Grand Canyon Run: Rim to River to Rim.

Greeted by a blanket of twinkling stars, I choked down my oatmeal.  If there’s one thing I dislike more than eating oatmeal, it is getting up early.  “It better be worth it,” I muttered to myself, “I don’t even get up this early for things like Black Friday.”  Matt and I didn’t even bother to visit the outhouse to change our clothes.  Nobody was awake and nobody could see anyway.  Miraculously, we remembered all of our things and neither of us ended up with clothes inside out when the sun rose.

Even my camera is sleepy at 5:30am.

We caught the first bus east, to the South Kaibab Trail.  Hikers quickly disappeared into the inky black hole.  The first twenty minutes were in complete darkness, only the small beam of my headlamp to help me decide where the trail was and that steep cliff lurking just beside it.  We quickly passed all the hikers and one young, teen that worked very hard to keep up with us.  Eventually, we had the trail to ourselves.  Matt and I marveled at the changing colors of the dusty trail.  One moment, it would be earthy and black, the next, a brilliant orange powder.

Light slowly filtered into the canyon, at first casting gray light and shadows, then the slightest hint of color.  For the next hour, brilliant light poured into the canyon, appearing to illuminate each wall individually.  Intense hues of crimson and orange reflected from the rocks.  Eventually the light grew high enough to peek over the edge of the rim.  Suddenly, the two of us became four as our shadows joined on the trip.

We marveled at the switchbacks that lead deeper into the canyon.  This trail was constructed to bypass tolls on another, more logical route, to the Colorado River at the bottom.  We expected the downhill trip to be easy and fast, but it was definitely neither of those things.  Footing was tricky for the most part, but luckily my legs didn’t fatigue much over the course of the nearly 5,000 ft. descent.

I couldn’t help but feel like we would eventually reach the Earth’s core on this run.  The colored layers of rock reminded me of those charts from fourth grade Earth Science class.  By my estimation, we must be nearing the mantle.  From the forecasts, Phantom Ranch and her triple digit highs must be somewhere near the “mantle”, right?

We reached the river at about 7:30am, two hours after we began.  We mostly had the trail to ourselves.  Just a single pack of mules crossed our path the entire day!  The river trail was quiet and we enjoyed the small up and down undulations to stretch our legs.  Matt wanted to cross the bridge, so I death-gripped the cables as we crossed together.  The bridge swayed with each footstep.  I really don’t enjoy the bridges that I can see through.

The Grand Canyon Park people very emphatically warn people: “The National Park Service DOES NOT RECOMMEND hiking from the rim to the river and back in one day.”  I understand that this type of setting brings hoards of inexperienced hikers, but we went for it anyway.  The more we discussed it, Matt and I decided our summer training had prepared us perfectly for this trip.  SOB was about the same altitude.  We both had steamy spring marathons.  We trained with heat, with hills, and a whole lotta walking.  No problem.  

Proof we made it to the river.

We power hiked the entire Bright Angel trail back to the rim.  It felt good to switch mindsets and not force myself to run, not that I would have been much faster anyway.  We marched along a creek leading skyward and eventually the naked, rocky landscape gave way to green.  Sparse grasses and desert flowers grew.  A few miles up, we encountered Indian Garden, a lush oasis nestled between two tall north-facing rock faces.  

I enjoyed watching hikers go by.  Matt mentioned a quote he saw the day before, “Going into the canyon is optional, hiking out is mandatory.”  From what we’d heard, there’s always at least one call each day from someone that is too tired to walk back out.  No injuries just tired.  If I fielded the emergency calls, I’d probably laugh and hang up on them.  Cross off careers in customer service, hey?  

Look how green this area is!

Since the Bright Angel trail is the gentler, natural way out of the canyon, the views weren’t as spectacular as the S. Kaibab’s cliff side trail. Temperatures continued to climb, luckily at about the same rate as we were moving.  It was almost 80F at the river at 7:30am and about that when we reached the rim at 11am.  I was glad we started when we did; climbing is exertion enough when I don’t have to worry about melting.  We passed many hikers, of different ages and sizes on their way down.  Their eyes fixed on the far away landscape; they didn’t realize the cluster of Desert Bighorn Sheep perched on a rock just above their heads.  The sheep posed patiently for our photos until we carried on skyward.  

Bebe.

Curious parent.

This run, with half the mileage distance, about the same amount of climbing, took almost the same amount of time as SOB did in July.  Personally, I was happy that I didn’t have to climb back down and run to the other rim again.  It was just enough of an adventure that I didn’t end up wrecked for the next week.

17.3 mi, 5:12, really slow pace/mi. :)

Matt, Isaiah, and I spent the remainder of the day riding the free shuttle to Hermit’s Rest.  We stopped at each of the bus areas for a photo.  After a few of them, I remarked, “Oh look! It’s a big hole in the ground!”  Although a seemingly flippant comment to make, this trip really helped me grasp the enormity of the Grand Canyon.  Coincidentally, I rode most of the bus trip and all the stops seated next to the same woman.  Her eyes were glued to the window and only gasps and words like “incroyable!” and “magnifique!” spilled from her lips.  I wish I were outgoing enough to ask where she was from.  Judging by the accent alone, I figured she was Quebecois.  We eventually made it to a spot on the rim where we could see the river below.  

 No wonder my legs were tired.