Only saw a couple muleys, both small bucks in velvet, and both down low by the river.
A guy could get into trouble in HC for sure. When we were 3 days in (about halfway) it starts to occur to ya that if'n some part of your leg went tits-up on you you'd be in a world of hurt. Because you still gotta get your ass back OUT. The river trail is non-technical, but on the bench trail and the canyon trails that connect things up vertically, so to speak, they are rough trails... virtually every step you take is mission-critical and could have serious ramifications if you screw it up. There are many many places where the sketchy narrow bench trail skirts cliffs, that'd kill you DEAD, by just a few feet. To add a bit of spice to THAT, we had close encounters (under 5') with 3 rattlesnakes, and 2 of them were in the above scenario- death cliff on the downhill side RIGHT off the trail, and a rattler on the uphill side of the trail just a couple feet off of it. Would hate to be on a horse in that situation. I grew up running all over the desert in NM and only encountered one rattler the whole time.
Ticks were voluminous but mostly not interested in hanging on.
Now that I've seen it I can start to plot a hunt there.
