Layover
We got a brief shower in the middle of the night, which was preceded by a single clap of thunder. It sounded threatening enough that I got up and quickly threw the fly on our tent, but not everyone took that precaution, about half the group got wet from it. By sunrise though, the sky was a brilliant clear blue, hardly a cloud in sight...
Much of the group took off shortly after breakfast for hikes up Monument Creek. I decided to chill for the morning and putter around, set up a sunshower for W. and maybe hike some later. When I went downstream to the mouth of Monument Creek, I ran into a group of 4 backpackers who are Boy Scout leaders on a trip w/o scouts. Had a nice chat with them, then got started setting up the shower. A group of 6 white rafts that I assumed was a commercial group pulled in at our campsite while I was downstream setting the shower up, and after awhile they all ran on through Granite, all had pretty smooth runs, they stayed in the current along the r. wall, and all went r. of the big hole bottom center. Turns out it was a NPS patrol trip, and we got inspected pretty closely, and passed with an A+. The Superintendent of the park was along, rowing his own raft, along w/ some Aussie and Kiwi parks people on an exchange assignment here.
I set the shower up for WW and left her doing laundry and went back to camp about 11:30, and clouds appeared and thunder rumbled over the canyon rim...by noon it was starting to rain, hard, and any thoughts of drying clothes today started looking sketchy. Showers turned into more of a constant rain and the thunder continued all afternoon, and all the hikers came back wet by early afternoon. Some had been up on the Tonto rim when the lightning started, and had to scramble to get down to less exposed ground. We set up the big wing, and then the smaller one too, but by mid-afternoon they both had been blown down, several times, the wind was very unpredictable and gusty. Almost everyone retired to their tents. Really nasty, freaky weather, but we were dry in our tent.About 5 the rain seemed to be stopping so we make the decision to cook dinner as a morale boost, and just about when we are totally mobilized, the rain began again in earnest, not real hard, but steady. The wind had calmed down, so we put the big wing back up again, and had a good hot dinner, but everyone was wet by the time we finished. We took everything down and stowed it all, just in case the wind kicked back up. Good thing we did, since at midnight the lightning resumed, along with more wind and rain, and that was the first wave of about 5 or 6, violent and intense storms. The lightning was often right on top us, with an incredible crescendo at 3 AM, with more lightning, and a deluge that came off the canyon wall like a continuous sheet of water falling with a roar that was quite unnerving, in the dark. It flooded out several of the tents, and the night was filled with headlamps flashing and agitated voices as the flood victims had to mobilize to find and move onto drier ground. Luckily the groover (toilet) was untouched, even though a waterfall came down a few feet away from it, but our kitchen beach had a serious gully cut right through the center of it, under one of our tables in fact!
By this time we were all praying that was it, but there were several more waves of storm to come, culminating at exactly 6 AM with a flash of lightning and thunderbolt that was right over us, no lag whatsoever, as our alarm clock...not that many of us got much sleep. But the rain had finally abated, and our shell-shocked team straggled out of bed remarkably cheerfully, considering the night we had just been through. What a group, not a whine from anyone, although everyone had a story to tell! Our layover day did not actually result in much rest or recuperation for anyone. Never before in my Grand Canyon trips or in all the years I spent growing up in the desert Southwest have I witnessed a storm like we had last night. Our campsite lost a lot of sand to the runoff of all the showers, and we saw later that this was the case for many miles downstream too.
