-tech gear, must
have assumed that you were the Expedition Leader and thought  now there goes
a leader of men taking an Apple Dumpling Gang on a death defying expedition.

Ps.....whoever told you that you could barter with Indians on the Bright
Angel trail gave you wrong scoop, you have to go to HAVASU CANYON .  There
is a real Indian Village in Havasu Canyon and some of the most beautiful
water falls you can imagine. The only place in the USA where the mail is
still delivered by mules.

JMT Reinhold
The Canyon Rat