The author approaching Diamond Peak just a few hours before the end of the trip.

June 7 - Getting Ready

We arrived at Flagstaff in the late morning after meeting at Al's house in Tempe.  While at Al's, we loaded up our vehicles with our gear and supplies, which included dry bags, 30 30-pack cases of beer, 35 cases of soda, about a dozen cases of (completely unnecessary) bottles of water, a half-dozen cases of canned ice tea, an inflatable kayak, tarps and other stuff.  Lot's of other stuff.  At about 8 am we headed north to Flagstaff, where we ultimately linked with up our outfitter, PRO at the Wal-Mart on the southwest edge of town.  We convoyed to All-Guard where we reloaded our supplies and gear into PRO's truck, parked the vehicles and headed north in the PRO van. 

Upon arrival at Lee's Ferry, the site of one of John Lee's Lonely Dell Ranch, we immediately set about building our boats, unloading the truck and getting our gear together.  After several hours of working in the heat, we moved the boats downstream a few hundred yards to our Lee's Ferry camp site and and set up camp.  Brian and I stayed with the boats and the rest of the First Half crew went of to Marble Canyon Lodge to have dinner.