Emily and I just returned from our trip to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Mesa Verde, and other select four corners locales. We arrived late Saturday night at the canyon, just in time to catch a beautiful sunset.
Looking down into the canyon through a strong sense of vertigo, we could barely make out the Colorado River--which would be the destination of our backpacking trip to the bottom of the canyon via Hermit's Trail. With a touch of nervousness, we went back to camp to pack for the next day's hike.
With 15 liters of water between us, we set out after jumping the car battery (the death of which enabled both our packing and the previous photo). We hit the trail around 7:30, unfortunately an hour and a half late.
about 1/8 of the way down the trail
We made it about half-way down the canyon wall by about 1130am, when the intensely hot sun forced us to rest through the heat of the day. Due to our late start, we were stuck on a length of long traverses with a cliff above and below us. We found a rock ledge for some shade and pitched the rain fly when the we lost that.
hot
We left our shelter around 3 or 4 when the sun became obscured by clouds and moved on down the wall.
This left Cathedral Stairs and a few miles of canyon floor between us and our campsite.
me above the stairs-essentially a switchback down something like the cliff immediately across the expanse
the cathedral stairs
We got into camp around 9, after the sun had gone down--no pictures. We set up camp alongside a chilly stream and soaked our very sore feet as we made dinner. Of note was a chorus of several thousand tiny frogs croaking.
We awoke to the rise of the moon over the canyon rim. It was nearly full, and so bright it casted distinct shadows. We were able to pack and hit the trail without lights at 4 in the morning.
The next day was essentially a reverse of the first, only this time with very sore legs and feet. There were several large boulderfields to navigate but this time we couldn't see the target like on the way down--the continuing trail over with a difference of several hundred feet in altitude. This, and some misplaced cairns by previous hikers, lead us off the trail from time to time. Though never as bad as another group of three hikers who brought too much trash to leave on the trail and not enough water--a pair of Canadians we ran into in the morning told us those three had gotten lost and dehydrated the night before. We had encountered them going up the day before but they didn't ask for help--we had plenty of water we would've shared had we known. We saw them getting evacuated by a helicopter on the way back up.
This was a particularly hot day, and we felt it. We realized quickly we were getting way too hot and stopped for the afternoon on the supai--luckily we found a ledge to hide under during the worst of it.
even hotter
The rest of the day was hard, and as such we didn't take the time to get any pictures to share. A nice break was found at Santa Maria Springs, where we refilled our water bottles (my msr miox kit worked great for cleaning our water both here and the night before).
We hit the canyon rim exhausted around 9 pm after 9 miles of linear distance and over four thousand vertical feet. Notes for next time: early start (4am), good boots (I'm loosing at least one toenail), it's hot enough to skip carrying sleeping bags and a tent (in the summer anyway), be sure the cairns you're following aren't taking you to labyrinth boulderfields, bring more than enough water (something we did right), don't leave your half-eaten beef jerky and smuckers bottles on the trail--the canyon will kick your ass for that, empirically proven.
leave no trace
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que rico
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