John Franz rests and cools his feet in Bright Angel Creek near Phantom Ranch after 16 miles of hiking.
Grand adventure
James Dannenberg and friend
John Franz take on a two-day,
25-mile trek across the Grand Canyon
under the hot summer sun
It's hard to swagger when your calves don't work.
Yet somehow those mere mortals milling about the South Rim seemed, well, diminished as I emerged from the depths after a two-day, 25-mile trek across the Grand Canyon last month. Within a few steps, I merged with the summer crowd, indistinguishable from any other tourist gawking at the canyon's immensity, save perhaps for my backpack and obvious need for a shower, but I remained puffed up, secure in the knowledge I had accomplished something special, something that set me apart from these slack-jawed rim-dwellers upon whom I now cast a jaundiced eye. I was invincible.
Now if I could just hobble a couple of hundred more yards to catch the North Rim shuttle at the Bright Angel Lodge.
But, as friends have asked, was I having fun?
A dedicated couch tuber in my 60th year, I probably shouldn't succumb to such an obvious fit of hubris. It wasn't so long ago that I was just another one of the millions who never dare to venture below the canyon's rim. Likely fewer than 1 percent of park visitors hike as far as the Colorado River. Of 4,464,400 visitors in 2003, only 29,666 overnighted at the Phantom Ranch on the bottom, and many of those arrived on the backs of mules.
The idea of taking a rim-to-rim hike had gestated for a while, not in small part because of logistical problems.
It's no cinch even getting into the campgrounds, but having avoided sleeping on the ground for a quarter-century or more, I bowed to a craven need for creature comfort (and a lighter backpack) and opted to stay at the Phantom Ranch, a comfortable oasis near the Colorado River offering cabins, dorms and meals.
The catch was that the place was booked almost two years in advance. The best my friend John Franz and I could do in 2002, when we were finally moved to action, was to reserve a couple of dorm beds for early June 2004, plus two stew dinners and two 5 a.m. breakfasts, all of which needed to be paid for in advance.
That was only part of the task, however. Logic suggested that we needed to hike down from the North Rim -- at 8,000 feet about a thousand feet higher than the South and inaccessible except for the summer months -- so a room at the North Rim's Grand Canyon Lodge was a necessity. And what about when (if) we actually reached the more crowded South Rim? We could have stayed at one of the several lodges on the rim, including the venerable El Tovar, but because we needed to get back to our car on the North Rim, we considered alternatives.
Hiking back across seemed an unlikely proposition, but the only other route is a 210-mile drive. Luckily, a daily shuttle service links the North Rim lodge and the South Rim's Bright Angel Lodge, so for $65 each we booked one-way rides, again paid for in advance. That decided, we booked another night at the North Rim to cap the hike.
The terrain begins to reflect desert conditions where James Dannenberg is shown here, about six miles into the hike and 3,500 feet down.
NOW ALL WE had to do was wait about two years to actually put our feet on the ground. Assuming my wife didn't commit me to a nursing home in the meantime, I figured to use the time to study and prepare.
Boy, was I going to prepare. I would work myself into good enough shape to challenge Olympic marathoners. I would be so finely tuned that the hike would seem like a picnic stroll.
Of course, that didn't happen.
Luckily, my little dog, Kea, demanded a walk at least twice daily, and because I live near one of the nicest beaches in the world, I decided that "sea level" training would do. We hit that beach for about five to six miles each morning, with a mile chaser later in the day. A little bike riding plus the occasional climb up some nearby 500-foot hills topped off my training regimen.
And suddenly it was June.
John and I met up in Las Vegas, dawdling in southern Utah for a few days before reaching the North Rim. Our little cabin actually had a canyon view, so it was tempting just to sit around staring into the impossible void, but we decided to scout the North Kaibab trail head.
We struck up a conversation with a middle-age guy emerging from the trail. He mentioned that he had started out on the South Rim 10 hours earlier and was a little tired because of the steep climb up the North Rim. This seemed to be a fast transit, but the guy didn't appear to be an "iron man" type, just an ordinary 50-something sucking down a beer after a walk in the park. Maybe this was going to be easier than my secret nightmares predicted. I was starting to get cocky.
The North Kaibab trail head at the start of the hike offers a clear view of the Grand Canyon.
NEXT MORNING around 6, with a show of great bravado, we eschewed the trail head shuttle, tacking an extra mile and a half onto what was already listed as a 13.8-mile direct course to the Phantom Ranch. The alpine forest setting of the North Rim was clear and cool, and we had the narrow trail, which we could see switchbacking for miles into the Canyon below, mostly to ourselves.
The first four or five miles provide the steepest descent, dropping about 4,000 feet. It's not a difficult walk, as long as you have good shoes, good knees and hiking poles, and if you pace yourself you can take your eyes off the trail long enough to pay attention to the marvels of the side canyons through which you descend, including long-dormant waterfalls and incredible cliffs and pinnacles, all set against the backdrop of the Grand Canyon beckoning in the distance.
A walk into the canyon is a drop through more than a billion years of geologic history; it's been said that each step down accounts for about 20,000 years. I hardly had time to reset my watch. Forest gradually gave way to ever-drier environments until, almost without warning, we were in the desert and it was mighty hot.
Let me say in my own defense that I had done my research and learned the rules. Rule No. 1 in the canyon: Hydrate. Rule No. 2: Replenish salts and electrolytes, mainly by eating. This I knew. Hey, I wouldn't go see "Lawrence of Arabia" without bringing a canteen.
Still, I underestimated the power of the Arizona sun.
Even though I had a 3-liter hydration pack, plus a bottle of Gatorade, I found that the last five miles, mostly level, was as hard a walk as I had ever taken, mainly because there was little shade to protect me from the sun and heat, which climbed to 100 degrees by noon. I did my best to sip water every few minutes, to munch peanuts and trail mix, to wet myself down in the cold water of Bright Angel Creek whenever possible and to seek out whatever stingy spots of shade the noonday sun offered. But by the time we slogged into the Phantom Ranch about 3:30 in the afternoon, we were pretty wrung out.
Cocky no more.
And, yet, after a soak in the creek and a half-hour's rest on a real bed, the world started looking a little less bleak. Put a huge beef stew dinner into us, topped off with chocolate cake, and we were almost ready to bound up the South Rim. Almost.
WE RUSHED through breakfast at 5 the next morning, eager to get on the trail as early as possible. The shuttle back to the North Rim was scheduled to leave at 1:30 p.m., and if we missed it there weren't any obvious alternatives for getting back to our room and car that day.
The Bright Angel Trail was only 9 1/2 miles to the top, but it was uphill and a pretty steep climb to boot.
Again, the first few miles, in the cool of the early morning, followed the river and were relatively easy. All that changed quickly, however, as the trail turned away from the river and toward the rim, more than 4,300 feet above our heads. Not that we could actually see the rim, obscured by the inner canyon and then the intermediate heights of the Tonto Platform. By the time we walked into the Indian Garden campground, we were pretty tired after five miles and an elevation gain of about 1,300 feet. I started to worry that there was nothing certain about making that shuttle.
Just above Indian Gardens, a descending hiker exchanged greetings and casually remarked, "You've just finished the easy part." Not what I needed to hear.
He wasn't kidding, however. The top half of the Bright Angel Trail seemed particularly cruel, so near the rim after more than 20 miles of walking but yet so far, rising relentlessly over 3,000 feet in about 4 1/2 miles. The initiation to this trail of torture begins immediately, with a series of 42 dusty switchbacks benignly called Jacob's Ladder.
It didn't help that by the time we started this last leg, the sun was at a point from which it could deal out maximum punishment, and punish us it did. Each step up seemed to take me deeper into an inferno, a sort of retrograde route through hell. No matter how much water I drank, the back of my throat seemed parched. Appetite was suppressed by a vague sense of queasiness; eating a handful of salty peanuts was as appetizing as chewing on cardboard.
My legs had turned leaden, and I was hoping just to sustain a shuffling pace of 1 mile an hour in order to make the shuttle. I found myself stopping to rest at virtually every little dot of shade along the mostly exposed route, assuming strange positions to wedge my body behind any protective outcropping.
The now-visible rim far above seemed to mock us.
Trudging uphill was tough enough, but constant mule traffic had irritatingly gouged and disfigured the once-smooth path and left it a corrugated minefield of fresh feces. The logs and dikes meant to protect the trail from erosion required the additional effort of climbing, turning the hike into a slow-motion steeplechase. And as we approached within a mile or two of the rim, day hikers, many dangerously unprepared for even a short hike, crowded the trail.
Though I was in a sort of agony for the last three hours or so, hammered as hard as I had ever been by sun and fatigue, I slogged on, barely able to appreciate the incredible views of the depths from which I had emerged, or even a couple of California condors circling above. (Or were they vultures eyeing me as their next meal?) John, a younger, fitter runner, could have made it more easily, but he stayed back, keeping a kindly watch over his struggling companion. Humbled though I was, there was no way I was going to quit, even as I admit to a few second thoughts about the undertaking.
Somehow I kept going, and almost before I knew it, I could see that trail head, a sight that gave me the final burst of energy I needed. I walked out triumphant.
We made that shuttle with 20 whole minutes to spare.
As I gradually came back to my senses on the long shuttle ride and back at the North Rim lodge, having rehydrated and wolfed down bags of salty snacks and a steak dinner, I realized that in spite of all my preparations, I had been on the edge of heat exhaustion and dehydration. Danger was closer than I cared to contemplate, even though I tried to minimize it as my strength returned. It's not surprising that the rangers try to warn off hikers and that a fair number succumb to that brutal sun.
Yet John and I were pretty full of ourselves at dinner that night, mindful that most of our fellow diners would never dare to follow our footsteps. We had done what we could do -- maybe a little more -- and were already talking about returning to hike the canyon again, this time in a single day. Next time, of course, we would do it in a cooler month; we would hydrate ourselves for a few days before the hike; and we would drink lots more Gatorade along the way. It would be a piece of cake.
On the other hand, we still had some vague idea of our limitations, with no illusions about crossing swords with the guy who made the 10-hour crossing; he must have been a marathoner, at least. And I reminded John of the all-time record for the rim-to-rim passage: 3 hours, 7 minutes. Terra incognita.
We had dessert, slept soundly and drove back to catch our planes the next day, glad to have done it and chastened by our vulnerability.
But was it fun?
Hell, yes.
James Dannenberg is a retired District Court judge who lives in Kailua. His tales from the road have appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
