Trip Report: Hiking in the Grand Canyon

A week ago, I returned from my Arizona trip.  I was busy that weekend, so I wrote about jerky (I tried the ostrich today; it was pretty good).  Now, I'm spending a relaxing evening at home and can write about the most epic part of the Arizona trip: the Grand Canyon.

On the first day, Mom, Dad, and I went for a walk along the rim.  We observed the canyon's bigness  ("Is your canyon grand enough for you, Mr. Bond?").  Here are Mom and Dad posing at one of the many places you could fall to your deaths, trying to imitate the cute little heart sign that some of the Japanese tourists were making:

Here are some tourists posing at another place to fall into the canyon:

It's fun to run your finger along the picture, like you're pushing the tourists over the ledge, while making a video game sound effect.  Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, the Grand Canyon is really big.  I had trouble grasping the real size of it from the rim, though.  The canyon barely looks real from the rim.  It looks like you're viewing a huge panoramic photograph, but it's hard to comprehend distances.  I wanted to walk down into the canyon in order to get a better idea of the size of the place.

Thus, a plan was formed to hike into the sweltering July canyon, from the rim down to a viewpoint we could see far below.  You can see the trail going out to the viewpoint here:

The hike down to the point and back to the rim (a combination of Bright Angel and Plateau Point trails) was rumored to be a little over 12 miles round trip, with a little over 3000 feet of elevation gain.  A great hike in normal weather, but the Grand Canyon gets hot in July.  It hangs around the mid-80s at the rim, but as you descend, it gets hotter.  (The warmer temperatures in the canyon are likely due to elevation change and shelter to wind, but I'm just guessing.)  Down at the viewpoint, the weather gets into the mid- to high-90s, and at the bottom of the canyon by the banks of the Colorado River, it regularly gets to 105 and even 110.

The plan, then, was to get down to the viewpoint as early as possible, and try to get back to the rim before noon.  Given that the estimated hike length was 8-12 hours, we started out early, hitting the trailhead at 4:50am.  The sun rises at 5:21...so yeah, here's the trailhead:

Ahh, the beauty of the canyon.

Having no flashlights, we couldn't have left any earlier, so we felt good about our starting time.  We set a hard turnaround time of 7am so we wouldn't be stuck in the canyon in the heat, giving us just over 2 hours to reach the viewpoint.  This seemed a bit ambitious, given the estimated 8-12 hour hike time, and that 7am turnaround time was always on our minds.  The weather was already in the 70s when we started out.  Moving at a quick pace, we passed numerous hiking parties with headlamps.  When they asked what the hurry was, we gave them a quick answer ("Trying to reach the point before 7!") without pausing to chat.

It started to get light.

Did I mention we were in a hurry?  I paused to take a picture of a deer, and Mom and Dad just continued on at their quick pace.  By the time I put the camera away, I had to jog down past a couple of bends in the trail before I caught up with them.

Here are my parents on the trail, which has a lot of steps carved into it:

The path ahead:

Soon, the sun started to chase us into the canyon:

As the slope leveled out, we approached a river.  The river led to increased vegetation in an area called "Indian Garden."  You can start seeing the vegetation here:

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of Indian Garden in all its cactus-filled glory, because at this point we looked at our watches (25 minutes until 7am!) and the "3.1 miles to plateau" signpost, and we actually started jogging towards the destination.  82 degrees now, said the thermometer at Indian Garden.

When I paused to apply sunscreen, Dad pressed on towards the point, and I had to jog for a good 5 minutes before catching up to him.  Yes, it was fun going jogging through in the Grand Canyon after passing so many signs on the way down that warned of heat stroke, dehydration, and the importance of taking frequent rest breaks. :-)

The next photo I got from the camera was our triumphant group shortly after 7am, at Plateau Point!

Behold, the beautiful talus back the way we came!

We found the Colorado River, which carves its way down the middle of the canyon!

We also noticed the trail that leads down to Phantom Ranch, the famous ranch down by the river where people stay overnight.  You can see it here:

We took a final look at the beautiful Grand Canyon from the inside...

...and then, having spent a whole 10 minutes there, we turned around again and started our return hike, racing the heat!

A bit later, looking back towards the point, you could again see some of the vegetation around the Indian Garden area:

The return trip featured:

Scenery!

Wildlife!

Aww, that squirrel has light dots on its fur.

Let's talk about squirrels. 

Grand Canyon squirrels are extremely aggressive.  I've had a wild ground squirrel climb onto my shoulder to get peanuts before, and those guys are scaredy-cats by Grand Canyon standards.  Grand Canyon squirrels charge tourists, making screaming noises if other squirrels get in their way, and don't think twice about getting close enough to get kicked.  If you upended a bag of peanuts on your head, you'd get swarmed.

Enough about squirrels.

Mom, Dad, and I were hiking upwards at different speeds, and eventually got separated.  Mom was pretty fatigued, and it turned out that she only drank about 1 liter of water during the ascent because she didn't feel thirsty and didn't realize how little she was drinking.  For comparison, I drank 3.  She was probably on the verge of getting heat stroke.  Passerby would ask her if she was okay, and if she had water, and she would say that yes, she had water.  Of course, they never asked if she had been drinking it...

Even with all of this, Mom arrived at the trailhead again at 11:20am, making the round trip in 6.5 hours.  I took about 6 hours, and Dad took about 5.5 hours.  Dad's prize was getting to shower in the hotel room before we had to check out, but Mom and I didn't arrive at the top early enough.  Still, the estimated hike time given on signs was 8-12 hours, so we did pretty well.

Near the top, I got some other hikers to take my picture.  The guy photographing me was pretty funny.  He took one picture, portrait-style, and said, "Your boyfriend will like that one.  Hold on, let me take one for mom."  Then he turned the camera to landscape orientation to take another one.  I'm still trying to figure out what was up with that, but it was pretty funny.  He also gave me a peppermint candy, which tasted excellent and got me through the last 10 minutes of the hike.

So, this picture is for Ken:

And this one is for Mom!

Hello from the Grand Canyon! :-)

Also, do you remember two weeks ago when I made you a desktop background?  Go back and check the blog.  Well, now I made you a screensaver of cactus and rock pictures I took!  Here it is, just for you:

http://web.mit.edu/joyp/Public/ArizonaScreensaver.zip