Mark Sundstrom

On our hike out of the Grand Canyon in June, the memory card on my camera failed, with a write error. From then on, I used the in-camera memory feature to take more pictures on the way out.

After the trip, I tried a number of things to try to recover the pictures on that memory card, but nothing worked. I kept the card around, but I had given up, when a chance reading of one of my regular bloggers today pointed to a free program called PhotoRec, said to be useful for recovering lost pictures from digital camera memory cards. Could this be – I thought – and how come I hadn't run across this program before?

I installed it, ran it, and it recovered every one of my lost photos. Well, that just made my day! So, here is a photo album of the best of those photos.

Some comments to go along with the photos ...

"Tweeting from the Grand Canyon..."

Some of us did a day hike from Phantom Ranch. At the high point of that, we got cell phone coverage, which wasn't available down in Phantom Ranch. As others checked their cell phones, I pulled out the iPad to see that, yes, Verizon did have coverage down here, so I took a photo and sent it to Twitter. Everyone else thought that was pretty geeky, so there you go...

After the morning hike, I took a walk on my own to walk over both river bridges, a walk that most of the group would do later on in the day, hence the additional photos of the two bridges.

On the group hike over the two bridges, we spotted a Grand Canyon rattlesnake, the same species that we also saw at Cottonwood campground.

The photo of the Phantom Ranch dormitory should give you an idea of what they are like. 10 bunk beds altogether, 8 of which are in the photo. Everyone else in our dorm had already left that morning, the same morning that we hiked to the South Rim. Really not great accommodations, but not as bad as I originally anticipated. I'd rather have a cabin next time. In the next photo, Brad is coming out of that dorm, ready for the hike up.

The rafts along the river were rafting trips taking a break, just downstream from the Silver Bridge.

"heading up to the South Rim..." -- after the trail crosses the Silver Bridge, it follows along the river for more than a mile before heading up. Now we are finally starting up.

"relaxing at Indian Gardens..." -- really a nice spot. 4 1/2 miles to go.

"waiting for the mule team..." -- this was the only one we saw on the way up. My camera failed right after this, so for a long time I never expected to see these photos again. I have relived this part of the trip today, thanks to the recovery of these photos!