It was Friday. I had made it most of the way through a tough work week. Not tough because of stress or anything like that, but tough because the weather was so nice here at the Grand Canyon.

So I was eating my lunch at home because I live close to work, and decided to run a few laps on my backyard woody.
I,m happy with it. Sits on a concrete block, 16 feet high, big and small holds, jugs at the top, gently overhanging, hand crack down the middle. I call it Crack-a-supai.

Back at work, I ask my only climbing partner Dan if he wants to go out this weekend for some leads at the local cliff.
Here is his picture. It was taken at the base of a climb called Studly Do Right. Now Dan's name is Studly Do Right! Oh yah, he's also my boss. Turns out he was heading to Vegas.

So my only option was to go out and run a mini-trax on Sunday. Looks like the weather was still going to be great. Our highs are normally in the 30's this time of year.

Sunday morning I loaded up the bike and set off down the hill to The Bright Angel Walls.

Living in the Grand Canyon is like living in the past. The streets are full of kids on Halloween, rangers on horseback. Here I stopped for a fill-up before crossing the railroad tracks.

The Bright Angel Walls are a collection of amphatheaters along a layer of limestone, just west of the Bright Angel Trail on the way to Hermits Rest.
The climbing is along the cliff on the left.

From the bus stop, I had to ditch the bike and walk along the rim trail until I reached the marker for 3290 million years ago. Why it does not say 3.29 billion I do not know.

And finally I made it to the BA Walls.
These are the routes I was planning on running my Mini-trax on. The cliff is called the Lower Flailing Wall. It has a couple of trad lines and a half a dozen or so clip-ups.

As I was setting up my top anchor, I ran into Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go! They were there trying to rescue a baby condor who was stuck on the side of the cliff. Diego asked me to take their pictures for them so I did. He loaded them into his field journal and e-mailed them to me so I could add them into this trip report.

Diego likes wide cracks, and Dora prefers nice arets.

Finally I rapped down to the base of Surface Tension 5.10

Then I raped down to the base of Preying Mantles 5.11

By this time, it was 10:oo AM and it was getting downright hot. I was so psyched that I had to give a shakka to my main man in the White House Barack.

Before leaving, I looked around the corner at the wall I'd like to go to next.

And I made it back home in time to paint the tops of some Christmas cookies with my wife and son.