Grand Canyon

Last week Boyfriend flew back out here and we tackled one of the biggest items off my bucket list.  We backpacked the Grand Canyon along with my friend Dallas (my labmate Slim was supposed to come, but bailed too last minute for us to find a replacement).  We drove up to the South Rim Wednesday and camped there before hiking in on Thursday.  We did rim-to-rim-to-rim (45 miles) in 4 days, hiking out on Sunday.

For those who care about the hiking details: we hiked in using the South Kaibab trail.  While the least pretty in my opinion, this trail has the most stereotypically "Grand Canyon" views, and it's certainly not ugly.  At the Colorado River (i.e. the bottom) we picked up the North Kaibab trail to Cottonwood where we camped the first night.  That was a 14 mile day.  WARNING: the 3 or so miles south of Cottonwood are at low elevation and consist of extremely hot, dry, and exposed desert with essentially zero shade.  Hitting this stretch mid-late afternoon in 100+ degrees with 35 lb packs was brutal.  Plan better than this!  The second day we continued on North Kaibab trail 7 miles up to the North Rim where we spent the night.  The stretch 2-3 miles from the top was the steepest part of the entire trip.  On day three we hiked the entire length of the North Kaibab trail back down to Bright Angel campground.  The entire 14 miles were downhill, the first 7 or so of them really quite steep.  I was on the verge of tears over how badly my toes hurt by the end of this.  On the last day we hiked 10 miles up Bright Angel trail to the South Rim.  Bright Angel is far less steep than South Kaibab and we make remarkably good time.  This is the prettiest of the corridor trails in my opinion (unfortunately it's also the most popular - the couple of miles closest to the rim were crowded and annoying, not to mention my entire body hurt by that point).

Some people I talked to before we left thought we were crazy going with this itinerary - and there were some points during the trip when I thought we were too - but we met a ton of people with far crazier plans.  An astonishing number of people attempt to hike rim-to-rim in a single day.  Granted this is a lot easier to do with a 10 lb day pack rather than a 35 lb multi-day pack, but still insane.  We even met 2 guys who were attempting to do rim-to-rim-to rim in 24 hours.  They did crazy things like put a packet of ramen noodles in a ziplock of water and then strap it to the outside of their packs to "cook" in the heat and sun while they hiked.  The majority of people who get med-evac-ed out of the canyon are young, healthy people who try to do too much.  We saw one such guy being loaded into a helicopter on a stretcher as we were getting into Bright Angel.

Anyways, enough of the depressing/scary talk.  It was a great trip, and I'm immensely proud of accomplishing that hike.  Time for a photo recap:

Plus food made about 35 lbs...Roughly 10 of which were water.  Such a shame that it really was necessary to carry that much for some parts of the hike.

From the South Rim, just before sunset

The NPS has some pretty awesome signage.

Looking west from South Kaibab trail

From South Kaibab trail

South Kaibab trail

Switchbacks on South Kaibab Trail

Bridge over the Colorado River

Supai Tunnel, North Kaibab trail

View from North Kaibab trail

Rainbow rocks on the North Kaibab trail.  The zoom on this shot makes that rim look so much closer than it was...still about 3 miles away at this point...

Colorado River

More awesome signage.  Don't feed the squirrels!

Bright Angel trail

Bright Angel trail