A long hike and a sad goodbye

Just finished a twenty mile hike through Canyon de Chelly.  We started at 0900 and the first part of the hike was a descent down a rock face about 1000 feet to the canyon floor.  I made the wrong assumption that because our leader was a Navajo women of about 62 that the climb down could not be too bad.

 Wrong...wrong..wrong.  This woman was actually a mountain goat disguised as a Navajo.  The first part of the descent was over a cliff face hanging onto a rope ladder and cable as one looked down over a very empty space to the river below.  Each portion of the drop involved either ladders, cables, or ledges to make it to the valley floor.  It was something like the Chutes and Ladders game in design but without chutes....... unless one slipped.  It was both a frightening and exhilarating that I hope to do again. 

Once on the bottom of the canyon our long hike began to the mouth of the canyon and our cars.  Most of the trip involved walking through a river bed  several inches of water deep. There were large numbers of Indian ruins along the way as well as petroglyphs. The canyon walls were mostly red sandstone with contrasts of black and white that dripped down from the tops of the walls.  Awesome is too mild a word to describe the scenes.

The ladders were the easy part!

Amazing colors on the canyon walls.

The river bed we walked through for miles.

Michael From, Pediatrician, and two of Elsie's Grandchildren.

The last five miles we were joined by the grandchildren of Elsie, our Navajo leader, as we no played in the water on way out, ending the trip at six in afternoon. This was a great ending to my first two months with the Navajo and I am sad to leave.  I will be back at the beginning of June for more adventures and experiences with a group of people little understood by most visitors.  So, stay tuned for part two in about four weeks and enjoy a few pictures of the hike.