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Backpack to Nankoweap, Kwagunt, and Malgosa
NOTE: Click on Hypertext to view photos.
Preface: This trip ended up being much different than originally planned, although we had planned to be flexible, and we had even thought that a change in our itinerary was likely. This trip was originally planned for 11 participants, but three people bailed about a month before the start. One person failed to show up at the trailhead, so we ended up with a group of seven. Trip members included
Bert, Marcey, Fred, Jim, Chuck, Ben, and me.
The hike was to start and end at Saddle Mountain Trailhead, which provides easy access to the Nankoweap Trail. We planned to hike down the Nankoweap Trail to the creek the first day, and take two days to hike out, staying the last night just above Tilted Mesa. Marcey had arranged for a cache to be placed by a river trip several weeks prior to our start. Many thanks to Chuck for allowing me to include many of his photos.
October 7, 2010. I left Boulder a couple of days early with the intention of not only checking out Bryce Canyon National Park and Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, but also to put in a water and food cache part way down the Nankoweap Trail. I knew I would probably be one of the slowest in our group, so I wanted to level the playing field a little. I left Boulder early and drove straight to the trailhead, stopping only briefly for food and gas. I turned off the paved road in House Rock Valley at around sunset (18:00). I immediately noticed that the road had seen a lot of recent rain, and a few of the wash crossings were muddy and rutted. Very good omens. After about 45 minutes I arrived at the trailhead where I re-organized my stuff so I could sleep in the back of my Cherokee.
October 8, 2010. I got up at first light (around 6:00), quickly ate breakfast, and packed up 7 quarts of water (some was Gatorade), lunch, and a small food cache that I would leave somewhere along the trail. I noticed a truck parked at the trailhead with GCHBA bumper sticker and Arizona plates. I wondered if it belonged to Doug Nering, who I knew was going to be in the area. I reached the saddle (and the official Nankoweap Trail) in a little over 1-1/2 hours. It is about 3 miles and 1400-ft elevation gain from the trailhead to the saddle. I dropped three quarts at the saddle and continued on. After about another two hours I reached Marion Point, where the trail takes an almost 180 degree left turn. I knew our last camp would be further down the trail, but I didn’t want to spend any more time – wanting to get back to Kanab, food, and a shower before dark. So I left 3 quarts and a couple of pounds of food and returned to the car. By the time I got back to the saddle I had already drunk one quart, and was getting thirsty, so I picked up one of the quarts at the saddle. Thus two quarts remained at the saddle and three at Marion Point. I drove to Kanab and checked into the Comfort Inn.
October 9, 2010. After an early breakfast I headed for Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park outside of Kanab. Although the dunes were pretty, I was disappointed with all the dune buggies and tire tracks. From here I headed north to Bryce. When I was a kid (back in the 50s and early 60s), I visited Bryce (and other National Parks in Utah) a couple of times. Bryce was always my favorite, but I hadn’t been back there since. It was mostly how I remembered it, with spectacularly colorful towers and erosional surfaces. It was also smaller than I remembered – too small for backpacking – but I told myself that I need to come back and spend a day or two day-hiking. From there I drove back to Kanab, had lunch, and headed back to Saddle Canyon to meet my group. I got to the trailhead just as a group of 8 or so was finishing a day hike. As I was talking with them, Marcey showed up. She was returning from a hike to the Saddle to leave some water. She had already found a nice camping place just across the road from the trailhead. We set up camp and talked for only an hour or so when the others showed up. The others had flown into Phoenix and Chuck (from Tucson) picked them up there. Marcey, as usual, had a wonderful meal prepared for all of us.
October 10, 2010. Marcey and Bert got up very early to heat water for breakfast. They yelled “Hot Water” around 5:30.
By 6:00 we were all eating breakfast and it was almost light enough to get around without flashlights. Marcey was laying out 7 piles of communal gear and food.
We began hiking around 6:40. The air was cool and damp. We reached the
saddle
around 8:15. I picked up one quart of water. The
Nankoweap Trail
follows a bench in the Supai for several miles. The
views
down into the Nankoweap drainage were spectacular.
In an hour or so I reached my personal cache at Marion Point and my pack weight suddenly increased by about 8 pounds. We reached our campsite above Tilted Mesa at noon, where I off-loaded two quarts of water, one breakfast and a snack. So now I had one quart at the saddle and two at Tilted Mesa for the hike out, and about 1-1/2 quarts left to get me to Nankoweap Creek.
This was my third trip to Nankoweap, but only my second time on the trail. The other two times I exited 49.9, and once I entered via the Freefall Route between Marion and Seiber Points. I was a little surprised at how deteriorated the trail was. Was it really this bad 10 years ago? It wasn’t difficult – just a lot of washouts and rocks blocking small sections of the trail. I managed to lose the trail for a short time as the trail dropped off the
blackbrush-covered hill
towards the bottom of the trail.
We arrived at the Nankoweap Creek around 15:15. The creek had only a slight touch of sediment.
We found a nice campsite a few hundred yards upstream on the opposite side of the creek. We had appetizers and drinks around 17:15, dinner at 17:45, and bed around 18:45. It got dark around 18:00, and totally dark around 18:30.
October 11, 2010. We awoke this morning covered in dew. This was certainly due to the high relative humidity, which I’m sure was exacerbated by the damp ground caused by recent rains. Today we were heading for our cache. Again we got an early start to avoid the heat. It was a very pleasant stroll down Nankoweap to the River. The views down-river from Nankoweap Delta were splendid. I think it took us a little under two hours. By the time we got there it was already pretty warm, at least for me. My preferred hiking temperature is around 65 degrees, and it was already well into the 70s.
We began following well-defined trails down-river towards Kwagunt. For the most part the trail stayed high above the Tamarisk and Mesquite, which was much easier than hiking close to the River.
But the farther we went, the worse the “trail” became. It seemed impossible to avoid bashing through the brush occasionally. The going became difficult and unpleasant – I was starting to remember why I didn’t like hiking along the River. I think it took me about 4 hours to get to Kwagunt, about an hour behind most of the others. By this time the temperature was around 85 degrees.
I thought our cache was at Malgosa, so I was very surprised to find the others unpacking our cache at Kwagunt beach. Through some miss-communication between Bert, Marcey and me, Marcey had the cache placed at Kwagunt and not Malgosa. Not a big deal. Because we had such a large cache (two 5-gal paint cans, fuel and wine), we decided to stay at
Kwagunt beach
that night.
Our original plan was to continue down-river for another two long days (even longer now that we weren’t starting at Malgosa), then return via the Horsethief trail starting at Carbon. Doug Nering had previously noted that we were unlikely to make it that far in two days. So I suggested to the others that we modify our plans. I was willing to split up the group if necessary, but to my surprise everyone seemed more than willing to shorten the trip and add some day-hikes instead.
Bert had copied a hike from Tom Martin’s book that started at Kwagunt beach and went up and over Malgosa Crest, then down Malgosa Creek, and back to Kwagunt along the River. We all agreed that would make a fine hike for tomorrow.
October 12, 2010. We were covered with dew when we awoke this morning. I hung my sleeping bag and food bag from a large Tamarisk, and consolidated my gear before leaving on our day hike.
This hike starts by climbing a
steep chute
that was visible from our campsite.
By the time we got to the base of the chute the sun was already upon us. The chute was steep and kind of disappeared into some rock formations at the top. Tom’s route description said to climb the
chute all the way to the top of the Redwall. Once we got into the rock formations where the chute seemed to disappear when viewed from below, we kind of topped out on a small saddle. We were not yet through the Redwall and we wondered where to go next. There was another chute that jogged a little to the left, but it looked even steeper than the one we had already climbed. But that seemed the only reasonable way to go, so up we went. We had to belay people once or twice – very time consuming with 7 people. This chute did top out at the
top of the Redwall,
but now we were faced with several hundred feet of
Supai ledges.
Tom said to make your way through the Supai using chimneys and cracks in the ledges. This took us a lot of time to find our way through. But eventually we found ourselves at the saddle between the two buttes of the
Malgosa Crest.
As I recall it was now about 13:00. We found a shady spot for lunch, and then continued on to the western end of the Crest. The views (and more views) were stunning!
By now we were beginning to realize that we would need to pick up the pace if we were going to make it back to camp before dark. But we had to find the route down through the Supai into the Malgosa drainage. We split up and looked for a break. We could not find it. We re-grouped and tried again. Still no luck. Valuable time was being lost. We eventually decided to drop down a break that we knew would go, but it was on the opposite side of the Crest (a couple of hundred yards SW of elevation 6062). Once through the upper portion of the Supai, we contoured CCW around the end of Malgosa Crest until we were above the Malgosa drainage. From there it was just a steep scramble down into Malgosa. However, our time was about to run out. And so was our water. At around 18:00 (close to dark) we found a couple of nice potholes in the creek bed and decided to stop there for the night.
We only had two flashlights between us, and there was no way to continue hiking at night, even if everyone had a flashlight. But at least we had water and a relatively flat place to spend the night. We pooled our extra lunches together for dinner, which surprisingly was plenty for all. It was beginning to cool off, and we definitely were not prepared for cold weather. Several of us had only shorts, and some had only T-shirts. We gathered what wood we could find and built a small fire in the creek bed. We ended up huddling around the fire all night (12 hours!). We would freeze on one side and roast on the other. It was one of the longest nights I have ever endured. I don’t think I slept more than an hour. As the sky eventually began to brighten, we all stood around waiting until we thought it was safe enough to start hiking again. In about 20 minutes we came to a nice spring. In another hour or so we were back at the River. And in another hour after that we were back at our camp.
October 13, 2010. Soon after we started hiking down Malgosa, Ben felt something on his calf, looked down and saw a large rattle snake next to his foot. After jumping away, he looked at his leg and saw two parallel scratch marks that looked like they were made by fangs. The scratches barely broke the skin. Although we could not be certain, it appeared that he had been struck by the rattler, and was lucky the snake didn’t get a good grip on him. He had no symptoms.
As we were hiking back to our camp along the River, a raft party rowed close to shore to ask if it was our camp at Kwagunt. They were a little concerned because, as they said, it was obvious that we had intended to return the previous day. These were the first people we had seen so far. Once we got back to camp we started the stoves and made breakfast. Then most of us took a nap for a few hours. We decided to just hang around camp the rest of the day.
October 14, 2010. We decided to
hike up Kwagunt
and camp at the spring in Kwagunt Valley. This would be an easy day, but we figured we could do some exploring with day-packs if we wanted. Kwagunt was running thick with mud at its mouth, but by the time we got to Butte Fault it was almost clear. Near where Kwagunt crosses the fault, we stopped and decided to go for a day hike. We thought about possibly going up to the saddle between Kwagunt and Malgosa. We headed up the slopes west of the fault, following a prominent ridge of dark reddish-brown rock. The geology in the area is very confusing and I am not sure what the rock was, but maybe quartzite. Anyway, I got most of the way up before deciding to quit, but 5 others continued on to the top of the ridge that separates Kwagunt from Malgosa. It appeared that we were following the best route between Kwagunt and Malgosa.
Once back down to Kwagunt and our packs, we continued up canyon to the spring area that is marked on the map. The creek was still flowing there so it was difficult to exactly determine where the spring was. But it appeared to be a series of seeps several hundred yards long. Our campsite was very nice, with very good views
(Hutton and Duppa Buttes),
especially considering we were camping in the canyon bottom.
Late that afternoon we were startled by a huge boom that sounded like a bomb or sonic boom. It was extremely loud. We all jumped up, looking around to see what it could have been. In the distance, looking down Kwagunt toward the River, we saw a gigantic
dust plume
coming from the high wall opposite and maybe a little up river from Kwagunt. It was about 4 miles away from us. It looked like maybe a huge chunk of Coconino had fallen. The dust plume lasted for about a half hour, and rose hundreds of feet above the rim of the canyon. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rock fell all the way to the river. It was truly enormous. We wondered if a river party might have been camped near there. If so, I would love to hear their account.
October 15, 2010. We began hiking early again today, first by hiking back down Kwagunt to the fault, then up one of the ravines toward the saddle east of Nankoweap Butte. We followed the ravine that was to the east of the ridge with the “quartzite” rock band, but we eventually climbed to the top of the ridge when a good opportunity arose, then followed it up for a while before
contouring
over on very loose soil to the saddle immediately east of Nankoweap Butte. Bert and Jim decided to climb the Butte while the rest of us waited for them.
There were great views towards
Malgosa Crest and Kwagunt Butte.
The hike down to Nankoweap was more difficult than I remembered from previous trips, probably because there was a lot of water flowing in the gully, making for a slippery descent. We stayed at the same campsite we used on our first night, and were treated to wonderful views of
Mount Hayden
that evening.
October 16, 2010. Marcey, Fred and I got an early start up to our final campsite at Tilted Mesa, while Bert, Chuck, and Ben headed off on another day hike to look for some old mines in the area near Nankoweap Mesa. They couldn’t find the mines, so they decided to climb the Butte (again for Bert). Jim stayed at camp to finish a book and waited for the others before they all headed up to Tilted Mesa. Marcey, Fred and I got to Tilted Mesa a little after noon, while the others didn’t show up until about 16:30. The weather was almost perfect, although rain did threaten for a while. This is a
wonderful campsite
with almost 360-degree views. Chuck set up his camera for a
group photo.
October 17, 2010. Up early again. Jim, Bert, Fred, and Ben had early evening planes to catch in Phoenix, so we hustled to get out early. We were at the cars around 11:00. Two notes were attached to my windshield when I arrived: One from Doug Nering and the other from Rob Jones(?).
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