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Tonto Trail facing west near Plateau Point

On December 4th, 2009 I went on a day hike down the Bright Angel Trail and west on the Tonto Trail to go explore Horn Creek. The colors at Indian Garden were so brilliant that I hesitated there, limiting my time to explore Horn Creek itself.

Brahma and Zoroaster… letting off some steam? Heh.

The conditions for hiking this afternoon were absolutely perfect. The air was cool and crisp, and I’d be hard pressed to recall a time that the Grand Canyon was more silent.

Horn Creek

I started making my way down the east arm. It immediately developed into this cool looking narrows, but I was soon faced with a wet pouroff that I didn’t care to attempt to downclimb in the chill evening.

I tried the main west arm and made good progress. The only main obstacle was a mess of boulders near the place where the two arms of the canyons meet, which I bypassed up a slope to the east.

Cheops Pyramid

After some time I was faced with this high pouroff, the rim of which is seen in the photo above. The view from its rim is seen in the photo below. Sunset was coming soon on this December day, so I chose to turn around here without searching very diligently for a bypass – none were immediately evident.

Back on the Tonto level, the low sun nicely illuminated all the peaks on the north side of the river. The views from the Tonto are some of the best in all the canyon.

looking back into Horn Creek

Isis

Cheops

…and then it was just another dark, peaceful night-hike up the Bright Angel Trail.

click here to view a gallery and slideshow of all 82 photos from this day