54 Days To Go - Vulcan's Throne & Vulcan's Anvil

Vulcan's Anvil - Check out the tiny kayaker at the base

TL Report:

Folks hiking in at Phantom:

• You need to be thinking about shipping your gear to MOE in the next few weeks. Remember you will be flying home with your gear, so pack your stuff in an appropriate piece of luggage. We will repack in a drybag for you at Flag and will store your luggage in one of the cars to retrieve after the trip.
• That being said, you may want to simply buy your own drybag and use that as your luggage so nothing needs to be repacked. If so, you need the 55 liter size.
• Remember that you don't need much at all besides hat, water, snacks, day pack, clothes on your back for the Bright Angel Trail hike. Go as light as possible, you'll be glad you did.

Everyone else:

• You should be workig on the equipment list. Call me with any questions.
• Start working on your base tan. Sunburn sucks, especially when you can't get out of the sun. And while we can apply 50spf all day long, you are in the sun with water splashing you.

What the Grand Canyon forums are chatting about this week: Rangers Receive Report of Fall Fatality on River Trip

Grand Canyon News Release
Release date: Immediate


Contact(s): Shannan Marcak
Phone number: 928-638-7958
Date: April 29, 2011

Rangers Receive Report of Fall Fatality on River Trip


Grand Canyon, Ariz.


At approximately 1 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, the Grand Canyon Regional Communications Center received a report from a commercial river trip of a fatality at river mile 74 on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park.


According to one of the trip guides who reported the incident via satellite phone, the group had gone on a side trip, a hike up the Tabernacle Route, located in the vicinity of Upper Rattlesnake and river mile 74. During the hike, a woman aged 77 lost her footing and fell approximately 100 feet suffering fatal head trauma.


Park Rangers responded via helicopter to the scene, began initial investigations into the incident and packaged the body for transport. The body was flown via helicopter to the South Rim where it was met by the Coconino County Medical Examiner.


The National Park Service is conducting an investigation into the incident. No further information is available at this time.


-NPS-

Our sympathy goes out to the family. Please let this be a reminder to all of us to always observe safety rules while in this magnificent wilderness environment.

Mileage This Week: River Mile 171-178. FLAT, FLAT WATER with a queasy, queasy stomach. We may be enduring seemingly endless flatwater in this stretch, but its never an easy float since the most difficult rapid on the river, Lava Falls, class 9 (out of 10),  is just a few miles away. The anticipation (or anxiety, or just plain panic) can be, well...... I'm just gonna say not to expect a good night's sleep at camp this night, because we will be camping at "Above Lava" the camp just before this infamous rapid. :-) The sound of this rapid can be as intimidating as the actual scout. I'll cover Lava Falls in next week's blog, but there's still lots to say about the lead in.



Vulcan's Anvil



The geology in this area of the western Canyon is heavily influenced by volcanic activity that occurred over 100,000 years ago. At River Mile 178.2 we'll pass one of the remnants of this volcanic acivity, the Vulcan's Anvil. This  huge column of jet-black basalt rises 50 feet in the center of the river. It is traditional to leave an offering or to pay respect here in order to ensure safe passage through Lava, although most commercial trips say it's bad juju to do so (I think they don't want to have 30+ passengers trying to leave offerings!).



Vulcan's Throne, with Lava Falls at the base.

Just downstream from Vulcan's Anvil, and just above Lava Falls, we'll pass Vulcan's Throne. The eruptions of this volcanic field were responsible for damming the river multiple times between 725,000 to 100,000 years ago. While some believe that these lava dams were stable, lasting up to 20,000 years and forming large reservoirs behind them, others think they failed quickly and catastrophically as massive floods. What we do know for sure is that lava flows traveled downriver almost 76 miles from river mile 178 to 254.






Acient Lava flows from Vulcan's Throne. You can just see the river below. Lava Falls is just downstream.

At river mile 179 and change, we'll stop for the night at either "Above Lava" camp or "Just Above Lava" camp at Prospect Canyon. After a dinner of BBQ ribs, cole slaw, baked beans and blueberry shortcake, we'll all hike down through the black basalt to scout Lava just downstream. This is the hottest scouting hike on the river so doing so after dinner will help with the heat.  

GC Geology: Vulcan's Throne is one of the monogenetic volcanoes in the Uinkaret volcanic field located along the North Rim. A monogenic volcanic field is a volcanic field of small, scattered volcanic vents. These volcanic fields, containing numerous monogenetic volcanoes, are noted for having only one short eruptive event at each volcano, as opposed to regular volcanoes that have several eruptions from the same vent over a long period in their history.

Equipment/Camp/Info Check: Check out this great "Canyon Minute" of a Condor bathing in a GC stream.