Narrows in the Rain

Well, I knew it was going to rain, but frankly I was going to go into the Narrows anyway. For one, I am very experienced and I knew where safe ground was. For another, I just wanted to be in the Narrows for a bit to understand what happens when it does rain in there. The first of the days was dry, though, without any rain coming down. I spent my time hiking upstream through the crowds of people until I made it past Big Spring. Then I spent the rest of the time working on social trails. I had spent most of my summer in the Narrows trying to eliminate these trails.

 Though it had been rather successful in the lower sections, the wilderness Narrows were not incredibly easy to get the job done. It was difficult to access and the lack of signage and educated hikers made it a challenging experience. It took most of my time and most of my energy in there. I didn't get any rain which was slightly disappointing. I went to sleep unconcerned, but was awoken at 5:30 AM by a downpour. This downpour continued until 8:30 AM. I have to say at this point, I was a bit concerned. Luckily, my planning had involved camping at site 10 where I knew that I would have contact with dispatch.

They were able to give me some good information on the weather, so that I knew that I would not be in too much trouble with what was happening upstream. I was surprised by how many people were hiking past me concerned but still not stopping when it was pouring down rain. I filled them in on what information I had, but they would have kept going regardless. These AM rainstorms are the ones that actually killed 5 people in the 60's. They are going to take some people out again, it is only a matter of time.

We do our best to give the information that we can give, but when you are up there, you lack that information. I was impressed by the numbers of waterfalls coming down just by my campsite. There were two separate canyons near me with beautiful large waterfalls. I hung out around camp until 10 AM and then started going downstream. I continued to work on social trails on the way down regardless of the fact it was still sort of raining. It actually gave me some good perspective on how much moisture these things would get. They got a lot which just meant that keeping people off of them was tough to do. As I hiked down, the water had risen a bit, but still did not pose too much of a danger. Yet, there were still many people trudging up with all the same ridiculous questions.

Yeah, it was something to be concerned about people. As I made it out to the Riverside Walk I had both gotten a lot of work done and seen the canyon during the rain. Beautiful, yet very dangerous and even with a lot of experience, I would never feel the need to experience it again.