On
their web site, the National Park Service warns people: “DO NOT
ATTEMPT THIS HIKE IN ONE DAY!” Those who endeavor this
super-adventure sometimes end up dying of exhaustion while trying to
ascend the other side, or else they get air-lifted out of the canyon
on a very expensive helicopter ride. For me, this is why the idea is so
fascinating.
The
thought was conceived a few years ago when a couple friends of mine,
Russ and Terry, completed the feat: hiking from the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon to the South Rim in only one day. Since then, the idea
nestled itself in the back of my mind, never arriving at the planning
stages, but at least making it onto the “to do” list. I was
curious to know how Russ had handled the hike logistically, so one
day I asked him. To my surprise, he came back a day later and asked if I
wanted to hike it with him in the fall. The ball was set in motion.
We shine our lights ahead toward the cold dirt, not completely aware
of what lies around us. We know that tall, coniferous trees grow at
our sides and that somewhere beyond the pale of our illumination is
the vast chasm of the Grand Canyon. But at this point we can see
nothing. As I descend the trail, which quickly becomes a series of
switchbacks, I wonder how steep the drop-off is at my side. Will a
misstep at this point send me to my death, or will I only land onto a
cushy scrub oak?
I try not to use my flashlight much. I either walk close to one of
my companions and borrow from their light, or else I allow my pupils
to adjust to the darkness and walk independently. On a far away
sheer cliff, the faintest image of rock and trees begin to
emerge. Below us, a deep gorge begins to unfold. Ahead there are
other white dots of light, indicating that we are not the first ones
on the trail this morning.
This canyon that we are now descending is called Roaring Springs
Canyon. Although enormous in its own right, it is only a small
stubby side-canyon which eventually pours into Bright Angel Canyon,
which is the long corridor that will lead us to the main Colorado
River gorge.
As first light brings our initial glimpse of the canyon, I am very
intrigued that we are now descending through the prominent bath tub
ring which surrounds much of the canyon. This ring is the Coconino
Sandstone formation. This morning we will pass through all the geological layers: the Kaibab, the Toroweap, the Supai, the Redwall etc. The Supai
formation is fascinating to me because it is the same ocher-red and
checkerboard rock that we encountered at the village of Supai only
weeks earlier, obviously where it derived its name.
7:15 AM, 1.7 miles, 1,441 feet of elevation loss. We pass through
Supai Tunnel, a very short tunnel, and here we turn off our
flashlights and take our first break. A small bathroom sits beside
the trail and a water spigot stands ready in case anyone needs it.
Although I'm not thirsty at this point, I force myself to swig down
several large gulps of Powerade. I am very aware of the challenge
that lies ahead, and am determined to do everything to keep my body
in top condition. At the rim, I took three ibuprofen, and at this
crucial first stage of our journey I feed my body with liquid and
electrolytes.
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| Bridge in Roaring Springs Canyon |
Back and forth, zig and zag, down and down we go. Although the drop-off at my side is sure to be fatal if I succumb to it, the extremeness of its height doesn't seem to phase me. The path we walk on is certainly wide enough to eradicate my fears. Toward the bottom of this accelerated decent, we cross a little red steel bridge that traverses Roaring Springs Canyon. From this point the trail runs uphill for a ways before resuming its normal decent.
It is shortly after this that we are passed by our first “marathon
runner.” I refer to him as a “marathon runner” in a slightly
loose fashion as he is only running 23.9 miles rather than the 26.2
necessary for a marathon. But most marathons don't descend over a
mile, then climb just short of a mile at the end. The feat is
certainly marathonic in my mind.
The runner is an old man, either in his late sixties or early
seventies, dressed in white slacks and a button-up short-sleeved
shirt. He wears a ball cap to keep the sun from his head and
carries only a water bottle. A windbreaker is tied around his
waist. He does not look tired. In fact, he looks as if he does this
every morning before breakfast. We say “hello” to him and
watch him jog down the trail until he is out of sight.
The walls around us are sheer, and the trail is literally blasted out
of the cliff. Some of these sections are what I believe they call a
“half-tunnel,” because it looks as if someone took a tunnel and
sliced it in half—the
exposed half being where the drop-off is.
Almost exactly an hour after crossing the bridge, we catch our first
glimpses of Roaring Springs. From a point across the canyon amid
scrub oak, massive amounts of water gush from the hillside and
cascade down in a very long streak to the bottom of the canyon,
appearing as a stretched fiber of cotton. Several other seeps, not
as apparent, also ooze from near the same area.
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| Roaring Springs |
8:45 AM, 4.7 miles, 3,021 feet of elevation loss. We are at the junction of the spur-trail to Roaring Springs and it is a good time to shed our exterior articles of clothing and adapt to the warming temperatures of the canyon. I open my Twizzlers and chew on a few pieces of the strawberry red candy. I also open up my cracked pepper sunflower seeds and pour a handful into my mouth. The reports that I have read from others who have accomplished this hike have stressed the importance of maintaining enough sodium. My knees are doing just fine. I feel a slight soreness in my big right toe, but that is it. No one else seems to be complaining.
Within half an hour we pass the pump-house residence and are now in
Bright Angel Canyon. We don't snoop around the residence too much,
not knowing if we we're allowed to or not. There is a small wooden
home next to the creek, several large cacti with dark black berries,
and a water spigot.
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| Bridge crossing Angel Creek |
9:12 AM. We cross another metal bridge with a wooden footpath, and find ourselves on the left-hand side of the Bright Angel Creek. The canyon is primarily a V-shaped corridor that, according to our maps, runs for nearly nine miles to the river. The trail runs mostly flat, but slightly downhill. The transparent water of the creek is not always as prominent as what I hoped for, as it is often blocked from view by willows and other long grasses that grow along its banks.
One of the many types of flora which fascinates me is the short
Catlaw Acacia tree. Its leaves, instead of growing as one single
plate, grow as a group of six or seven pairs of oval leaflets. On
the branch are spines that curve inward.
There are also century plants, which look very similar to yuccas, and
have a large stock that grows right in the middle of the plants and
several feet higher than a man, often twisting in Dr. Seuss fashion.
I am surprised that most of these are not a thriving verdant, but
rather a sallow color. Once the stalks reach full height and thus
the plant matures, then it automatically dies. It was once believed
that this process took a hundred years. In reality, it only takes
twenty to forty.
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| Catlaw Acacia |
9:40 AM, 6.8 miles, 4,161 feet of elevation loss, Cottonwood
Campground. We rest near a spigot and I guzzle down as much water as
I can before refilling my bottle. The campground is not at all what
I thought it would be. I expected it to have tents strung around
pell-mell. Instead, the sites are very organized with each plot
having its own number. The pit toilets here have no toilet paper.
It is during this rest that we are passed by marathon runner number
two, and then number three. Number two has a foreign accent, and
when he passes us he is desperately looking around for access to
water. “Are you looking for this?” I ask as I move away
from the spigot. “Yes, yes,” he replies. Number three looks
like he could have been a drummer in a rock band. I pour another
handful of seeds into my mouth and we continue on.
Ten minutes later we enjoy another landmark on our journey. The
first ray of sun touches our shoulders! In the distance we think we
can see the walls of the South Rim. It appears, however, to be an
optical illusion, for whatever we see truly must be only a couple of
miles ahead of us, and yet the South Rim is much further than that.
As part of my regulated attempt to keep my body in top physical
performance, I maintain a schedule of eating Power bars, consuming
one bar about every four hours. I continue to drink plenty of water
when we stop and most of the time I am either munching on something
or cracking sunflower seeds. This plan seems to work as I am never
in great lack of physical strength.
Once the sun comes out from behind the cliffs, the temperature is
never too hot. I sweat beneath my arm pits and around my shoulders
and back where my backpack is, but not so much that it drenches my
entire shirt. October is a great time to hike the canyon.
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| Oza Butte |
10:31 AM, 8.4 miles, 4,521 feet of elevation loss, Ribbon Falls.
This detour takes us about ten minutes, some of which is spent trying
to find the correct trail that leads upstream of a tributary creek.
The falls are beautiful. Ribbon Falls is a double cascade, first
falling from a rock chute high above, and then shimmering down a
steep growth of rock and moss. A small pool is formed at the bottom
of the falls with and abundant growth of flowers and water plants.
Inside the mossy rock, over which the cascade falls, is a small cave
which is just large enough for a man to walk into. An hour after our
initial detour, we are back on the trail.
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| Ribbon Falls |
12:05 PM. The nature of the canyon begins to take on a slight
change. The rock ledges, which at one time gave us ample room to our
right and left, now close in on us, creating a much narrower
passage-way to the Colorado River. There is room for the creek and
a trail and that is about it. For four miles we persist this way,
the trail crossing the creek by means of a bridge, four times. Cacti
and riparian plants continue to grow along the creek bed, but as far
as any budging room goes, there isn't much.
We persist along the trail until the box canyon ends and from the
south, across the creek, a new flow of water enters in. This is
Phantom Creek. Dave tells us that this is the narrow canyon where a
hiker died several years ago during a flash flood. A side excursion
sounds tempting, but of course on another day as we have much
distance still to cover. For me, Phantom Creek means one thing: we
are nearing Phantom Ranch, the iconic place at the bottom of the
Grand Canyon where my brother, grandpa, and I stayed many years ago.
1:25 PM. We arrive at the Phantom Ranch, being happily welcomed by
its tall shade trees and very well maintained toilets that are the
only non-pit toilets that we have seen on this excursion.
Miniature cabins neatly dot the estate, along with corrals for horses
and burros. We sit down, strip off our backpacks and other straps,
use the bathrooms, and fill up our water bottles. A skinny doe with
her fawn walk lazily in front of a cabin, only yards away from us.
They do not seem phased that we are here. The doe keeps one ear
cautiously turned toward us, but never startles.
We then step inside the lodge, the nostalgic place where I ate dinner
with my grandpa and brother. It does not look the same as I
remember, other than the multiple rows of rectangular tables and
wooden chairs. A lady works behind a counter and I buy a postcard
to have mailed. They say that this is only one of two places in the
United States where the mail is carried out on horse. The other is
also in the Grand Canyon—Supai
Village. Our stay at the lodge is not long and soon we are back on
the trail.
14 miles, 5,761 feet of elevation loss. We pass the neatly organized
Bright Angel Campground with its picnic table and “bear poles” for people's baggage.
2:03 PM. We are at the river and ready to cross Silver Bridge.
This is a big milestone for us. Psychologically it represents
half-way, although in distance we are certainly past the midway
point. But it also marks where our “hike down” transforms into a
“hike up.” A very steep hike up. For me it also represents the
portion of the hike that I endured with my grandpa. I am anxious to
see what I remember.
The great suspension bridge spans the width of the muddy river. On
the south side, vertical cliffs climb from the water's banks. Below
us I spot an eddy, whose large waves of water swirl like the spinning
of a hurricane. We take many pictures of the water down below, of
the span of the river, and of the length of the bridge.
Once on the other side, now the Bright Angel Trail, we parallel
the river for a mile or so, but high above it. It is here that I
spot a lonely Joshua Tree. The trail is sandy. Below on the river,
someone in our group spots a blue heron standing on
the bank of a small rocky island in the river.
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| Colorado River |
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| Silver Bridge |
Everyone in our group is doing remarkably well. No complaints and
no signs of excess fatigue. But until now, it has all been either
downhill or on a relatively level plane. I am excited. Going
uphill has always been my forté—my
hidden strength.
The great ascent does not come
all at once. The trail parallels, and sometimes crosses Pipe Creek.
The flora here is nothing great. Muddy brown ledges climb at our
sides with patches of green bushes scattered across them. Willows and
grasses grow along the creek. The amount of people that we encounter
seems to increase. English is the common language to maybe half of
them, and many of those speak with a British accent.
After about two miles at the
bottom of this little side canyon, the first major ascent begins.
Have you ever put together a
jigsaw puzzle, working on particular detail in the picture and not
knowing how it fits into the larger landscape of until the puzzle is
completed? This is how it is for us. As we begin to zigzag back
and forth and gradually rise in elevation, we can hardly tell at the
time that our trail, from a distance, looks like a giant corkscrew.
Such is the Devil's Corkscrew, and by the time that we make it to the
top and around the rim of a steep hill, facing the trail that we had
just came up, we are able to witness our feat. Well done, we tell
ourselves, and there, in full view of the satanic bottle opener, we
take a five minute break and top off our bodies with the water that
we will need for the remainder of our climb.
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| Devil's Corkscrew |
From the Devil's Corkscrew we now walk along Indian Creek and enter
the Tonto Plateau via a relatively narrow slit in the canyon rock.
The area around the creek grows bounteously with vegetation.
4:30 PM, 18.7 miles, 1,320 feet of elevation gain. We arrive at
Indian Gardens just one hour and twenty two minutes after leaving the
river. We have just over four miles until the top. That means that
we have hiked nearly twenty miles to this point. This is exciting
to be near the end, but daunting also, knowing that the most
difficult part of the entire hike lies before us. This will be the
refiners fire. Our bodies will now be tested like that of Daniel.
Will we be able to control and calm that which is there to devour us?
Or will the lions of fatigue and pain win the battle?
Indian Gardens is similar to how I remembered it. It is well-covered
with trees and flanked with many large cacti. We sit down on a bench
that surrounds a spigot, and one last time we fill our water bottles
and canteens. Many other hikers rest here also, some pouring water
onto their hats and hair. I take another ibuprofen and then I pull
out my cell phone and attempt to call Russ, who is waiting for us on
the rim. To my surprise, I receive cell service.
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| Cactus at Indian Gardens |
It doesn't take long before the trail becomes steep and nothing but
switchbacks. My goal is to let no one pass me. I leave my three
companions behind me and continue relentlessly, climbing up the
sandy trail. Fatigue is creeping in rather quickly, but not enough
to halt me. I stop from time to time to drink water from my bottle.
The only sore spot that I can feel on my body is my big right toe.
It is probably hitting into my boot.
5:21 PM, 20.4 miles, 2,268 feet of elevation gain, 3-Mile Resthouse.
The climb from mile three to mile two feels like the longest mile of
my life. The two-mile marker seems to never come. The scenery
doesn't change much either. I am cornered into the same wall of the
canyon with the same view across to the North Rim, and even though I
can tell that I have assented quite a distance, the length to the top
appears unchanged.
I pass several people. Several hikers appear scattered along the
trail-way, breathing heavily and staring into the distance. I greet
them and continue on my way. Many of the people that I pass are
hikers that I had already passed earlier, but who had re-passed us
while we were taking a break.
For much of the climb up, I can't understand how there can be two
more miles left! I know that I am nearing the top because of the
famous white bathtub ring, otherwise referred to as the Coconino
layer, is right where I am. I am not passing through it yet. I
can see the rim. To me it appears to be a ten minute walk to the
top. But somehow, the trail stretches on, finding new territory to
pass through.
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| Coconino rock formation. |
I can tell that we are getting near the top, because of the increased
amount of hikers that I encounter. They differ from the hardier
hikers like myself who found themselves at the bottom of the canyon
earlier in the day. These hikers wear clothing that no one
would hike in, sometimes even sandals, and they carry perhaps only a
small water bottle. These are people that are hiking a couple of
miles down the canyon, just to say that they “hiked the Grand
Canyon.”
Soon I am encountering people who have hiked down a little ways to
meet or pick up friends who have really hiked the canyon. These
people are chatting with strangers or else peering down at the specks
of people along the trail, far, far down, hoping to recognize a
friend.
I know that I am getting close when I can see tourists on the rim,
leaning on the railings into the open abyss of the canyon. I pass
through a small tunnel that marks our proximity to the end.
The feat took twelve hours and seventeen minutes to complete. All
the papers will list 23.9 miles as the official distance, but I know
that we traveled slightly further, due to our detours. It feels
good. I'm not even super tired.
I am at the rim in time to watch the sun fall below the horizon.
But there isn't much of a sunset. No clouds to speak of, but
certainly there is that lovely red hue that forms on the canyon walls
as the sun sinks deeper and deeper behind the earth. I set up my
tripod and capture several pictures. I watch the shadows gradually
envelop the entire canyon, and observe as little fires and
flashlights begin to appear at Indian Gardens.
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| Indian Gardens is the lush patch of green that you see. |
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