Day three began at the reasonable hour of 7:30 A.M.
I started the day by asking, "Why the fuck are we up so early?"
We broke camp and ate breakfast, coated ourselves in sunscreen and prepared for a long day of hiking. We were right at the mouth of the canyon and had been told there were ample trails to satisfy a full day, if not many days of hiking. Lie #1 of the day.
We managed to scramble our way up the side of the cliff. Along the way we found a geo cache that we pillaged...actually we pillaged nothing because it was the shittiest geo cache ever. Actually thats not true. As far as I know there are no cool geo caches. They are all shitty. This one contained: pictures of some douche bag and his friends, a rain poncho, artifacts indicative that the cache once contained a bottle of crown, mantles for a lantern, and a pencil. Rad.
Anyway, after getting up the cliff and taking some pictures of us standing on the edge of the cliff we continued hiking down the canyon. See, today we had a plan. We were going to scout out the infamous Rock Slide, the class IV rapid, from above to plan our line better.
Well, along the way Brandon caught a GIANT thorn through the foot. That was pretty awesome especially since only dirty fucking hippies hike in Chaco sandals.
We finally arrived at a completely impassable side canyon. Hiking around it was our only option. It appeared to run roughly a mile into the desert. We elected to call it a day of hiking after only about 3 hours. The main reason being the sun was already beyond oppressive and we realized we really didn't have the desire to do massive amounts of desert hiking after all. When we returned home we would later find out if we had walked around this canyon, Rock Slide would have only been about half a mile away. Oh well.
On the way back we actually encountered a path along the canyon rim which we followed back to where we scrambled up. Scrambling down took a little longer because Brandon had a few episodes of acrophobia induced paralysis while trying to down climb.
When we got back to camp, we packed the rest of our shit and hit the river. We had hoped the confined boundaries of the canyon would pile the water up some and provide us with some depth so we wouldn't drag ass as much. No such luck. This was a day filled with getting out of the boat, dragging it, and getting back in.
Before long, we had encountered Rock Slide which had been described to us as a class IV (which means pretty difficult) rapid filled with house sized boulders.
What we found was no rapids worth mentioning and closet-sized boulders. The first thing we did was enjoy a casual swim and play around in the legendary rapid. We were greatly disappointed.
The only challenge of the entire rapid was....actually nothing. Justin and Brandon managed to navigate fine. I took a hands off approach and allowed the river to ram my boat into the first rock of The Slide at which time I was pushed side ways and tipped over.
Just was standing near by and he and Brandon both agree I had a look of terror upon my face as I went over. This is probably accurate as I had a) about 1000 dollars worth of photo equipment with me and b) a strong fear of drowning.
After flailing around for a few second I realized I was in waist deep water. I stood up, quickly turned my boat right side up, and we continued the day. I did manage to successfully navigate the rapid on my second attempt.
Just past Rock Slide on the Mexican side we found a nice patch of dense Bermuda grass in the shade on a ledge over looking a rocky beach. We set up camp and had lunch. Brandon was really bitching up a storm about this campsite. His protesting stemmed from his fear of all things "icky." He was certain we would be consumed by snakes and scorpions living in the tall grass. He even claimed he would rather sleep on a gravel bar versus the pillowy Bermuda grass. Justin and I agreed he was a bitch, told him to pitch his tent like a bitch, and enjoy the night.
By the end of lunch there was no shade to be found on our ledge so we jumped in the river and started walking down stream. Brandon spent a lot of his time looking for round circular flat rocks he thought might make nice coasters while Justin and myself better used our time creating rock sculptures to please the God's of fertility.
Brandon then laid down on the rocks and took a nap. Justin and I walked back upstream and found a sandy bench cut out bellow a large boulder that created a nice shady area for sitting and relaxing. And thats about how we spent the rest of the day.
The evening was uneventful save a few satellites passing overhead and an occasional shooting star. We watched the bats (which numbered in the thousands) fly sometimes inches over our heads eating insects. It was pretty interesting watching them and listening to them echo-locate their prey. Justin and I once again slept under the stars (like men) and Brandon spent the night in his tent (like a woman).
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