At around 5am we wake up: rain! And our backpacks are hanging in the rain! Marie bravely volunteers to put her rain poncho over the backpacks. Good. Now, our stuff is safe and we continue to sleep. Fortunately, the rain stops later.
The plan for this day: Plateau Point in the morning, then Tonto Trail west and sunset at Plateau Point in the evening. Sunset is at 7pm according to my pocket computer. After breakfast, we head for Plateau Point at 9.40am.
Plateau Point provides a very good vista into the inner canyon. Additionally, it is also possible to hike from the rim to Plateau Point and back in one day. We reach Plateau Point within one hour and stay there for another hour to enjoy the view.
From Plateau Point we go back to the Tonto Trail Junction and go westwards on the Tonto Trail.
Tonto Trail meanders along the platform and we walk from one amphitheater to the next. Compared to Clear Creek Trail, the cliffs are higher and closer. However, the vegetation is different: mainly some small bushes with sharp needles.
We stop at Horn Creek for a while. But the beauty and silence is deceptive: Above Horn Creek once was a uranium mine and the water of the creek is still radioactively contaminated.
At 2:40pm, we are at a viewpoint to the Colorado, which is located 1.5 miles before Salt Creek according to book and map.
Unfortunately, we had left the backpack somewhere on the trail (where we had lunch) and i had only one picture left in the camera what i noticed when being at the viewpoint. Damn! A part of the picture was cut off in the development process - as usual for the last picture on a film :-(
We turn around at the viewpoint and were back at Plateau Point for the sunset at 5:25pm.
We met only 3 persons on that trail for the whole day. A really lonely trail compared to Bright Angel Trail and South Kaibab Trail. And for the whole day, we were kidding about our lack of food...
