In many cases, the hike down into the canyon is the second-most difficult physical test achieved by most people that accomplish it. The most difficult test, of course, is the hike out. And all you can think about between the two hikes is how bad your legs hurt after the first one, and how the second one is going to be far worse. The Phantom Ranch staffers all commented on how this brings out some the most primitive instincts in the ranch's guests.
Most people hike out of the canyon the day after they hike in. So they get to the bottom of the canyon completely wiped out, and then they turn around and look at what they'll need to surmount the next day.
And it's kind of hard to put this in perspective with a photo, but take a look at the relatively small crack in the canyon noted by the green arrow (click on the photo for a larger view).
Now look at the same point, but from the bottom of the canyon. It's one hell of a climb.
And that's not a fun realization if this is your first hike in several years. Apparently, that scenario is incredibly common. As in, pretty much everyone that stays at the ranch. So people are slogging (or perhaps Kaibab Shuffling) throughout the ranch, feeling a mix of anger, frustration, and sheer panic. It's not a pretty sight.
To be honest, Aimee and I weren't too worried about the hike up. We were looking forward to counter-stretching our legs from the hike down. Plus, we were in no rush, so we could take as many breaks as we needed.
We set out around 5am, and the sight of the sun rising over the canyon walls was nothing short of breathless.
We took the Bright Angel trail up to the South Rim, and the scenery was markedly different than the Kaibab trail that we took down. The Kaibab trail was pure desert, with open, sandy vistas, and plenty of cactus. The Bright Angel trail was green, lush, and looked more like Germany than Arizona.
The scenery was enough to distract us for the first few hours of the hike. But around 9 am, we started to feel the climb. We never said it out loud, but there were a few times that we wished the Grand Canyon wasn't so damn grand. Even though Bright Angel trail was a little less steep than the Kaibab trail, we still needed to climb thousands of feet and hike nine miles of trail. It was no walk in the park, and we completely understood the terror of people who hit the bottom and realized what they were in for on the way up. There's no shortcut, and there's no calling off the hike early. You hike until you reach the top (or until someone calls the Medevac helicopter). There's no in between.
The tone of that last paragraph is all wrong. I must be going for dramatic effect. The trail is an absolute stunner, and it's definitely doable for most people (with the right amount of preparation). We saw all kinds of people on the trail, from geared-out adventurers to young families on their first hike.
And speaking of all types of people, there's a special type of adventure hiker that Aimee and I just didn't understand. This guy:
The real version of this hiker looked nothing like the warning-sign version. It's the rim-to-rim hiker that tries to go from one rim to the bottom, and back up the other rim in one day. You can tell who they are every time, since they have no gear, an undersized Camelbak, and some kind of ironic piece of attire to tell you that they're hipsters outside of the canyon (thick-rimmed glasses, neon marathon shorts, a 90s-era Nike tank top, etc.). They were, almost without exception, 24 to 28 year-old males, and they never said hi as they blew past you on the trail.
We had a pretty good time making fun of these knuckleheads, and they deserved every bit of it. Most people visit the canyon to experience an amazing part of our planet. The rim-to-rim hiker is out to conquer it, and to check one more thing off his list. We didn't get it.
As we kept climbing, we passed through distinct regions of the canyon, which had their own distinct types of hikers. The rim-to-rim hikers were most often seen at the bottom of the trail at 7am, since they started their hike from the top at an ungodly hour. The family hikers were concentrated a little bit further up the trail, since most of them spent the night at Indian Gardens campground (which is conveniently located almost exactly halfway down the canyon). The mule riders and day hikers were a little higher up, and as soon as we saw the foreign tourists with their Las Vegas baseball caps and oversized cameras, we knew that we were close!
By 11:00, we had been hiking for almost six hours, and we knew that the rim couldn't be far off. We started basing our distance by the people we saw. We were a little judgmental, and I'm not proud of it, but there are definitely people at the Grand Canyon that you just know couldn't have been hiking for more than twenty minutes.
Those calculations turned out to be pretty close. By 11:30, we could see the trailhead and the visitor's center, so we turned around to take in one last view of the canyon.
And just a few minutes later, we were out! It felt amazing!
I still can't get over how put-together Aimee was at the top. She looked like she just walked around the block, and I looked like I...well...like I just climbed out of the Grand Canyon!
It was an absolutely amazing trip. The scenery was continuously jaw-dropping, and the company at the bottom couldn't have been better. We'll definitely be back. It might take us a few years to forget how bad our legs hurt, but we'll be back.
