LAM History Index | Go to Previous Topic | Go to Next Topic By 1974, a year after
Merle Wheeler introduced the Mountaineers to the narrow slot canyons on
the Navajo Reservation, he also started taking club members on tough
one-week trips into some of the most remote areas of the Grand Canyon.
The guide books for these trips were Harvey Butchart's tersely written
"Grand Canyon Treks." These booklets provided only the most minimal
information about how to locate a particular canyon, where water was
likely to be found, or whether there were breaks through the major rock
layers. The trip participants knew only that the route they had selected
would "go," if they didn't get lost.
Fig. 1. Merle Wheeler, Bob Cowan, Peter O'Rourke, Norbert Ensslin, and Larry Dauelsberg starting down the Tanner Trail. Thanksgiving dinner was eaten at the river, and then the party continued downstream and climbed out at Grandview Point (Bob Cowan photo, Nov. 1974). The first Grand Canyon trip that Merle Wheeler took the Mountaineers on was to Shinumo Amphitheater off the North Rim, in May 1974. This trip started on the North Bass Trail from Swamp Point, went down into Shinumo Amphitheater to the Colorado River, then up and out via (the appropriately named) Merlyn Abyss. Bob Cowan remembers that he went on all four of the 1974-75 Grand Canyon trips, including this first trip.
Fig.
2. Merle Wheeler and Carl Keller in Nankoweap Creek, Grand Canyon The May 1975 trip involved a descent down the Eminence Break to the Colorado River. The party carried a small 4-person raft to cross the river to get into Nankoweap and Kwagunt Amphitheaters. The raft was used again to cross back to the east side of the river. The party made camp on an island at the mouth of the Little Colorado River. On the next day they climbed steeply out to the rim via a route used by John Wesley Powell on his first exploration of the Canyon. Earlier in the trip, on the day that the party crossed from Nankoweap to Kwagunt Amphitheater, almost everyone took off his pack at the saddle and climbed to the top of Kwagunt Butte. But that was the day that Carl Keller was carrying the raft. Carl and Merle raced to the top of the Butte with their packs still on, with Carl still carrying the 40-lb. raft just to show he could do it!
Fig.
3. Dennis Brandt, Carl Keller, and Norbert Ensslin enjoy 360-degree While still living in
Tucson, Merle Wheeler joined a trip to Vishnu Amphitheater. On that
trip, he and his friends became the second party to climb Vishnu Temple,
a huge tower in the middle of the Grand Canyon whose top is as high as
the rim. The climb of Vishnu Temple is via a challenging route off the
North Rim that requires a lot of scrambling and two short pitches of
easy class-5 climbing. Some years later, after hearing about Merle's
trip, a Mountaineers group returned to that rugged spire for a repeat
ascent. According to the summit register, they were the 7th party to
climb the tower. LAM History Index | Go to Previous Topic | Go to Next Topic
|