The sickness really beat me down. I mean really beat me down. I slept for 16 hours Monday afternoon/night. When I woke up, I felt a bit better. I had drank 2 liters of water throughout the night, and even woke up Tuesday morning and ate some granola bars. But the stomach issues were far from gone. I still had diarrhea that seemed to be constant. However the liquid intake was better than the outtake. I felt weak, but stronger than Monday.
Me and d=rt spoke of the options, me going back to Jacob Lake, meeting him on the North Rim in a few days, or trying to take it easy the next couple days down the trail. My stubborn self was easily convinced to try to hike on.
So we did. The first 8 miles were beautiful. We walked a road that went through aspen and ponderosa forests. We saw wild turkeys, blue grouse, and a lot of deer. We were at 9000 feet and drinking snowmelt! Perfect, I even felt pretty good after 8 miles.
Then we began our descent down to the Grand Canyon on the Nincoweap trail. It was about 6000 feet down. We quickly left our ponderosas and snow, and became completely exposed on a ridge headed steeply for the Colorado River. It was a neat trail, really pretty, but I was running out of water fast, and even drank a lot of what d=rt had left. I could see the lush green bottom for a long time, but it seemed to take forever to get there. When I did make it, I found a cottonwood, grabbed water, and began to drink. It was then that I made another mistake. I drank 3 liters of water in 20 minutes. Then threw it all back up. I was now weaker than before, not only regretting coming down to the canyon, but slightly fearing what would happen next. Diarrhea was still happening, and I was feeling weak.
We decided to hike 3 more miles down to the confluence of Nincoweap creek and the Colorado, hoping we could meet some rafters who could give me a ride or other suggestions.
d=rt scoped out 3 parties at the junction, and we decided to go to all of them, explaining the situation, and seeing if they had ideas. The first group was a private party, very interested in our trip, and they treated me like royalty. They had me sit down, gave me Gatorade, gave me anti-diarrheal, gave me pro-biotics, vitamin C, and even rubbed some oregano oil on my palm, saying it would help as well. It truly almost made me tear up. Once again, a group of strangers, giving so much to help others. Though they were not headed downriver the next day, it gave me some relief. They also said they would help anyway possible. We left them though, after many thanks as it was getting late and we wanted to see if anyone was headed downriver the next day.
The second group was already drunk, and said they weren’t headed downriver the next day either.
The third party was super helpful. We camped near them as I was exhausted. d=rt went down and spoke with them while I tried to eat some mashed potato flakes.
He came back after 30 minutes with 2 plates of food and good news. The leader would float us down part of our route the next day. d=rt ate steak, potatoes, salad, and chicken, which smelt so good, but I knew my stomach could not handle.
I slept on and off through the night, bad gas still, no diarrhea. The party crowd was hootin throughout the night, though it really wasn’t too loud. The bats were so neat to watch throughout the night, and I woke to cloudy skies, a real blessing.
I met the trip leader this morning, a super nice guy who offered anything he could to help. Gave me a ginger root and another roll of toilet paper. He said we should start hiking, and that he would pick us up a bit further down.
So we did. The route was rough, a few game trails on sand and stone. I was still weak and tired from the episodes the days before. But we made it 3 miles before we saw them coming. They picked us up and took us past the confluence of the Little Colorado River, (don’t tell anyone, it is against the rules)! But we got to float through some rapids, and made good time.
At the Little Colorado, we got on the beamer trail, which took us 10 miles to the Tanner Trail. I feel exhausted by the heat still, and plan to hike up the Tanner trail to the South Rim tomorrow. d=rt will push on, but I think I need a day off to recover. Time for sleep.
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