These boots are made for hiking

10/18/09

Today I was able to hike Canyon de Chelly. I know what you are thinking, "but hiking is like walking and you hate to walk", while true about walking I do enjoy hiking, its good to get away and kind of clear your head. I realize that I have spent the past 2 weeks by myeself and should have a clear head by now becuase there is nothing going on in my life and few contacts from the outside world, but I really needed to get out of the house and out of the car and just spend some time accomplishing something tangible. I went on the only trail which doesnt require a Navajo guide, the White House Trail. The trail is about 1.5 miles each way and descends 600 feet into the canyon through various switchbacks. The walk down was very uneventful and pretty easy. I was able to get a few looks out over the amazing view of the canyon and the bluffs and buttes and mesas which make up this area. On the bottom it is about a half mile walk over really sandy ground (seriously like a beach) to the ruins, which were built around 1000AD. Canyon de Chelly is the oldest continually inhabited areas in the US where people have lived for 4000 years (for reference Jesus died around 2000 years ago, Columbus discovered America just over 500 years ago, and I was born just over 24 years ago). The ruins were fenced off but I was able to get a few good pictures from just outside, im sure that they arent as good as the famous Ansel Adams photo shot in the same place, but they were pretty good none the less. There were also a lot of Navajo craftsmen at the bottom selling jewelry and trinkets. I did buy some things here, as well as around the rim road. Groups of tourists can take Navajo guided horse/jeep/truck tours through here to avoid the climb. After spending about half an hour at the bottom I decided to tackle the tough part, the climb up. When climbing mountains the sumit is the midpoint, you climb all fresh and then come down when you are tired, if you get too tired on the walk up then you just turn around and head back down. With canyons it is the complete opposite, the easy part happens first and then you have to do the hard part. The climb up wasnt all that bad, there were a few benches at the trailside and plenty of places to stop and catch your breath. It did take me a while because im out of shape and not fully acclimated yet, but I made it up all right. About 3 switchbacks from the top (about 70 vertical feet) it started to rain so that kind of gave me a boost to make it up there. It is funny how the weather can shift around here so fast, it went from clear blue skies to rainy in just a short time. All in all I made it through the hike in 2 hours 15 minutes including a 30 minute break at the bottom. The guy at the visitor center said it would take and hour and a half to 2 hours so I made pretty good time. After reaching the top I went around the rim road to check out the other overlooks. Spider rock was pretty amazing, its an 800 foot spire rising from the canyon floor. At spider rock I picked up these really cool stones from the canyon floor that he had carved the pictographs from the walls into. He said that each design took him about 3 hours of work with a nail, and showed the pictographs of kokopelli and several other Native American symbols. I was also talking to a photographer about the views and eventually found out that he was originally from East Greenbush, just across the river from Albany. It is pretty cool to see what a small world it is. The rest of the overlooks were cool, but after spending all day there I was just about exhausted of red rocks. I did stop at a Hogan (Ho-Gon, Navajo living place) that was selling frybread and crafts, turns out that fresh frybread is even better than what I got at the hospital. Im really glad I went on this hike, it gave me some time to think and get out there, except for being exhausted and having a few blisters from the new boots I am none the worse for the wear.

Tonight I spent some time in the parking lot of Churchs Chicken uploading photos onto facebook, I am probably going to set up a webshots account so everyone can see my pics. Now im going to go crash and get geared up for the week ahead of me, hopefully this one will be better than last week.
-O