August 10, 2005
Thursday morning after eating one half a bagel and a chai latte, Brian, Joel and I caught the 6:30 shuttle to the top of The Narrows, a privately owned area called Chamberlain's Ranch. Our companions on the hour and a half ride were three college students from North Carolina on a roadtrip before returning to school.
» My Narrows pictures on Flickr
» Here's a good description if you are interested in doing the Narrows
Once dropped off at our destination, the only way out was to follow the trail roughly 20 miles to the end. The trail starts out as a lazy mile and a half jaunt through rolling cattle-grazing country.
It was pretty country, but really, we all just wanted to get through it and get to the canyon.
Here's a shot of me before we went in. That canyon looks pretty ominous.
If you are unaware, The Narrows is a slot canyon carved in a mountain the past hundred thousand or so years. The beginning has a lot of land that you can walk on, but the further you go the more it becomes like this.
At times, the water is only up to your ankles, but at other times, you have to swim. I would say the average height of the water is about waist high. The picture below is of a waterfall that we came across at about the eight mile mark. That's Brian venturing into it to see how deep it gets. Another point on interest, here's a
picture of the waterfall in 2002. As you can tell, this amount of water would make it a lot easier to do the hike, in fact, I believe the photo came from a set where the people did it in one day as opposed to the two days it took us.
Take a look at how tall that wall is. Yes, that's Joel at the bottom. It's huge! I didn't even get the whole wall, it continues up for another thousand feet or so.
This is called Big Spring. It's a great place to drop your packs and get a good picture. I set my camera on my pack and put the timer on. Pretty, huh?
Here is the final picture we took while still in The Narrows. This was after lunch and we still had about two and a half hours left of our hike through the canyon behind us. For obvious reasons, this is my favorite picture of the trip. Again, I used the timer on my camera to get this one.
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4 Comments
Wow, great pictures Neil! Thanks for sharing. I am definetly gonna have to do that hike. I don't know if I would dare take my camera
You have to take your camera. I reasoned that the reason I bought it was to take good pictures and I didn't want to take subpar pics with a disposable.
That's true - that's why we spend so much on our cameras. I would not be happy with the quality of a disposable. Especially through a canyon like that.
Exactly. I felt it was worth the risk. I haven't seen my friends pics with their disposables, but I've never been very impressed with their quality of photos. If you do it, just keep it in at least one ziplock bag when not in use and you'll be fine. Of course, if you do the hike next year, the water level will most likely not be as high as this year.
