Saturday June 3, 26.2mi/42.2km

North Rim near Milk Creek (662.3/8280ft) to North Rim at road FS223 (682.7/8060ft) (AZ) +5.3mi Tapeats detour, +0.5mi GPS correction

It was a pretty cold night and I woke up with some condensation on the inside of the tent. I decided to let the sun dry that a little bit so I didn’t leave until almost 8am. Today was mostly easy roadwalking.

Pretty soon I came to a viewpoint overlooking Crystal Creek canyon. Somewhere in the distance it connects to the Grand Canyon.

I listened to some podcasts as I roadwalked, and it was a very enjoyable morning. I encountered this junction which seemed like a funny juxtaposition of place names. I turned right towards Swamp Point…. But Point Sublime sounds much better!

Halfway through the morning I came to my only water source all day, Kanabownits Spring. It was flowing pretty strong!

I continued on, and the miles flew by as the scenery changed from pines to aspens.

Yup, still heading towards Swamp Point!

At that junction the route took a hard left and headed west, and the forest soon changed back to pines.

I hiked another couple hours all the way to the end of the road. The time flew by as I listened to my Obama audiobook. At the end of the road is the North Bass Trailhead.

Usually, hikers would go down this trail to Moav Saddle, and then down Saddle Canyon and Tapeats Creek. Unfortunately, Tapeats is still flooding from snowmelt, so I have to do a road walk detour around, and rejoin the route at Thunder River. The views from Swamp Point were pretty amazing though. Looking north down Saddle Canyon:

And directly west down into Moav Saddle:

I had to backtrack on the road about a mile, to get around this little side canyon that was blocking me from heading north.

After that short backtrack, I bushwhacked a mile to connect to the next road. It was a super easy bushwhack through open ponderosa pine forest.

Because I had gone upstream a mile, that side canyon was now just a small grassy valley, and very easy to get across.

I quickly climbed up the hillside, and got to the plateau on the opposite side. The bushwhacking was still quite easy, and now the open forest also had some grass.

Surprisingly, for the first (and hopefully only) time of the entire hike, I encountered mosquitoes….insane amounts of hungry mosquitoes. I kept moving quickly through that area, and as soon as I was back on the next dirt road, they were gone. Weird. After a mile on that dirt road, I decided to set up camp. The spot seemed too perfect to pass up, it was in the ponderosa pines, flat, and mosquito-free.

Tomorrow I will start off with one more short bushwack, and then roadwalking most of the day. I love these easy days where I can just hike and listen to audiobooks.