Here we are about five weeks out from my departure for Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The excitement is growing, but it's tempered by the wildfire situation out there. About a week ago strong winds fanned the Dragon Bravo fire, which had started by lightning on the North Rim, beyond the control of firefighting crews. It destroyed the historic lodge on the North Rim, along with park personnel housing and dozens of other structures. The North Rim village where the lodge stood is now closed for the rest of the year, and trails from the North Rim to the canyon floor are closed until further notice. According to an app I'm using to check the conditions out there, the fire covers some 12,000 acres and is currently 2% contained.
Farther north there's a much bigger fire burning: the White Sage fire covers over 58,000 acres. Over the last few days I've watched this fire go from 0% contained to 31% contained. Apparently some monsoon rains have helped the firefighters' efforts. However, today's forecast shows much drier weather moving in.
People I've spoken to with our outfitter in Flagstaff seem optimistic that everything will be fine by our launch day on August 27. But there's no guarantee of that... those folks aren't wildfire experts or meteorologists. One of my biggest concerns is the smoke: spending sixteen days in a smoky haze is definitely not the Grand Canyon experience I've been hoping for, and of course the last thing I want to do is lead a group of people into conditions that could be harmful to their health.
All I can do is sit here and hope that five weeks will be enough time for the events out there to run their course. And maybe they will. Maybe it'll turn out I'm worrying over nothing. But I'm powerless to do anything, and that's frustrating.
Here at home I'm just doing the usual, getting in my conditioning sessions and trying to take care of my health. During the past week I rode my bike a couple of times and paddled my whitewater boat in the harbor a couple of times. This weekend I paddled the surfski out on a quiet, flat Mississippi River. The only barge traffic I saw was a northbound rig this morning, and it was too far upriver for me to catch up for some wake surfing.
I think the weather this weekend has been the worst of the summer so far. While the air temperature hasn't been higher than maybe 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the humidity has been off the charts, making it very unpleasant outside. On top of that, I started feeling some intense lower back soreness on Friday, and it's feeling only marginally better today. It's a condition I've had many times before, and I have no doubt it'll be better in another couple of days. But that and the weather have me feeling pretty beaten down right now.
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