Flat Iron (Siphon Draw)

This is one of those hikes (climbs) that stays in your memory. For individuals who enjoy climbing this is a delight. Our guides, Mark and Ron, are just those individuals and had both done this trip several times in the past couple months. Our friend, Dan, was on his first adventure but also seemed ready for the climb.

After a short distance, we asked them to go ahead of us.  I, Nana, learned I am a "Sunday afternoon hiker." I like to take my time, talk with others on the trail and soak in everything. I was surprised how much trying to stay with the group affected me, triggering my asthma and really stressing me.  Once they went ahead, it was much more relaxing. Nothing that they did for sure. Don't know if it's competitiveness or being a little introverted or what, but I do like the almost private, intimate hiking experience. This was an interesting thing to learn. I am glad now that Papa and I are doing the Grand Canyon together and not in a group.

The other good thing about this adventure was learning about where we need to work on conditioning for the next 11 weeks.  Overall, both Papa and I are doing well the day after this hike/climb. Our area of soreness is in the upper thighs. Of course, the aerobic side needs work and Nana needs another 20 lbs. off too. This is good motivation to get those things covered in the weeks ahead.

The Siphon Draw trail up to the stream is relatively well maintained. It was an ascent but it was good hiking. This is a trail that we would possibly do again or take adventure loving guests with us.

After the slide rock area (Siphon Springs) is where the climb started, which is well-described in the links below. Although there are pretty good hand/foot holds, they aren't well-spaced for vertically challenged legs. I found myself several times on the way up having to climb with one knee in order to scale the vertical distance. This made it interesting on the way back down, lowering myself to one knee in order to reach far enough with my other leg to get that foot on the rock below. Thankfully Papa was a good spotter during these balancing feats.

The most challenging of the climbs is a 12 ft. vertical wall just before reaching Flat Iron. There is a tree to one side which many people used to climb the wall. We happened upon the area when a man was coming down and took the other side of the wall with a very narrow (less than a foot wide) ledge.

As you ascend on the narrow ledge on the right side, you have to straddle an opening about 8-10 ft. straight down and about 2.5 ft wide to make an L-shape turn to a wider ledge to finish the last couple feet up the wall. Going up was scary but I did it.  On the descent, I had a crowd of about 8 people watching. It must have been quite the show as I was nearly in tears and begged Papa to help watch my footing and guide me (he went down first). I heard encouragement from the group. Hikers are the nicest people!

By the time we got through the second vertical wall (this one a little less challenging, but still challenging), my legs were feeling tired. I also neglected to wear my gel toes which meant my toes were jamming into the top of my shoes causing pain to the toe nails.  (Note to self: always remember the gel toes when hiking! Papa had his and had no discomfort at all.) Those two items meant that a good portion of the downhill trek to the slide rock, I lowered myself to my bottom and slid down rocks to secure footing. Great ab workout. I'm sure it was another comical sight for onlookers, too.

We met one man on the way down who was also doing the bottom-scooting routine, although not as frequently as I did. He, however, didn't have gloves and his hands/palms were scraped and bleeding. We were SO thankful we read about the hike/climb and purchased the recommended hiking gloves. (Dan also encouraged us to have gloves.  Thanks Dan!) They were a blessing on this trip.

All-in-all, a very good adventure. I'm glad I did it once, but can honestly say that I'm not motivated by that degree of climbing. A little is good, but 12 ft. vertical climbs are not appealing to me. I'm not really afraid of heights, yet I did have a couple dreams last night about falling that woke me up. Guess you could say I have a healthy respect for the potential dangers of heights and falling on hard, jagged rocks.

We are doing more research on the corridor trails at the Grand Canyon. Although there are sections of the trails rated "strenuous" like this trail, I don't believe they involve climbing like this. The Canyon's strenuous trails are more steep elevation changes with switchbacks I believe. Again, we will be looking into this and making sure. This was about a 5-6 mile round trip with 45 degree or greater ascent/descent on a rocky path. We would not want to do 14-17 miles at the Canyon in a day in those conditions. Again, we're nearly certain it's not, since most of the trail is marked as moderate or even easy, but we will make sure. Better safe than sorry.

Another thing to learn before the Grand Canyon: Working with FlipVideo to get some good footage of our adventure. This is just the second week of working with the software and it's getting there; learned how to add captions this week. I'll keep working on it.  This week's video adventure.

Additional links/blogs about Siphon Draw/Flatiron:
http://hikingarizona.blogspot.com/
http://www.azhikers.org/
http://www.dankat.com/