Out of the Grand Canyon

The next morning we woke up bright and early, had some quick breakfast, packed up and hit the trail.

We started by going across the other suspension bridge. The sun was shining, just not making it into the inner canyon.

The trail followed the Colorado river for twenty minutes or so.

Then we were heading up a valley out of the inner canyon.

There were 3 or 4 streams we had to cross by

hopping from stone to stone or stepping on logs.

Eventually we found the sun, although we were getting a good workout and
didn't really want more heat from the sun.

We were only in the sun a little while before we rounded a corner
and went right back into the shade.

We hiked for a while just inside the shade line and stopped for a snack
at a place where we could stand above or below it.

After 2 hours of hiking we made it to the other campground where there was water.

Then began the final long leg of the journey. We basically had to hike to the level of the top of those high walls in the distance. When walking towards these walls it was a mystery to me which way we would go in order to get up them. It appeared we were walking into a dead end with steep walls all around.

The trail had a lot of switch backs and managed to wind its way
in between and around the steep parts.

Still, we never went around any large corners, we could always
look back and see how far we had come.

The trail went up through the gap in the top right.

The look back became more and more spectacular.

Because of the direction the slope faced we were in the shade until the top. After the 3-mile rest house (3 miles from the top) we passed a lot of people coming down on day hikes or couple hour hikes. Some young Japanese tourists were not wearing jackets and they were walking down along the icy trails in sneakers.

This diagram was in the 1.5 mile rest house,
which is in the hermit shale layer of the Grand Canyon.

The view of the canyon getting really close to the top.

Sometimes you have to let mules pass.

The view from the top...and my last photo of the Grand Canyon.

The hiking trip was awesome. The views were amazing and it was not crowded or hot this time of year. The thing that surprised me the most was the level of difficulty of the hike. I did not find it challenging and it only took us 4 hours to get down and 6 hours to get all the way back up. The steepness of the trails is much less than the Squamish Chief or the Grouse Grind. I suppose it needs to be so people can backpack in.

Next we drove back to Vegas for the conference...the reason I was in the US.