Little Package

the Grand Canyon’s Fault

Caroline — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 17:58:26 +0000

I’m on upriver beach of the Kwagunt delta deep in the Grand Canyon. I have started taking voice notes using my phone. This is the first time that I’ve ever kept a hiking diary and I’m excited to try this. No promises it will turn out interesting, but given prior hikes along the Grand Canyon, it might. I’ve already been in the woods a few days. So let’s rewind for a bit to see how I got here. Monday, May 18th I woke up on the Kaibab Plateau near Jacob Lake, drove mi cacharro guapo 20 miles down a windy mountain pass past House Rock, then drove 26 miles down a dirt road to leave my backpack at the Trailhead. Once back at the highway, I left […]

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Beautiful, Economic, and Private WordPress image Management

Caroline — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 18:02:16 +0000

When you’re uploading images to WordPress, WordPress is going to make some changes to your file before it is stored in the WordPress media library. Namely, it is going to resize, smush, and scrape the image for data stored in EXIF. Then WordPress is going to “generate thumbnails.” Most people are not aware this is being done quietly in the background. Naturally they are confused why their images look differently on their WordPress site to how they look on the camera or desktop. A file is a file is a file, right? Nope. WordPress has wrested some control here. While trying to keep things “sane” for us, they inadvertently create insanity. Below are some helpful suggestions for taking back control over what WordPress can do to your […]

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No Beach? Moor by Shore-Tie!

Caroline — Mon, 13 May 2024 00:17:00 +0000

Some of the “bays” on Lake Powell are actually narrow canyons, and impossible to find beaches on at certain water levels. However, if you have enough bumpers, and some skills placing climbing protection (cams in particular) in iffy sandstone, then you can attach to the canyon wall. I was sort of surprised he wanted to do this given it’s a pretty nice boat, but it worked well. It was his first ever attempt doing shore-tie, so call me impressed. After several days here, where we came and went by SUP and motored dinghy, the total of our damage was having scraped mussels off the wall. Far less damage than rental house boats do going further up these canyons than they should. At the worst possible part of […]

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Labyrinth Canyon

Caroline — Fri, 10 May 2024 21:36:27 +0000

If you had told me in 2019 when I was hiking and packrafting around the mouth of Labyrinth Canyon that someday I’d be exploring the canyon deeper in a much larger boat, with a man and a dog, and that I’d be starting to enjoy it, I’d have laughed in your face. Lake Powell was at that point pretty depressing, I thought. Laughing in the face of a conservationists’ dilemma, their collective pain–my pain–this year I decided to let go and enjoy what I could of this odd situation Glen Canyon finds itself in (underwater). If I had decided during my Pacific Crest Trail through-hike to let go of the sadness of walking through burned sections of forest, and instead celebrate the char and ashes as a […]

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Navajo Canyon Camp

Caroline — Fri, 10 May 2024 16:41:02 +0000

We spent quite a bit of time setting anchor here (two anchors, actually) because weather was coming. And boy did weather come! At one point we had hiked about 1000 feet above the boat to sight-see. Looking down on the boat, while wind gusts pushed us around like little sails, we prayed it would stay in place. When we got back it was just how we put it, the anchors buried under about a foot of sand, at 45º anchors from the bow. But what’s the worst that could happen? Oh, it would be pretty bad actually: the boat would blow into and scrape up against sandstone walls, which are effectively rock-hard sandpaper blocks. The perils of navigating this man-made lake are sometimes intense, but my captain […]

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Lees Ferry Wind Storm

Caroline — Sun, 05 May 2024 21:42:50 +0000

Today was my second time up on top of this mesa, and definitely the windiest! HOLY SHIT! We felt really bad for anyone launching a boat down the Colorado River on that day! As you can see (if you zoom in) people are preparing to do just that. I was having a hard time standing up in the wind, and then it started to rain. I’m glad this time I drove most the way up this hill, and was not backpacking it and camping like the first time (when I walked from Loma, Colorado to Mt. Trumbull, AZ on my own version of the Hayduke). The dust devils definitely made this incredible vista even more otherworldly.

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Navajo Steps

Caroline — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 20:15:06 +0000

We found this spot using one of Kelsey’s books about hikes along Lake Powell, but only barely. It was hard to find at the lake level this march. We motored past the steps a couple times before finally catching a glimpse… on the way back to the boat. In the spring light, no shadows were cast by the steps, which in other lights, must be more obvious, because they are definitely well cut into the sandstone. The steps are very steep in parts, nowhere near as steep as other moqui steps I’ve seen, but still, they caught me feeling pretty nervous at points. We’ll be back to finish exploring this set, and another set of steps put in at the early part of the 20th century by […]

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