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| Looking down the chute to Lava Falls. |
Since our friends stayed behind at Toroweap overlook, we decided to make this a day hike and left our full packs at the camp. The first section was through lava boulders, which when looking back up we could see they had white paint spots marking the route. Then it leveled off at a platform where you could see the river below and the chute that we had to drop down.
It was rough going from that point. We started down the right (downriver) side and quickly found ourselves sliding with the rocks beneath us. Luckily, I was wearing leather work gloves and I pushed myself off the moving earth toward the edge to grab a large boulder. I was good, for the moment; but then Dan's footing gave way and he knocked a boulder about 4 feet wide down toward me. It missed me, but we starting having second thoughts of continuing, and how we would get back up. We were cautious the rest of the way down, taking turns making the moves so that we could watch for each other and falling rocks.
When we got to the bottom, we could see a geomorphologists busily tagging rocks with locators to monitor the controlled flood. The red dye was about to arrive and he had only a few minutes. We sat and watched the dye float by and into Lava Falls. We visited for awhile with one of the geomorphologists who we knew from the river community, while we dreaded the hike out. We had lunch and then had to make the move to get back to our friends on the rim.
I returned to the downriver side of the chute for the climb out, but Dan decided to try to upriver side. He stayed close to the solid rock wall and eventually ran out of it before he had to cross over to return to the white-dot path. It was touchy during the cross-over, but he made it. The rest of the hike out was a piece of cake after what we went through to get down. I do not recommend this route for anyone!
Here are the photos...this should be the only way you see this route.