Lynn and Julius, thanks for the complements. But we had many months to plan this trip, so that helped. I am more often a procrastinator, but on this one, knowing that another family's plans depended on my carrying my end of the deal motivated me a lot.
The comments about cell service reminded me of another hiker I met who was almost illegally camping at the last bridge on the way up. (He had the ranger's permission, since he had been suffering from the heat and was slowly making it out under his own power).
Not sure if it was this trip, but he had taken a satellite phone to the canyon floor, and was trying to connect with it. It was as useless as a cell phone, which was likely because the phone connections work line-of-site to the satellites, and in the canyon, a lot of the sky is blocked.
I was expecting my SPOT unit to fail to send many of its signals, based on my experiences with it in deep canyons in the Sierra. But I was very surprised that most of the tracking signals got out.
