The Grand Canyon, 11-12 January 2004
Feb. 1st, 2004 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peteryoung
(The complete 26-photo album at Yahoo is here).
As we arrived in Phoenix, four of us (Peter Styles, Nikki Parsons, Stephanie Dumas and myself) decided to do the Canyon, so we hired a car for two days ($80) and set off at 4.15am the next morning. For me, with only two hours of sleep that night, I slept in the back for most of the 2-hour journey to Sedona, where we arrived before sunrise. At Sedona, you are treated to the kind of landscape where so many 1950s westerns were filmed, with it's distictive flat-top mesas dominating the scenery. I wished we had arrived as the sun was coming up, because they would have made some spectacular photographs. We stopped for breakfast at a 24-hour Denny's and bought some provisions (bread, cheese, water). I also picked up the latest Weekly World News with the headline Bat Boy Led Our Troops To Saddam's Hole!, as being away from LiveJournal and the Today programme I was obviously in need of some weighty political discussion and of course being in America I know exactly where to find it.
We finally arrived at the Grand Canyon after a total of five-hours driving at around 9.45am, where we bought a 1-car pass valid for several days, and after parking and togging up with scarves, gloves, sweaters and backpacks, we opted to descend into the Canyon from the top of the Bright Angel Trail on the South Rim, which should take us all the way to the Colorado River if we wished to go that far. At the top of the trail is a sign warning about the possibility of death from exhaustion, which we read with some bemusement, thinking it probably applied to elderly folk trying to recapture their lost youth. How wrong we all were...
We set off at 10.15am, and from the top of the Trail you can just see the plateau on the left with the path that became our final destination, a vertical half-mile down and about 7 miles in walking distance. Peter Styles had done this trail before in the summer and had made it all the way down to the river, though this time the temperature was around zero degrees celcius, and the first vertical 200 yards of the descent were a tricky combination of pack ice, snow, and often steep narrow passages with a precarious drop on either side. During winter the inside rim of this particular part of the Canyon never sees the sun as the sun's path is too low. This was the state of the trail for the first two miles of walking and we all slipped up occasionally. We soon passed a mule train of Canyon rangers coming back up, who told us that the famous mule rides for visitors are not currently happening as the icy paths on the Bright Angel Trail are considered too dangerous for mules. Soon the snow and ice disappeared from the trail as the temperature warmed up the further down we went, and the trail also levelled off somewhat though it was still a constant scramble over small rocks, and we often hoped for something that more resembled a clear path to walk on. There are rest points every few miles, often with large chemical toilets in situ. Further down near Indian Village we encountered some white-assed deer, often camouflaged perfectly in the bush (ah, I thought, so this is the kind of deer Joni Mitchell mentions in Refuge of the Roads). Indian Village is a small group of buildings which are used for rangers, horses, and in the summer, backpackers who stay in the Canyon overnight. From Indian Village we could either take the trail deeper into the Canyon right down to the Colorado River, or head for Plateau Point. Stephanie was concerned about getting back to the top before sunset, as the ice would not be easy to negotiate in darkness. As it was also 1.30pm by then, we opted for the plateau, and the trail levelled off completely as it smoothed out into something more resembling a walkable pathway.
We encountered very few other hikers, probably because of the time of year, though the most common intruders into the almost total silence were the constant aircraft passing high overhead, leaving their vapour trails high in the clear blue sky, often in parallel, making "a Hexagram of the Heavens" (Mitchell again, Hejira). From the plateau we could see the best views so far, with the Colorado River still a scary distance below us.
At the end of the path, Plateau Point turned out to be a good destination not only for some more spectacular sights, but also for a bit of lunch. From here it's still hard to grasp that you are still only half way down the Canyon, and there's almost another half-mile under your feet before you reach the Colorado River. Photos simply do not do justice to the scale of the place, with the result that distant Canyon walls in photos look much closer than they actually are. Peter saw a rocky outcrop which to me looked rather precarious, but he quickly jumped down some rocks, up some others, and casual as anything sat himself on the edge of the vertical precipice. It gave me vertigo just watching him.
We stopped for half an hour and filled up on bread and cheese. This was occasionally a battle, fighting off the black crows who fearlessly try to grab your bread. One made off with a very large chunk, and we watched it take off with the bread and soar down the canyon, across the river and up the other side, absolutely miles away, probably to its nest.
Full of food, we then set off on the return journey, with our destination the furthest point visible on the Rim. This was a mistake. We should have at least let our food settle for half an hour, because after a couple of miles, as soon as the path became a rocky trail again and started to incline, we all found ourselves at the beginning of a long and difficult struggle. Leading the rather sedentary life that I do these days I was quickly reminded that I am far more than a decade past thirty. I'm not that much more than my ideal weight, but that still doesn't mean that I'm fit for this kind of exertion on a full stomach and two hours sleep. We all found it tough going in our own way, and I held up our progress a few times as I had to stop to catch my breath. I often found myself puffing and wheezing, with my pulse sometimes reaching 180bpm, and the trail was not even at its steepest or even icy yet. My legs were still fine, but I realised that I could not ever remember being so comprehensively exhausted in all my life, and there were still at least three steep and difficult miles to walk to the top of the rim. Clearly my top half was not as fit as my lower half. I soon realised I had being going about it all wrong, and cursed myself for not taking control of things sooner. Years ago I used to run several miles every day, and the first rule of running is always 'control your breathing': set up a breathing rhythm, stick to it, and think of something else. I soon noticed a positive difference in my progress and ability, though the last two miles were still very hard going. We finally made it to the rim at sunset, where we noticed it had actually taken us half an hour less to go up than it had to come down. Odd. I took one last look at that sign and humbly realised that yes, it did apply to me too. And in the cold air I was also now covered in sweat, which had also soaked my sweater. All in all, not a personal best for endurance, but under the circumstances it was still something of an achievement.
Once at the top, things immediately became a little ridiculous. Looking forward to a well-earned beer, we headed straight for the bar in the Grand Canyon Lodge, where, somewhat rudely, we were refused service because as tourists we didn't specifically have our passports as proof of age, and were asked to leave as they would not even serve us soft drinks. Ho hum. So we headed for the Lodge's restaurant where we could at least get hot chocolate and food. We found somewhere to stay the night, Maswik Lodge, where twin rooms cost us $68 per room. I had a hot bath and slept for nine hours.
We awoke at 6am next morning, and I had to buy something clean from the hotel's gift shop to keep me warm before we headed for Mather Point for the 7am sunrise, from where we could again see the trail we had walked yesterday. There were probably about thirty other people at Mather Point other than ourselves, there for the sunrise too. The Canyon becomes truly colourful at sunrise: it is spectacular. We then headed for breakfast at the Grand Canyon Lodge before heading for a few other locations in our vicinity along the South Rim, including Mohave Point, Hopi Point and Hermit's Rest, before beginning the five-hour drive back to Phoenix.
While driving the stretch between Sedona and Phoenix I did wonder to myself what's to stop me doing this at home, ie. get up at 4am, drive five hours to the Lake District and climb a small mountain before lunch. It's certainly do-able...
no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 10:44 am (UTC)Boggle!!!!
How old do you have to be for dimwit American bar tenders to acknowledge that you look like adults because you actually are adults?
Re: It's Not the Bartenders
Date: 2004-02-01 01:00 pm (UTC)Re: It's Not the Bartenders
Date: 2004-02-02 01:02 am (UTC)It defeats me, I haven't looked under 18 for quite some time now.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-01 01:05 pm (UTC)Many bars will not serve to anyone without proof of age.
Others aren't so picky.
But, if they guess wrong about somebody, they can be shut down.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 01:05 pm (UTC)The sunset pic is gorgeous ... glad you were rewarded for making it back up to the top!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 03:14 pm (UTC)Thank you very much for writing this. And the photographs! I spent five minutes gazing at them in rapture going in three months I'm going to be there.
My plan is to aim for Indian Garden the first day, down the Bright Angel trail, and the next day I want to go down the South Kaibab trail, along the Tonto Plateau, and back up the Bright Angel trail. The first day is more of a trial run than a fullscale trek, but I'm interested to see that you could get down as far as Plateau Point and back up again in one day. (I was planning to start down as early as possible, both days...) Well, I'll see how I feel when I get there, bearing in mind that I've been told you should count on it taking twice as long to get out of the Canyon as it took to get into it! (You must be a pretty fit bunch if you took the uphill trek in half an hour's less time than it took you to go downhill...)
I'm interested by conditions you report at the top end of the trail. I'm told you can rent crampons for use on the trails - I was hoping rather desperately that this wouldn't be an issue because the snow would be gone by the end of March, but it does sound like this isn't something I should count on.
Also, thanks for the note about needing a passport in the bar. Should I want a drink, I'll be sure to produce mine.