The night was cold and quite windy at times but we were fairly comfortable inside the tent. I think the temperature probably went down into the mid 30s but I doubt it went below freezing. I was up around 5:30 to try and get some shots of the crescent Moon while it was still dark. This proved virtually impossible without a tripod however and after a few attempts I gave up on the idea. We got up again around 6 and had some breakfast while watching the sun come up. It looked like it was going to be a glorious day. We took our time having breakfast, warming up, and breaking camp and did not start down the trail until around 8.

The upper portion of the trail was much clearer than I remember from the last time we were on it in September of 1995. I knew there had been some work done to make the upper portions more passable and it looked like that work was holding up. There were no obvious signs of heavy trail usage but the trail was pretty easy to follow all the way down through the upper rock layers and into the Supai. I remember having to pick our way carefully and actually look for the trail and 1995 and that was no longer necessary.

The stretch along the eastern side of the canyon, down to the top of the Redwall and then through the Redwall was a lot longer than I remembered it. I remembered the nice little creek that we had lunch at being closer to the top and though perhaps it was above the Redwall but that turned out not to be the case. We made pretty good time along this upper section though and descended to the top of the Redwall gorge around 10:30. It took about another hour to get to the Redwall break, go down through it and get to the nice little creek that I remembered from the prior trip. We got there right around 11:30 though so it was a perfect stop for lunch.

Robin was already starting to have problems with her feet by this time and she welcomed the rest stop. We relaxed, had a nice leisurely lunch, and spent about an hour there before starting down the trail again.

Things went downhill (in more ways that one) for the remainder of the afternoon. Neither of us remembered all of the ups, downs and arounds along the lower portion of the trail and it just seemed to go on forever. When we finally got to the spot where we knew we had to cross the creek it was not obvious at all where to go on the other side and nothing seemed familiar based on the vague memories of the prior trip. Actually I knew where we had to be but the one way to get there looked more difficult than it needed to be and there was no sign of "trail". Nonetheless we scrambled up the rocky, screey slope on the other side of the creek and did manage to find the trail higher up.

The next problem was just before we got to the bridge near Roaring Springs and the trail just went out across a steep slope and disappeared. I was convinced we had missed something so we looked for the trail lower down along the creek but found nothing. After wasting about 15 minutes down there we came back up and started across the slope. There actually was a trail there but it was very indistinct and the slope was quite steep. I took my pack across to the other side and then came back for Robin's since I knew she would have problems going across with the pack on.

Once across that little section the rest was easy and we were at the bridge in no time.

We got to the bridge at 5 and from there down to Cottonwood Camp on the North Kaibab Trail took about another hour. We had camp setup and dinner cooking by 6:30 but it was dark shortly after that. There is no way we would have made it down to and then up Wall Creek today as well so it's good we got a site at Cottonwood. As it was we were having serious doubts about going up Wall Creek tomorrow as Robin was having major foot trouble. We needed a Plan B.