150-Mile Canyon

Matkat Hotel the evening before I left.

For the past 16 day I've been on a canyoneering river trip organized by Rich Rudow and Rick Demarest.  On Monday I hiked out 150-Mile Canyon with J.J., and Guy Smith joined the trip in my place for a few days.  I will rejoin the trip at Diamond Creek.  (Because Havasu Canyon has been closed by flood damage, this was as close as I could get to my original plan of hiking out at Havasu and back in at Diamond.)

In a word, this hike was great!!  It had just about everything you could ask from a day hike: river, canyon, cliff, water, narrows, boulders, sun and snow.   Rafts, wetsuits, wading, climbing, trail finding, and good old fashioned boulder hopping.

J.J. and I started out from Matkat Hotel camp in packrafts at 7:30am, just after the hiking group had started up the trail to do the Panameta descent. We stowed the rafts for later pickup at the beach about 1/2 mile upriver from Upset Rapids. We were in the mouth of 150-Mile at 8:30am. Finding and negotiating the first bypass, we were a bit apprehensive because this hike involves four rope assisted upclimbs that rely on pre-placed pull cords, used to raise a rope through rap rings placed on bolts & hangers. We weren't sure the pull cords would still be in place and our concern was heightened as we reached the first pouroff and found a silty length of parachute cord in the stream bed and no pull cord on the B&H. However, I observed that the pouroff did not appear to be a true rap according to "Todd and Rich" standards, but rather a partner-assisted upclimb. Sure enough we were able to negotiate it so we did not count it against the four pull cords we were hoping to find intact.

Fluted limestone with clear-running snowmelt.

As we approached the next waterfall, we could see a pull cord in good condition, and we successfully placed and ascended our rope. As we were moving upstream, J.J. said if there was going to be one washed-out pull cord, he wished it had been that one, because he was sure he could have upclimbed it. I should mention that J.J. is an awesomely good climber. 

We continued on, and each of the next three obstacles had a well placed and excellent condition pull cord. Unlike the parachute cord we had found ruined in the bed, the pull cords were all of good quality accessory cord. I don't know if it's any more resistant to flash flood damage than parachute cord, but we were sure glad to see such quality pulls since we were dependent on all four being in good shape.   

J.J. enjoys a rare dry-foot moment.

Two of the four pouroffs required wet upclimbs, at least partly in the falling water. It was quite exciting. I shuttled packs through the waist-deep to neck-deep pools balanced on my helmet to try to keep them at least somewhat dry, if only to prevent them getting any heavier. We mostly succeeded although at the final waterfall the pack hoist was almost straight up through the stream flow. The tale of the tape was that J.J.'s camera stayed dry inside its ziplock bag, so mission accomplished.


The lower section of Temple Butte and Redwall narrows was very pretty and reminded me of Saddle Canyon (the one between Muav Saddle and Tapeats Creek, not the Marble Canyon one). Large red-washed alcoves and some boulder scrambling. The higher section of Redwall became very narrow (10 feet or so) and contained fluted and sculpted white polished limestone that was as beautiful as any I have seen in the canyon. Even though we were going for speed, I just had to dig my camera out of the pack for a couple of photos at this spot, so we found a dry-foot spot to stop for a moment and snap some views.

The narrowest section is near the top of the Redwall.

Just after 1pm we topped out above the "90 foot cliff" that Rich had told us about. It was no problem for us both to upclimb with packs on and we wondered why such a big deal had been made of it. There was a B&H at the top which we imagined would mostly be used to belay downclimbs, rather than the moderate upclimb. In hindsight the first bypass up from the river was much more sketchy and exposed, and although we both upclimbed it without removing packs, J.J. had set up a belay for me after saying "it's wigging me out" doing a climb around a point with footholds just two or three inches wide with exposure to at least 50 feet of fall potential.

We took a break in the first direct sun of the day, getting out of our wetsuits and eating lunch on the polished top of the Redwall layer. At 2:20 we set off again. In the Supai we found two of the stock trails around ledge pouroffs, showing some signs of rough stacked stone construction to support the trail. At others we simply upclimbed in the interest of time. As we approached the end of the canyon we could see the exit break in the Coconino but we never saw either Buckhorn Spring or the metal wheelbarrow that are given as landmarks in the area. We didn't care too much since our main goal was to get out in daylight. 

J.J. taking in the views from the final pitch of Kaibab limestone.

On the bench above the stream bed we found a cairn and sign of a trail and started working our way up. Although the switchbacks were not particularly obvious, and the upper section was completely obscured by 4-6" of snow, we were able to make our way out, "mostly" staying on the correct trail alignment. For part of the way through the Hermit we followed fresh bighorn tracks in the snow and were amused that he seemed to be following the stock trail, at least for a little while. 

View to the east as sunset approaches.

In the Toroweap we encountered a barbed wire fence above a ravine and J.J. said "yep, I wouldn't want my cows walking off the edge of that", then we switched back across the slope to the east a long way until reaching another fence at the edge of another ravine. The two fences (and ravines) seemed to define the switchbacks the rest of the way up until it became apparent that the trail would angle directly below a corner in the Kaibab Limestone cliff.

Shortly after that, staying on the same line, we passed through a gate in the barb wire fence. I stopped again to take a couple photos of the fantastic view back to the east as the low sun angle set the canyon's contours in delightful relief. We topped out at 5:30pm, 10 hours after pushing our packrafts off the beach. It had been a most exhilarating day.

More photos from this trip can be viewed in my Picasa web album at

150-Mile Canyon

https://picasaweb.google.com/CRForsyth/150MileCanyon?feat=directlink