Day 10: June 17th

We woke up very early to get an early start on our hike into the canyon. We took Hermit's trail into the canyon. We got to the bottom in about four hours. My knee gave out about half way down. It was terrible to deal with the injury but luckily the second half had easier terrain. It was such an awesome hike because we hiked through four different ecosystems. I gained an appreciation for what kind of hike i was enduring. At the rim we began hiking through the pine forest dominated by ponderosa pine. It was about two and a half miles into the hike where i began noticing the change in ecosystems as the pine trees were becoming less and less frequent. It was transitioning into the upper sonoran ecosystem. This environment consisted of very hardy plants. The majority of the hike was in this ecosystem, probably six or seven miles of the twelve mile hike was through the upper sonoran before it had become lower sonoran. The lower sonoran is made up of smaller and still very hardy plants which thrive in dry environments. Once we reached the creek the plants were much larger with lots of trees. This was the riparian forest.

We had half the class set up camp camp at the start of the creek and my campsite with the other half was on the beach at the river. The 2 miles to our site was like hiking through the jungle. This was very crazy because we had been hiking through desert all morning. We had the rest of the day to relax after a discussion with Patrick at our site. I was exhausted, I didn't even take notes. But I do remember talking about the natural habitat that is supposed to exist along the river and howit could be beneficial to many species. We also discussed the endangered species act. There are many endangere species which could thrive here if there were more natural beaches and less invasive species like the tamarisk. The Glen Canyon Dam is not helping this case. Patrick mentioned the mexican grey wolf could do great in the canyon but could cause controvercy with the tourists.