Into the Grand Canyon

On Jan. 10th, 2011 we arrived at the Grand Canyon at about 8pm Arizona time (7pm BC time). It was after dark and much too late to pick up our back country permits so we were forced to camp on the rim.

I went there with 4 coworkers from my hospital job. We would later attend a conference in Vegas. So anyway, it was Joanne's birthday so we had a chocolate birthday cake for her.

I slept in this 3-person tent between two other guys, which is perhaps how I survived since it was about -19C and the sleeping bag I brought said 4C on it and I had been told it was rated "comfort:11, limit:6, and extreme:-7". There was a heated washroom I could have slept in but that would have been admitting defeat. I wore many layers so just my feet were cold.

The next morning we woke up around dawn and drove and then took a bus to the South Kaibab trailhead. We hiked down the South Kaibab Trail all the way, across the Kaibab suspension bridge and over to the Bright Angel campground. The next day we crossed the other bridge and took the Bright Angel trail back up.

Here is my first view of the canyon that morning. It is hard to capture the hugeness of it in a photo. It is hard to even comprehend the hugeness of it when you're there.

For the first half of the hike there was snow near the trail and sometimes it was icy. A lot of the trail is steps but not very steep steps. Mules have to walk up and down the trails. Sometimes like this we were walking with steep slopes and a good view on both sides. There are no guard rails.

Down there is a cliff where the snow ends.

It was often easy to see very far in front of us to where we would be in 10 minutes or half an hour. The trail ahead wound around the right side of the pillar of rock past the end of the snow.

Here we are going behind that pillar. We were often on the edge of cliffs.

Some mules passed us on the trail.

We ate some lunch here, just before this gap to ascend into the inner rim.

Once through there we could see down to the Colorado river. You can see a trail way down there near the river that we hiked along the next day on our way back up.

There was more red sand at this level. The canyon has many different layers.

Here's a group photo minus Matthias who took it. I borrowed Jon's Olympics toque for the trip because mine somehow got left in my luggage at the hotel in Vegas.

Here's a view of the suspension bridge from above. It has many cables, so it isn't the kind that dips down or swings. They initially brought down all the cables on men's backs...not by mule.

This is looking back across the bridge at the short dark tunnel that got us there.

After setting up camp, we walked over to the nearby Phantom Ranch where hikers can pay to stay in cabins. They had a canteen there which we got some hot chocolate at. We also went back later and had some beers and played trivial pursuit.

There were deer that wandered right through the campsites. Also, late at night we saw a skunk and also a ringtail. There were also a few birds including a woodpecker.

There were many cacti at different levels of the canyon but the most at the bottom near the river.

I have sooo many more photos so I will probably put them up on facebook or flickr. Also, I will make another post about the hike back out.