Ask the 60-yr-old guy who hiked out of Grand Canyon

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know some of you have done this, but in case anyone is thinking about doing it, here’s a rundown of the trip. This is only one way of doing things, but it worked out really well.

Picked up Sunday morning in Flagstaff, driven to Lee’s Ferry (east end of Grand Canyon), got on Colorado river in large motor-driven pontoon boat (35 ft long, 5 tons, able to carry 20 passengers and crew of 3 - fortunately we only had 16 passengers). Started out on river around 10:30 am. Nice warm day (it had been chilly in Flagstaff). A few small rapids.

Stopped for lunch at a sandy place, set up tables, served sandwiches and fixings. Tons of food, “if you don’t eat it we have to throw it out” (for the meat and cheese).

Back on the boat, another three hours of boating or so, more rapids too, then stop for camp for the night. Hot dinner, sleeping bags, tents if you want them, windy, threat of rain in the middle of the night.

Monday another day, boating all day, rapids sometimes, a couple of cases where we have to sit in the well of the boat for more difficult rapids, mostly I think so the pilot can see to navigate. Lunch, boating, camping, hot dinner, very windy that night.

Tuesday morning we land about 9:30 at boat beach for Phantom Ranch. Check in, wait for cabin and showers (best shower ever! Hot and everything). Lunch, big dinner, we’re all exhausted so we’re asleep pretty much by 8:30 pm.

Wednesday up very early, breakfast at 5:00 am, we leave Phantom Ranch at 5:50 am on the Bright Angel trail. Weather perfect, cool but no wind. Make it to Indian Gardens (5 miles) by 8:20 or so. That was the easy part.

After this the group got kind of strung out along the trail, so I was hiking alone. I was very focused on finding the 3-mile rest house, but I missed it completely. I was a little panicky that it took me 2-1/2 hours to get there, until I found out I had actually gotten to the 1.5 mile rest house. Reached top at 12:05 p.m. Had to wait until 2:30 to claim duffel that was carried up by mules. Surprisingly, no serious aches or pains after we finished. Spent the time waiting in the bar at Bright Angel Lodge.

Part of the group went on to finish boating down the whole river, which takes a week. I can’t quite imagine that, two days was plenty (it was cold a lot of the time, and hard to sleep at night due to the wind). I hope their weather improved.

But looking back, the whole thing was a blast, and way outside my comfort zone. I have moderate sleep apnea, and fear of heights, but neither bothered me much. It’s one of those memories that I will carry always.
Roddy

2

Nice description, but you didn’t leave very many questions to be asked. How far in advance did you have to reserve this trip, and what did you have for dinner at Phantom Ranch (is it still steak or beef stew)?

How were the conditions on the trail, any snow left?

You’re doing better than I did. I hiked rim-to-rim last fall; finished about midnight and could barely walk for a week.

It’s an amazing place, though. Just seeing it from the rim isn’t enough to appreciate it. Good job.

3

Thanks for that write up.

Sounds like it was a blast. Good for you! Everybody should try stuff outside of thier zone once in awhile. It won’t kill you (usually).

I eagerly await your skydiving writeup :slight_smile:

4

That is my question, too.

Very interesting! I’d love to do that. I didn’t know you could boat partway and then climb out. I do much better going up than going down.

Do you have any pictures from your trip? If you choose to tent it, do you get your own? Where do you potty on the raft and in camp?

5

Who did you book the trip with and how much was it? It’s something I’d like to try next year.

6

The concessioner for this trip was Canyoneers - I believe there are several others who use similar boats, and we also saw rowing boats on the river. We booked months ago, but several people only booked a month in advance, and at that the boat wasn’t full (I’m glad, though, because I’m not sure where they would have squeezed in another four people). The cost for this trip was $1200, which included the night at Phantom Ranch.

The dinner at Phantom Ranch that was included in the package was beef stew (named somewhat optimistically, I’m afraid - one old hand that we met said that there was less beef in it every year. But it did taste good.) Steak was available, apparently, if you wanted to upgrade.

Ah, going to the bathroom. Everyone wondered about that, until the orientation the night before. For peeing, everyone had to pee in the river all the time, even when there was a portable toilet set up at night in camp (one reason to be glad I’m not a girl, I guess). Fortunately, no-one had to poop during the day. The portable toilet, which was a large-ish box with a toilet seat on top and a plastic bag inside, was set up in a secluded location every day when we camped. There was a hand-washing station set up in plain view, with a plastic bag with a couple of rolls of toilet paper. This was the signal: if the toilet paper was visible, that meant the toilet was vacant; you would take the bag with the toilet paper with you, so that anyone else coming up could see that it wasn’t there and that the toilet was occupied.

The trail was completely dry, no snow anywhere. I heard later that it had snowed in Flagstaff on that day, but we didn’t get any. The weather for the hike out was, as I mentioned, just about perfect. I didn’t get overheated nor cold, at least until we reached the top and rested.

I only have videos, which I want to consolidate into some kind of cohesive whole before I publish them. My still camera crapped out on me so I don’t have any stills, but other people did, and might share with us.
Roddy

7

You didn’t miss much with the upgrade. It sucks to have to say that; the mere fact that you can get a hot meal and a shower at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is bordering on heroic. Hell, I even made a phone call.

Did you carry anything on your way out? I think I’d at least want a water bottle; anything else?

I’ve got a couple pics from my trip if anyone would like to see them, and the if the OP doesn’t mind.

8

I made the Phantom Ranch to Bar-10 trip several years ago. If walked the Bright Angel trail (only down instead of up:)). We helicoptered out at the West end.

Our bathroom arrangements were similar to yours, but with differing rules. If we had to do #2 during the day, we had to ask the guides for “OSCAR”. Then they’d make us chant out loud the basis for the OSCAR acronym. “Outstandingly Superior Constipation Alleviation Receptacle”. If you didn’t say it right, they’d (pretend) refuse to get it out of the raft. After completing your business, everyone would cheer when you walked back “down the path”.

Good times. Congrats on making the trip.

9

I fully agree about Phantom Ranch, the hot shower was the best one ever - and it had only been 2-1/2 days since my last one at the hotel. The meal was not spectacular, but it tasted good and there was plenty of it.

The only thing we carried out was water and food. The Bright Angel trail has three water sources on the way, so we didn’t need to carry as much as we actually had. But food is important too, you’re burning a lot of calories during that hike!

Everything else was packed out by mules, as part of the package.

Feel free to post your pics, no problem.
Roddy

10

Thanks. Ours was called The Duke, not sure why, it wasn’t an acronym for anything. And I’m sure they would have trotted it out during the day if necessary, but I don’t think anyone wanted to ask (or have that much attention to what they were doing). We guys felt awkward enough peeing in front of each other in the river when we had to make a pit stop. The code of the river is: “don’t look”.
Roddy

11

These are from the South Kaibab Trail.


In that second one, you can see a bit of the river and Plateau Point, which is a branch off the Bright Angel Trail.

12

I do have one more question, what’s that eastern part of the canyon like? At either rim, you can walk up to the edge and the whole thing is spread out before you, just like the pictures. But when driving around the east end, there’s just a simple bridge about 50 feet above the water. It’s as if the Grand Canyon has sides, but no ends.

So on your river trip, was there one spot where it suddenly became The Grand Canyon, or is it just a gradual change until you’re a mile deep?

13

I’m not sure exactly how the geography works, but at Lee’s Ferry you can drive right up to the river. I guess the road cuts through some of the canyon walls or something, but they aren’t very high. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to that part. When we started off down the river, it was already a canyon but not very high. It just kept getting higher and higher the further down the river we went. After maybe 20 miles or so (just guessing really) you often couldn’t see the real rim of the canyon because of the angle and of how far it was set back from the river. As the guides told it, though, the “real” canyon starts when we hit the granite layer, no more shale or limestone with eroded caves and such, just solid granite walls.

Thanks for the pics of the South Kaibab trail. Could you describe how it is to hike that trail? The Bright Angel trail is pretty civilized, with three rest stops with water and bathrooms. I understand Kaibab doesn’t have any of that stuff. How is the trail itself - wide all along the way, or does it get narrow and treacherous anywhere?

Thanks,
Roddy

14

I’m not sure it really counts as a canyon at that point. From the North Rim, it’s a long drive downhill to get to Lee’s Ferry. It just seemed really anti-climactic. I remember the river, the bridge, a convenience store and a dusty airstrip, but there’s nothing there that looks like the Grand Canyon. Then you drive south for a while, turn west and start a long uphill, then come around a bend in the road and there it is again. As you travel west, the river goes down a bit and the land goes up a lot. It’s just an odd perception I had, I guess. It just seems like the canyon has sides, but it doesn’t have an end.

I’ve never been to the west end, either, unless Hoover Dam counts. I used to wonder what the ends of the Great Wall of China looked like, too.

The South Kaibab tends to go along the tops of a ridge instead of the bottom of a valley. The steepest part is probably in the first quarter mile or so, down a series of switchbacks. There’s one spot where the trail comes to the end of a butte (Skeleton Point, I think); wall on one side, dropoff on the other and I swear it looks like a dead end. That’s the second picture I posted above. But the trail bends around that wall, and then it’s more switchbacks. I don’t recall any places that were particularly narrow or treacherous.

After the ridgeline, the trail crosses a bit of a plateau. (Same geology as Plateau Point, I think.) That’s the first good look at the river, and the start of the inner gorge. I was on my way down, so it was early afternoon by then. It gets nasty hot down there. I had a bit of heat exhaustion and threw up a couple hundred yards before the bridge.

(I must have looked like a wreck by the time I got to Phantom Ranch. Everybody else there looked like there were ready for a couple sets of tennis. Now I know why; they came by boat.)

There are a couple of composting toilets on the way, but there’s no water. As long as someone does their research and brings enough with them, they should be fine.

There’s a great site here from someone who hiked down the South Kaibab and took pictures about every few hundred feet or so.

Did you see any Utah Agave on your hike? Everything is sun-bleached and dusty, but every now and then I’d see a vivid green plant stalk sticking up about ten feet. Turns out the plants were all over, but they live for years (decades?) before sending up that stalk and going to seed. I don’t know if there’s a season for them, or if the conditions are right on the Bright Angel Trail. Funny looking things, though.

15

Thanks for the great info and the site link.

We were very lucky on plants on the hike, lots of spring wildflowers were blooming, and at Phantom Ranch even a lot of cactus were in bloom. I didn’t notice anything like you describe as Utah Agave on the hike, but we saw lots of those along the canyon from the boat.
Roddy

16

We did the full week trip about 13 years ago. Unbelievable time – well worth it. Still want to do the Bright Angel hikeout – one of these days. Thanks for the tale!