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The Grand Canyon: Pipe Creek to Diamond Creek

Wednesday – Wednesday, April 8-15, 2026 | Low CFS: 8,030 – High CFS: 8,660

Less than a week after returning from a great rafting trip through the Grand Canyon from Lees Ferry to Pipe Creek Beach at the bottom of the Bright Angel Trail last year, I called up and booked the second half of the trip for April of this year so Diane and I could finish what we had started. Although Arizona River Runners wasn’t running their usual Hiker’s Special trip this spring, their sister company Grand Canyon Whitewater was offering the same trip, so we booked with them since it’s the same company- just with a different name on the sides of the rafts. On this trip we would be hiking down the Bright Angel Trail and then following the current of the Colorado River all the way down to Diamond Creek over the course of seven days, and we were looking forward to seeing this part of the canyon! However, as I have mentioned in the previous two Trip Reports, I had been battling a pretty bad cold for the past week and a half and was finally getting over it right as we left to drive to Arizona on Wednesday, so I was a little concerned about the hike down into the canyon since I hadn’t been able to do much hiking for the past couple of weeks, but I figured it would be OK since the hiking was all downhill…

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Valley of Fires and the Salinas Pueblo Missions

Lost in the Land of Enchantment | Friday – Saturday, November 15-16, 2024

After leaving the Three Rivers Petroglyphs Site, we made a quick stop at Pistachioland for Diane and then headed over to Carrizozo to visit the family of one of her friends who live there. When we were packing for this trip we decided to bring along a tent that we had not used for a while and accidentally forgot to bring the stakes for it. While this wasn’t a problem when we were camped at Gleatherland in Texas because it was a very calm evening, it had been very windy all day while we were searching for petroglyphs at Three Rivers and it was supposed to stay pretty windy all night, so we were a bit concerned. Thankfully, we were able to borrow some tent stakes from Diane’s friends while we were visiting which would help us out quite a bit. After our visit we ate dinner in town and then drove just a few miles northeast to the Valley of Fires Recreation Area where I had reserved a campsite next to the lava flow for the night. We got our tent set up shortly before sunset and then read for a while before going to bed early.

Wupatki National Monument & Sunset Crater Volcano

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Well, this extended weekend trip that I planned for Diane and myself certainly did not start off on the right foot! The initial plans for this three-day weekend started to come together back in early September when I was finally able to sign us up for a Ranger-Led hike to the Crack-In-Rock Pueblo at Wupatki National Monument. I’ve been trying to get on one of these hikes for many years without any luck, so I was very excited to finally get on the list this year. Unfortunately, the first winter storm of the season would have other plans for us as it impacted the Colorado Plateau just before our scheduled hike. Although I had been watching the weather closely the day before our hike and it appeared that the storm mostly missed the Wupatki area, when we were near Cameron on Saturday morning and just less than an hour away from Wupatki we both received the following message from the Ranger in charge of the hike:

The Arizona Strip: Peaks, Plateaus & Highpoints

Beyond the High Plateaus: Across the Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District
Monday – Friday, September 30 – October 4, 2024

Last year while I was reading A Canyon Voyage by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh about the second Powell Expedition that went down the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1871 and 1872, the text also spoke of their time spent reconnoitering and triangulating throughout the strip of land that is found north of the Grand Canyon and south of Utah state line, which is what motivated me to return to the Arizona Strip this year so I could could explore some of the peaks, plateaus and highpoints of this expansive region for myself. I also figured that this would make for a great extension of my exploration of the High Plateaus of Utah by continuing south through the Grand Staircase to the plateaus of the Grand Canyon District. So after leaving the Kaibab Plateau behind, Jared and I took off south across the Kanab Plateau from Fredonia on Monday afternoon and set out to spend the rest of the week making our way across the Arizona Strip. However, with temperatures much warmer than usual for this time of the year all over the southwest, we ended up taking it easy, relaxing in the shade at higher elevations as much as possible and having to cancel some of our hiking plans that it was just too hot for. Still, this was a great introduction of the plateaus of the Grand Canyon and I look forward to returning in the future to finish the hikes we couldn’t do this time around.

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Lava Tube Caving at El Malpais National Monument

Alternate Plans: Back on the Four Corners Circuit
Friday & Saturday, May 27-28, 2022

The first time Diane and I visited El Malpais National Monument we knew that we wanted to explore some of the lava tube caves in the park, but at that time all the roads were snow-covered and muddy and the caves were closed, so we figured we would have come back during a warmer part of the year to check them out. Of course, the next time we visited El Malpais it happened to be during the first few months of the COVID pandemic, and by then all the caves had been closed due to that, so as I started planning this alternate trip I was happy to learn that El Malpais had just recently reopened two caves, after all of them being closed for over two years, and I knew that this was finally going to be our opportunity to check them out!

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Tag: lava

The Grand Canyon: Pipe Creek to Diamond Creek

Valley of Fires and the Salinas Pueblo Missions

Wupatki National Monument & Sunset Crater Volcano

The Arizona Strip: Peaks, Plateaus & Highpoints

Lava Tube Caving at El Malpais National Monument