Grand Canyon, Part 6

Day 5 we were a little hung over, especially the other raft. I nick-named them the barf boat to which they responded, no, we are the beer boat!! And I was like yes, but 2 people got sick off the back of your raft this morning, so currently you're the barf boat :P

We went very briefly downstream and hiked to Elves Chasm.
Mom and Jan opted not to, Mom remembering better than me that there was a lot of bouldering involved. It will always be one of my favorite places. I climbed around the back and jumped off, but only once because the water was cold! First thing in the morning. And it remains very precarious to get up the back. Like I’ve done it the past 2 trips and Beth Purdy was still having to instruct me how to maneuver myself up. Jumping is not nearly as scary as climbing up the back :P

We hiked back to the boat and rafted another hour or two, and stopped at the Doll’s House. We climbed around and looked at dubendorf(?) rapid that was right ahead. I somehow remember it being more fun and easier to climb- possibly because I was chasing Randy and Bo around last time. Also I chose poorly in a climb and had to have Bruce coach me down a bit from a rock. Then I finally climbed through to the beach to pee and look at the rapid, and was trying to take pictures of lizards when I heard Mark and other calling me back to the raft. So I hightailed it back and we were on the river again.

A few minutes later we stopped at Stone creek and took the very short hike while the boatmen set up lunch on the beach.
This was probably the easiest hike, completely flat through a shallow creek to a pretty and slightly larger than we’d yet seen waterfall. It was warmer water and great to stand in and get group pictures J


I will say that the pictures of people look more recognizable when they are slightly in front of the waterfall instead of actually in it, but in it is way more fun :)

We hiked back and ate lunch, and I missed getting a picture of Karma 4 swimming out to the drag bag to retrieve a diet coke. A few more miles and we were at Deer Creek. Mom and the Karmas and Jan stayed at the bottom and hung out at the enormous waterfall, and about half of our group including myself hiked up to the patio. This is a steep hike that is a lot of fun, requiring hands a lot for balance. It’s a lot of hiking up, but there is a great view at the top of the river, and that’s not the end. Then you walk above a slot canyon that gets shallower as you go, until you can wade in it and sit in the shade at the patio.
It had changed a lot since last trip; a rockslide had taken out a bunch of trees that were nice to sit under. Mark, Elizabeth, and Brett or Ben took a nap and I walked over to where I knew Randy had his special piece of wood under a rock… in a boulder field. I should explain. Randy Brown was a friend from the previous two trips (I think he had been on seven total) that passed away from cancer about a year and a half ago. He had this piece of wood that he would engrave his trip dates on every time he went to deer creek. Elizabeth and I had talked about it at the beginning of the trip and thought about trying to find it. Since neither Elizabeth or I knew at all where it was, it was immediately obvious when I got to Deer creek that we would never find it. Which was okay. It was good being there just the same, and Randy would have wanted the wood to stay in it’s spot.

Purdy and Parke and a few others kept hiking to the throne room, which I had no desire to do – too hot, and I wanted to spend some time at the bottom too. So after a while I headed back with Bruce and Art, although I actually wound up going back with Kathy. On the way down we were passed by a 12 year old and his dad from another group, and the kid was like DAD! We should look for the chuck wallow, this is where we saw it on the way up! The dad tactfully tried to explain that the lizard had probably moved in the last 2 hours, bu we hadn’t gone far when low and behold, we startled probably the same chuck wallow who darted around the path as we stopped and stared, and he almost ran across my feet as he dashed for safety. You could almost see him sigh we relief when he decided he was far enough away from us, which actually wasn’t that far because I still managed to get a good picture of him without giving the poor guy another heart attack.

At the bottom I took some pictures of the waterfall and got Art to take one of me. If you stand in the spray, you can see a full circle rainbow around you in the powerful mist. This is one waterfall I had no desire to swim under- waaay too big.

>After enjoying the giant falls I headed back to the raft and found our group, and within 10-15 minutes we were on our way to a campsite literally a mile downstream.

This campsite, our fifth, was a large beach that was half covered by an overhanging cliff- Now you think this would have given us shelter from the sun, but no such luck.
It was called Pancho’s kitchen. I think it took like 2 hours for the sun to go down and our campsite to be in the shade. I forget if I washed my hair that night, having bathed the night before, but I did some laundry in the river and hung it nicely on sticks in the rocks in the ledge. We had Italian I think, (this is the guides cooking dinner)
and birthday cake since it was Pat’s birthday.

We were also told that the boatmen really liked our group and were going to try to get us to Matkatimiba the next day although it would be pushing it; we'd pack our lunches in the morning to save time. So it was a nice evening in camp, (I don't remember who ducktaped Matthew, but it was bound to happen at some point)- I slept on a little bit of an incline to get away from the snoring in our group, but it was so nice to see the stars and the bats as I went to sleep.

Grand Canyon, Part 5

Day 4 dawned without rain, huzzah! Karma 4 and I discovered that whoever sleeps on the side of the tent away from the door will invariably have to pee in the middle of the night and climb over the other person. I purposefully chose the spot near the door, having had to pee the second night and climb over Karma, and then I had literally a liter of water before going to bed the third night so I knew that nature would call. But that night she had to climb over me, so we decided the far side of the tent made you have to pee. It wound up being our last night using the tent anyway, so it was a mute point after that.

We launched day 4 zipped into raingear and immediately ran hance rapid, the first of the really big ones of the day, and the trip. In the morning we stopped to hike clear creek, with a mid river transfer of passengers right before we stopped.

This is Parke tying up the boat- it was kind of ridiculous. This is the hike that you literally have to climb out of the boat unless you park at the mouth, and there is only room for one raft at the mouth, so those that didn’t want to climb moved onto Scott’s boat and the rest stayed/moved onto Mark’s boat. Clear creek has 2 waterfalls, one of which is sideways, and it’s a great place to take pictures. All of our group made the hike, which wasn’t steep, but it was through a stream the entire way, which made it slippery. I think Karma 3 fell and skinned her elbow pretty good on the way out. I held mom’s hand a lot, more for moral support than actual hiking support. The water was once again colder than I remembered- apparently everything was colder than I remembered except for the Colorado itself. I got some good pictures of other groups of people on our trip too.

We made it back to the boat and rafted on.
At some point before lunch we passed Phantom Ranch and it's bridge.

We came to Horn creek, another large rapid, and Mark said that we could ride the sidetubes but we really had to hold on. We hit a HUGE wave, but somehow I managed to stay on the tube. On the other raft, we found out later at lunch, the wave knocked Elizabeth off the sidetube into the boat where Jeffery grabbed her. This left mom with no one in front of her on the sideboard and she got another (or maybe the same?) huge wave which really shocked her. When we breaked for lunch above Granite falls (another place we have eaten before), she was still a bit in shock and wearing Scott’s huge raincoat. We got some pictures of Granite falls while the batmen set up lunch (and also some pictures of lizards mating), ate, and ran more rapids.

I didn’t ride the sidetube on Granite because I thought it was too big, but I think I could have. Then I rode the side tube on the very next rapid, Hermit, which is probably the best ride in the entire canyon, at least on the part that we raft, and I got washed off the sidetube into the boat 3 times before giving up and staying on the sideboard for the rest of the rapid. I think next time I’ll start on the sideboard for that and enjoy the ride more instead of just trying not to die/stay in the boat. Earlier in the morning we also ran Grapevine rapid, which is another good one, and as I am climbing onto the sidetube on the left side next to Art, he says, Oh I remember this rapid, this is the one that Brenda (Randy’s sister) fell off the side tube and was dragged under the boat twice. I was like, don’t tell me that!! After we made it through someone overheard Mark saying to someone in the tea room, Did you see how many rocks I had to avoid in that thing?!

The rest of the day was filled with really big rapids, some of which were bigger than I remember.


I didn’t remember the gems being so fun, and there were just more rapids in general than I remember. We ran crystal with no problems, although it was butts to the boards. As a sidenote, I think more people have died at Crystal rapid then any other rapid in the canyon. Crystal has never looked scary to me as a passenger- this is probably because I have never actually scouted it, had to run it, or seen it at high water. I was on Scott’s boat for the afternoon.

We hiked at Shimumo creek maybe around 2. I totally didn’t remember the hike, although I think we did it in 2004. Once again it wasn’t long or specifically steep, but it was through a stream, deeper this time, with fast moving water. As we were getting our gear together Scott said, make sure your camera is in a water-proof case, people tend to tip over in Shinumo. He wasn’t kidding. I fell at least 3 times, once of which gave me a good bruise and scrape on my left shin. The waterfall at the end was cool;
I managed to walk/swim around behind it following Beth Purdy, and she slid out underneath it into the pool of water. So I went out the way I came, handed my fanny pack to unsuspecting Ross, and did the same thing. It was very cool. :) This is Matthew behind the waterfall.

We got back on the raft for a short time and then camped at Mile 114 across from Garnet Canyon. It was Mexican night, and thus began the shinanagans :D

So the food for the trip remains relatively the same from trip to trip; certain menus move to different nights of the trip. I think for a while Hatch provided margaritas with Mexican night, but then stopped a few trips ago. I’m sure it’s because of some random company policy about not providing alcohol, although individuals (and boatmen) can certainly bring as much as the rafts can carry. This trip we not only had the various and numerous sixpacks of beer and bags of wine, but also hard liquor in waterbottles and drink mixes and stuff. Anyway, the Beans brought enough margarita for the whole group and brought it out on night 4 with Mexican night. They had bought the margarita at costco where you can buy them premade in bulk, with even the tequila mixed in already. This was put in one of the drink coolers and labeled DANGER. Now, soon after although I’m not exactly sure when, Scott tasted it and said, those are weak! And added more tequila. Now, I’m also not sure how MUCH tequila he added, but lets just say at least one decent sized bottle. All of the sudden the entire group was at least tipsy and some very trashed. We were sort of split up by raft at this campsite because it was so rocky and hilly, there wasn’t a lot of room for a large circle, and people had been breaking off into smaller groups for dinners anyway.
Karma 4 fell out of her chair before she even had any margarita because it was so steep in the loose sand. I later fell out of my chair because I reached down to pick up my camera. What happens in the canyon stays in the canyon, but it was pretty freakin hilarious to see some people a little toasted.
Mark caught a spiny lizard in our circle. I think Scott actually had to piggyback several people to their sleeping bags because they couldn't make it there due to the heavy loose sand, steep rocks, and margaritas. Someone the next day said they forgot to eat dinner and couldn't even tell you what we had. Good times were had by all :o)

What do I do all day?

I've had lots of people ask me what I do at my job, specifically what a typical day is like. I have one of those jobs that has no typical days, and I also have one with a sort of spiffy yet not specific at ALL title: laboratory technician. Now the answer I usually give to the above questions is this: My boss and I set up and clean up all of the equipment and chemicals for the undergraduate laboratories, all 60-ish sections. This includes making solutions, testing and fixing equipment, keeping track of a lot of teaching assistants (TAs) and students, and being a general goggle nazi.

This explanation works except that sometimes people's eyes glaze over at the mention of equipment and chemicals... they understand I'm very busy, but they still really have no idea what I'm doing.

So, I thought I'd try to explain what my job in terms of what it would look like in a kitchen, instead of a chemistry lab.

In each room, we have 12 mini-kitchens: each little set up has a oven/stove and a small counter for working at. Students work in pairs, 1 TA per room. There are 6 rooms on the 4th floor like this. There are 3 rooms on the 3rd floor that are very similar, but the number of kitchens per room fluctuates because they do more complicated cooking projects down there. Let's stay on the 4th floor for a while.

During the fall and spring, 4 of the rooms have 2 sections per day, every day of the week. This is about 950 students, they are the 2^nd year cooking class. Today they are making biscuits. Not too hard, it's only the 2nd week of class. So they have to mix oil, milk, and bisquick in the right amounts, stir, knead, roll it out, cut biscuits, put them on a pan, bake for 10 minutes. This teaches them about kneading, rolling, and baking; a previous class covered measuring. Each little kitchen has 10 locking drawers, one for each pair of kids that comes through during the week. In the beginning, they went through and made sure they had the right number of measuring cups, spoons, trays, bowls, knives, etc. and marked it on their drawer sheet. I get these sheets back (all 1500 of them) and if something goes missing or breaks, I charge the student that it belonged to.

For the ingredients, there are small bottles of bisquick and oil at each station, and a card to come to the stockroom window to get the milk, since that has to be refrigerated. I take IDs in exchange for milk, returning the IDs when I get my bottles of milk back- otherwise who knows where they would wind up. There are large bags of flour and large bottles of oil in the refill kitchen in the room, so the TA can refill all of the student bottles at the end of the period.

Down the hall there is different class learning to measure things very precisely- they are making pudding and varying the amounts of ingredients in small increments to see how it affects the final product. They are also learning some methods of how to tell what is in a batter that someone hands you- without tasting it.

The 1^st year students are in the 6^th room and are getting very basic classes in how to measure, what some of the equipment looks like, how to operate a stove although they’ll only use it once, etc. Both the 1^st years and the measuring class still have 12 stations, drawers of their own, and ingredients for each class.

Downstairs the 2^nd year cooking majors meet twice a week. Although there are only 7 kitchens in there, their cooking projects are much more complicated. They are making biscuits too, but from scratch. So they have 12 ingredients instead of 3. They also have convection ovens in addition to normal ovens. While most second years will leave knowing how to bake a few basic things and a few meals, these majors will learn to bake from scratch, put together multi-step meals, and harder things like making fudge.

Also on the 3^rd floor is a class where they learn to use as much kitchen instruments as possible- woks, ovens, blenders, etc. It’s all about the equipment (which has to be working!) but of course they use ingredients as well.

The final lab on the 3^rd floor is specialized cooking, focusing on Asian cooking techniques. Not only does this require special equipment and a LOT of ingredients, but the students design their own meal to cook as their final project, so we order a whole bunch of random stuff for them. The upstairs kids do meal projects at the end of class too, but they are assigned 1 of 5 menus, so I can have those ingredients ordered ahead of time.

So all of these classes are going on at the same time. Before each I have to make sure each station has the ingredients they need, as well as refill bottles for the TAs. Often the prep includes things like making the pie crusts ahead of time so the students can just use the crust and apples. I often have to put out additional equipment, like blenders and frying pans, for each lab, and then remove it after that particular class.

Professors give us a syllabus in the beginning of the semester that says what dish their class is making each week. Ordering usually falls to my boss, although I help her figure out what we need. Inventory the flour, they use it 4 times this semester, so that’s 4x ½ cup x 900 students, oh and have some extra in case someone drops something or needs to redo their pie. Also, the ingredients are charged separately for each class, so each class has their own flour, sugar, oil, etc.

After the class is over, I lock the rooms and make sure all of the stoves are off, and often begin switching out the ingredients for the next dish.

A good chunk of my job requires my cooking knowledge- knowing that trying to make biscuits requires vegetable oil, not olive oil. Knowing how to make most of the dishes myself. Being able to mass produce pie crusts. Being able to troubleshoot moody ovens helps a lot too. But most of my job is an exercise in logistics. I have work study students that are often found chopping vegetables, topping off student bottles of dry ingredients, refilling items like aluminum foil and saran wrap that the classes go through quickly, or doing dishes. We generate a lot of dirty dishes.

With so many classes going on, we’re always prepping for the next dish. But we always get lots of questions at the window too- I can’t find my flour. My measuring cup broke. My oven won’t turn on. My oven won't turn off (this is way more exciting). Sometimes someone cuts themselves with a knife or burns themselves on a stove- we provide first aid, and fill out an accident report.

There are also TA meetings- we go over the dish the class is preparing next and make sure everyone’s on the same page- PLEASE make sure there is bread flour for the bread class! Normal flour won’t work! Things like this. Check the blenders ahead of time. Please make sure your students CLEAN the blenders when they are through. The usual.

I do really like my job- there are days it is fun and days that its completely insane. Throw in that we make students wear goggles, labcoats, and no flip-flops for safety, and you get us kicking students out of lab occasionally for failing to wear these things.

This is what I do all day ^_^

Grand Canyon, Part 4

The third day it was very overcast and not very warm as we started out. I think a lot of us had our rain gear on for warmth, and just case we hit any white water (the Colorado in the Grand Canyon is about 47 F). After a little ways and about 10 miles, we parked at the entrance to the Little Colorado and took a short hike along the LC to a place where there are some great ledges to hang out, and a few very small rapids that you can swim.
We put our life jackets on upside down as diapers and floated through the water that I remembered being much warmer :P
Probably because the sun wasn’t really out. I made a few solo runs and helped Jan go through once.

Then I began gathering people to make a train through the rapid. You float in a line holding onto the feet of the person behind you.
This gets tricky loading sometimes because there is a fairly strong current that is trying to pull you along as you are linking people together. I think our biggest train in 2007 was like 15 people, which gets to the point where you are still trying to add people onto the back and the person in the front is like, um, IN the rapid here, we need to go!! The first run we did this year had Karma 4 in the front (which means you are sort of steering) and after going through the rapids she bounced off a rock at the bottom, feet first, but it almost flipped her over- she said it was almost a keg stand off a rock, and christened it Karma’s rock. Somewhere we got a picture of her later standing on her rock. We improved our steering a little bit in future runs, although everyone including myself had a few scrapes.

After an hour or two, we headed back to the rafts went another mile or two and stopped for lunch at crash canyon. It was familiar; we have definitely lunched there before. It was actually raining at that point, although not super hard. I found a place to climb under a ledge while lunch was being set up. The spot was a great place to look for lizards, because I remember a lot there from last trip, but alas, they weren’t a fan of the rain and cold and were nowhere to be found.I got mom to take a picture of me on the ledge, after Matthew went to get a sandwich (he came up with me, or rather found me up there and joined me).

I eventually came down and got lunch, and then waited under an overhang while the boatmen cleaned up lunch. As we set out again, it really started to rain. Mark told us to keep our happy hats on, and that he would do his best to skirt some rapids so we wouldn’t get more wet and cold. We squished almost all of us in the tea room minus the karmas, and we were all decked out in raingear and everything else we had in our day gear. Even the boatmen had on huge rain jackets- it was the most clothing I ever saw them wear, they usually were in shorts, flip flops, and some sort of t-shirt.
Matthew didn’t have his raingear in his daygear, and he was like, I’m fine. Later Kathy was like, he has no idea how hypothermia works. Mark took off his own sweatshirt and made Matthew put it on, and then fashioned a trash bag vest to keep him sort of dry. We had him huddle in the middle of the tea room and put another trashbag over his legs, and he kind of squatted there for a while, probably not comfortable, but not complaining about the new layers of clothing either.

A few miles and maybe 45 minutes to an hour later (which I know seemed like longer), we stopped at Tanner Canyon. We were having an internal debate in our raft of whether or not to hike or just make camp early, but Mark only heard part of it and decided we were hiking. The worry was that while some of us could warm up while hiking, those that couldn’t or didn’t want to hike would just get colder. I think it worked out in the end though; I hiked with a bunch of people, and those that stayed behind hung out under the lunch tent that was re-erected and shared funny stories about practical jokes and such. Our whole group (us 5) started the hike, with the Karmas and I think Jan turning back in the beginning when it got rocky. Mom made it up a little ways to where some stone pictures were (hieroglyphics? Stone carvings? Not really sure what to call them here.), and then headed back down.

About 2/3 of the group made it to the clearing where we had a good view of the river and what looked a little like a delta- one of the wider places at canyon level.
There was some anasazi artifacts including a piece of pottery and what looked like some remains of a dwelling, although it’s very hard to tell the difference between that and some of the rock layer in that part of the canyon. There was also a stone that was used to grind corn with a rock- I need to look up the name for this.
Wandering back into the side canyon, and down a small bit, there was another grinding rock and lots of pieces of pottery.

Mark told us that there used to be tons more but people kept taking it, and asked us please to not take it. He was like, what’s it going to do, sit on your dresser? People, generations after us, need to see this stuff. We went further into the side canyon, until we almost did a u-turn back in the direction of the river, but into this almost slot canyon – wider than a slot canyon, but recently carved by water, not much growing there- that went down- it was a little slick, and several people were like, are we coming back up this way? Mark was like yes, and they were like, ok, that’s all I needed to know, and they didn’t go any further. People on this trip were great about knowing their limits and not complaining when they reached them.

We stopped somewhere between halfway and 2/3 of the way down the slot canyon, complete with some fresh pools of water from the rain, and saw a ledge in the canyon that had more grinding stones and… corncobs. That were like… 800 years old. Very small, and we didn’t touch them of course, but wow. It was really cool to see.
Sliding down a few of those ledges did in my raingear, which I was still wearing along with my life jacket for warmth. We climbed out and made it made to the rafts with no incidents.

Chatting with Parke (one of the guides) later on in the trip, I asked him if the hikes and the trip ever got boring, and he said that each trip was different, and that he had never done the Tanner hike before. ! Mark wanted to take our group, and specifically the Beans, somewhere they had never been, since they have seen so much of the typical sidehikes in the canyon. Most people like to hike to places they can play, like waterfalls, and this hike would also be miserable if the sun was blazing, which of course it wasn’t.

We got back on the rafts, more warmer from the hike, and went another hour-ish before we camped below Nevill’s rapid. This time there was no question about putting up tents, since we were cold and wanted to make sure that we kept at much stuff as possible, including ourselves, dry. It had stopped raining by time we camped though, which was great- my one wish was to not have to pitch the tents in the rain, because then they would be wet to start with. Even if it only paused for 5 minutes, I think I would have been happy. But it stayed dry that night and finaly began to sort of clear up, although it was cloudy some that night. I think we had seared tuna which was really good. The tents were great for warmth even though I don’t think it rained.