Some thoughts on our short vacation…amazing, beautiful, spectacular, peaceful, and very self satisfying.
We did it, we survived, and we’re here to tell you all about it. Tens of thousands of people go to the Grand Canyon every year but how many people actually hike to the bottom! We are very happy to be in that small percentage that makes it to the bottom. It was seriously the most amazing and ridiculous thing we have done.
We left the house on Friday morning and drove out to the south rim. We made a pit stop in Lake Havasu to have lunch and see London Bridge. The original London Bridge is there because a long time ago it just couldn’t handle the traffic in London anymore so the city of London decided to auction the bridge off. The winner of the auction was the city of Lake Havasu. We ate lunch at a brewery, which had really good Heffewiezen and White Ale. A couple of hours later we were back on the road to the GC. We set up camp and went to eat a nice big dinner before we started our long journey. Then it was off to bed early since we had to get up a bit before 6 to catch the hikers shuttle.
Saturday morning we got on the shuttle to the south Kaibab Trail. We were on this 7 mile trail right about 7:30am. The weather was perfect and a few clouds in the sky to try and help block the sun every once in a while. The south Kaibab Trail was beautiful! It follows a ridge so there were gorgeous views of the canyon all the time! I have to say though; going downhill really isn’t as easy as people may think. This trail is steep and boy could we feel it in our calfs and hips when we were done. My poor toes were in agony from hitting the front of my shoes. It took us 4.5 hours to reach our campground. Once we got there we found a great campsite right along the Bright Angel Creek. We set up the tent and got in the creek to cool and wash off…what a great treat for our feet! Dave was exhausted and took a bit of a nap while I explored some. Later that night we cooked our dinner on our stove. We had Honey Mustard Chicken, Corn, and Apple Cobbler (all dehydrated). Yeah we could have ordered dinner through Phantom Ranch, but we decided it would be nice to have the full backpacking experience. The Apple Cobbler was actually really good. We went to the ranger program that night then enjoyed some beer and wine at the Phantom ranch canteen.
Sunday was a day to just enjoy the bottom of the canyon, so we slept in. We were pretty glad we built in a rest day at the bottom. It was just so nice to be able to explore and relax down there. After breakfast (croissants and nutella) we did a small hike on the river trail. This short hike was beautiful…it follows the Colorado River and has spectacular views of the canyon. The temp was rising so we decided to go back and get in the river again. After soaking in the river I decided I wanted to take another short hike. Dave however was worried about not having enough in his muscles to get back up so he went to read his book at the Canteen while I hiked on the Clear Creek trail to the Phantom Ranch Overlook. My hike took a couple of hours, but my toes were killing me again so I headed back. I figured I’d grab Dave and we’d go back to the river, but I sat down in the air conditioned canteen and we started talking to this couple from Colorado. Two hours later, and a couple of glasses of wine the canteen was closing for the afternoon. We had a lot of fun talking to this group. Some people go to the Grand Canyon to hike from the north rim to the south rim, but they were doing north to south and back to the north rim! Awesome! Once the canteen closed we went back to the river and then cooked dinner. Dinner on this night was lasagna and mashed potatoes (dehydrated again). The lasagna was actually really good. After the ranger program we went straight to bed since we had to get up early.
For our hike out on Monday we got up at 4am. It took us a while to pack up the campsite so we were on the trail at 5am. We did this to avoid the heat in the bottom of the canyon. The only downfall was we had to hike with our headlamps for about an hour. Dave was seriously awesome on the hike out. We was kinda worried about climbing about 5000 ft in elevation with a 30 pound pack and he thought it was going to take him like 12 hours or something to get to the top. I however, knew he would be great! The start of the hike follows the CO river and it was a bit eerie crossing the silver bridge in the dark and hearing the rush of water below you. We then hiked through a gorgeous canyon and reached Indian Gardens at 8am! The hike up to this point was so beautiful and it was amazing watching the sunlight hit the canyon walls as it rose higher in the sky. After Indian Gardens the hike on the Bright Angel Trail gets more difficult. You have to wander up 4 miles of switchbacks and gain about 3000 ft in elevation. But Dave continued to cruise on up. We reached the top at 12:40…it took us pretty much exactly 7.5 hours to go 9.6 miles and climb up 5000 feet in elevation. Dave was seriously awesome. I was so proud of him. The last mile was tough on him but he kept going the best he could. As we were coming up there was a group going down. These people were seriously my heroes….they must have been in their 70s and were hiking down with big packs just like ours. Really, I hope I’m like that at their age. When we started to near the top and while we were at the top, we had lots of people asking us about our hike. They seemed pretty amazed. Once we got to the top of the rim we made a beeline to the ice cream shop, but we also took some time to take a look at where we came from. What an amazing sight to actually look at the trail and the canyon to see where we came from. So amazing. And so satisfying that we did that on our own two feet and carrying all of the stuff we needed for three days. I just don’t know how to put it in words as to how awesome of an accomplishment this was. I’m so glad we did this hike. I had the time of my life!
After our hike was complete we made the drive to Laughlin, Nevada to sleep in a comfy bed in a hotel and enjoy some gambling at the casinos. We had lots of fun, enjoyed a wonderful cooked Italian dinner and a bottle of wine. Amazingly we weren’t totally exhausted, and ended up staying up till about 11pm. We slept in on Tuesday and then wandered around the casinos and had more fun together.
Pictures…where are they? Later this week, I promise. I will post some to the blog, I took plenty!
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