ii) We looked for a route through the vegetation at Spring Canyon, but did not find a way through or a place that was suitable for a camp. My older edition of the guide book showed a camp, but the newer versions that Mike and David had did not. I picked up some trash in the swamp there including a slimy rubber ball that people in our group used to play baseball with at 220 mile camp. Tracy had some soft ball experience and lead the girls to a victory over the boys. Pumpkin Spring was under water and we looked at where it was as we floated by. There was a commercial trip stopped there and the guide told us where Pumpkin Spring was under the water. We stopped at Three Springs canyon, but did not hike upstream this time. Ted, Wesley, and I also hiked up from several other of the camps. The canyon and rocks were interesting above 220 mile canyon and above 186.4 mile canyon. We brought harnesses, ropes, and a small climbing rack on this trip, but did not use them except for using a short rope in Silver Grotto. There weren’t that many of us that had experience doing technical climbing and we did not have enough time to do much more than what we did anyway. There never seems to be enough time for hiking and climbing in Grand Canyon.

jj) Wildlife – We saw a lot of wildlife on this trip including condors along the bank in the upper part of the canyon, big horn sheep, mostly in the lower part of the canyon, a beaver along the bank, great blue heron, squirrels, ravens, many frogs, tadpoles, and fish. We also had a rattle snake crawl out from under our kitchen tarp one morning. The biggest pest problem that we had were red ants. Several people were bitten. I wore my boots and socks most of the time and tucked my pants in my socks and did not get bitten. There were a lot of ants in the camps, but also away from camps and even away from trails. I could not tell that activities of people attracted them very much compared to areas where people did not regularly go. We lost some fruit to rodents that was in drop bags on the rafts, and had ravens peck into a few plastic bags, but unless it was a raven that took the GPS, we did not loose anything significant that I know of to them. I was glad we had our snacks in a hard-sided container.

kk) Conflict Between People – We had some conflict between people on this trip that detracted from the experience for all of us. I thought quite a bit about what to mention or not mention in this report about these problems. I don’t want to risk offending anyone, but also don’t want to hide what was a significantly negative aspect of the trip. Although there were certainly other contributors, the main conflict occurred, at least initially, between my son Wesley and Glenn. To distribute the people among the boats, I had assigned Wesley and Glenn to the same raft. I told Wesley and Glenn that they needed to work together and to take turns rowing and divide up the rapids between them in a fair manner unless they agreed otherwise. The two had very different backgrounds, but between them, I though they had the skills and experience to manage a raft. Individually, I told Wesley to make sure that things in the raft were secured well, that the cooler was drained daily, that the raft was tied up well when we stopped, etc. Early in the trip, Michelle told me that Wesley had complained to her that Glenn was saying rude things to him, was disconnecting Wesley’s stuff and leaving it unsecure in the raft, insisted on his own way even when Wesley expressed safety concerns, and had a generally lackadaisical attitude about safety. I kept an eye on Glenn, but otherwise I didn’t do much about it. I did not see anything that was egregious, and when I gave Glenn a few pointers on minor items, he seemed receptive. My impression was that a power struggle was going on between Wesley and Glenn. I though that they should be able to work it out.