Paul and I flew to Phoenix on Feb 2 and arrived at 5:30 pm. By 6 am the next morning, we were having breakfast to start our hike in the Grand Canyon. Karl, the Desert Fox, had taken care of all the backcountry permits, picked us up from the airport and answered our planning questions. My pack was about what it weighed on the AT, maybe 27#s.
For some twisted reason, I thought that hiking in the Grand Canyon would be hiking down, walking along the Colorado River way down along the bottom and then hiking back up. Sort of a reverse mountain. Oh, man, was I wrong! For one thing, there is no sandy shoreline along the Colorado River. The Canyon is a labyrinth of rock walls cut by steep gorges and rock slides. Paralleling the Colorado River means going in and around canyons sometimes several miles long.
Hiking along the Tanner Trail.
The first day, we hiked down 9 miles into the Canyon on the Tanner Trail. Later I discovered on the map that it was considered an "expert" level trail. It is also a primitive trail, not maintained by the Park Service. Nevermind all that. We hiked through deep snow for the first 3 hours (3 miles) and then 3 more of intermittent snow. My legs were so wobbly that I collapsed onto rocks to rest many times the last mile. We slept that night on Tanner Beach, awakening to a frozen tent due to heavy dew and low temps.
Gear dried fast after the sun came out.
We stayed until the sun came up and our tent dried because we had only a 3 mile hike along the Cardenas portion of the Escalante Trail. It was a good day to recover and we camped again along the Colorado. We yogi-ed some lunch off some passing rafters, so had some green crunchies to augment our trail lunches.
The next day the work began. The 12 mile Escalante Trail had several cliffs to scale and a steep rockslide (see photos on Facebook). At one point, Karl scrambled up a 25 foot rock face and we lined up our packs and followed him, hand over hand up the steep rocks. (Don't look down!) Almost at the end, we went down a very steep rock slide, one at a time so we didn't kick down rocks.
For the most part, the trails were well-marked and fun to hike.
We hiked around for a few more days, ending up on the East Tonto Trail, a contour hike around lesser canyons. The last night before our first hike out, we camped on a ledge near Cremation Pt. overlooking the Colorado River. About 2 am, I heard a horrific scream in the night. Paul and Karl were both sleeping soundly (the usual). I woke Paul up and he heard the last few screams fading off in the distance. Naturally, it inspired him to go out and take care of business, leaving me to assume that he would be the next kill and how would I carry out all this stuff? In the morning, we discovered a sheep kill about 20 feet from our camping spot. Mountain lion or owl kill? You decide.
We hiked out the South Kaibab Trail starting at the Tip-Off, so it was only about 5 steep miles. Jacob's Ladder was a steep series of switch-backs. We had all day though and we were eating cheeseburgers in the bar by 3. Karl washed the clothes while we shopped for a few essential items and we went to bed early to hike back down. (2nd journey- next blog)
Eating out on the way down.
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