After parking our car at the Visitors' Centre in the village at 0700 hrs we caught a ride to the trail head at Lipan Point. Tim, our driver, offers this service and Ken has used him for previous hikes.
Our general plan is to hike into the canyon and move in a westward direction and returning to the rim near our car in six days.
The Tanner trail starts at Lipan Point and descends steadily and remorselessly for 5500 ft over 16 km to our destination at the Colorado River. There is no water on this route and a group we met that was caching water for the return hike at the half way point during their decent. The Tanner has two steep sections - at beginning and the 'Redwall' band about half way down. Sore legged and tired we reached our campsite for the night at Tanner Rapids around 1600 hrs.
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| Last rest stop before the bottom |
Funny story... Dale and Ken both supplied Aquatabs for purifying our drinking water. One table per litre of water. We prepared some clear Colorado River water and after waiting the half hour for the tabs to work we gave it the taste test and it was crazy strong. Like hot tub water. Upon closer inspection we found that they had both inadvertently bought the much stronger one tab per twenty litre tabs. No problem, we just chopped up the tablets to 1/20th size before using.
Ken and Dale settled into their bivy bags and me into my solo tent by the time darkness fell around 1900 hrs.
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| Rock slide across the river |
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