The Grand Canyon.

It is a shame that I dont visit the Canyon more than I do. It is only about an hour from Flagstaff and it offers some amazing terrain. In the past I have hiked it, walked it, and at times tried to run it. Early this August I had a friend come to town from Florida and he was psyched to spend an evening down in the Canyon hiking one of the many trails at night.

During the Summer it is very unwise to try and attempt the trails in the day especially when you are trying to move quickly. Temperatures can approach 115 degrees!! So with some careful planning and "Canyon Master" Jason H. on board we decided to take the Hermit Trail at night down to the Colorado River and turn around and make it out with early morning temperatures.

We left for the Canyon around 430pm thinking we would be able to make it to the trail head around 630pm so we can make our decent with the evening sunset and cooling temperatures. When we showed up we were all surprised and a little disappointed at how busy the Rim was. There was people everywhere. Parking lots were full, sidewalks were cramped, and the bus lines were long! Major bummer especially because we didnt plan on having to wait around. Once we made it on the bus we thought it was all over and we would be on the trail where there would be less people. It wasnt.

During the Summer the National Park system seems to change their rules and there schedules without letting anyone else know. This day was one of those days. The bus would not take us to our trail head. They said that they were in a "Summer Sunset schedule" and that they couldnt have people on the bus past Sunset Point... which is total BS because they were still going to the other stops to pick people up. So we tried to beg and plee but we still got kicked off.

Planning our revolt!

Were were at a lost for what our plans should be next. We were 7 miles away from the trail head and we were pushing our start later and later. I think we were all a little pissed at the bus driver and a little bummed that our plans were needing to change. We talked our options and even thought of bailing for a brief moment. We ended up finding a transportation supervisor, asking her for a ride after explaining our plans, and she helped us out with a bus ride on the last bus of the evening!!!

We were psyched to actually make it to the trail head and we started our decent with tons of good energy. I even saw Miah jumping up and down!!

Jason showing off his
legs.

The Hermit trail leaves the Rim towards the Western end of the Park. It leads down towards Hermit Camp ground and from there you can make your way to the Colorado River. It was our plan to cruise down the trail and "quickly" get to the Colorado where we could hang out for several hours resting and refueling.

The trail is different than the heavily used Kaibab and past the 1st mile you get a sense that the trail is not as heavily used. Great night time travel though. The night sky was alone without the Moon and the Milky Way was lighting up the black sky. Really beautiful and vast.

The further down we made it the more we found ourselves slowing down. I dont think any of us were unreasonably tired but the trail seemed to be playing tricks on us. We kept on finding ourselves a bit off trail and at a few point wondering where the trail was at all. We all realized that the very wet Monsoons obviously had damaged several sections of the trail and because of less travel it had not yet seen and maintenance. Made for some fun but frustrating night time travel. We even got to see some wildlife.

Me being tired.

Once we made it to the Hermit campground we kept up our momentum and kept heading for the River. We had not yet stopped more than a few minutes and we were looking forward to getting some rest down by the river. The last section of trail was the most challenging for me. I was pretty tired and getting to be sleepy. There was not a well established trail and because of being next to a running spring it was a lot like bush whacking the last hour. We were dodging around trees and bushes and criss-crossing the stream. Beautiful place to be under the stars. We even saw some spooky eyes up on the cliffs looking down at us.

Once we made it to the Colorado we quickly found a place to rest our bodies for a few hours. Camping with out a permit is illegal year round in the Canyon. We were definitely NOT camping. We didnt have tents, stoves, sleeping bags, pillows or really any thing to make resting comfortable. It was just laying on the ground for a few hours.

Rest felt good.

We had planned on being able to rest for a lot longer than we got to. We thought it would only take 2.5 hours to get down but because of the our slow movement on the trail it took 4.5 hours!!! Which just meant we had to cut into our rest time. We had decided to leave the River at 4am so we didnt have to worry too much about the heat of the day.


With only 3 hours of rest we woke at 4am to get ourselves moving. I was feeling even more exhausted from attempting to sleep on the ground and I was not psyched knowing that the way out was going to be tough. We had morning dawn light on us for the first hour but we all knew sunrise was coming and we wanted to make sure we didnt have to fight the Summer daytime heat. We just kept trucking our way up trail.

About 2.5 hours in we had the proper sunrise to awe at. It was beautiful and the giant red walls slowly bathed themselves with the golden sunrise. We stopped several times to just watch the Canyon come to life with light. The shadows danced up and down the walls and the texture of the river appeared far below us. But we had no time to sit around. The clock was counting down and hot temperatures were on their way.




After 6 hours we made it back to the trail head and were sitting at the bus stop at the rim. We had avoided the sun in total except for about a half of mile near the top. I was feeling pretty fatigued and my legs were weak but overall I felt good about the trip. My brain was stirring up the memory of the last 12 hours and over all it was kind of confusing to grasp staying up and hiking the trail.


We made it back to the car, had ourselves a celebratory morning beer, and headed home.