Grand Canyon
A guest entry by Sarah and Matt :)
Hola mis amigos!...Oh wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
After the overwhelming intensity of Las Vegas, we were very happy to reconnect with nature at the Grand Canyon. The first day, we found out that all the campsites at the bottom of the canyon were taken for that night, so we made plans to hike down the next day. We walked around the rim of the canyon, which was incredible. We'd heard that unlike many places, the Grand Canyon is even more amazing in person, and that was indeed the case. Pictures cannot accurately demonstrate how massive and Grand it really is.
The next morning we loaded up our packs (a little too full, we discovered), and took the bus to the trailhead. There were a lot of very young, fit people on the bus, which was a bit intimidating. At the trailhead a group of Brazilian guys from our bus did a very long series of stretches. At first we felt self-conscious and wondered if we should be stretching, but after a while it became clear that they had no idea what they were doing!
The hike down was about 7 miles, and not too difficult. A lot of people take mules down, which costs $500 a day. The mule people had a definite attitude--they were pretty rude to us, especially the guides. There was nothing that could dampen our sprits, though. Being inside the canyon was breathtaking, and gave us a whole new perspective. As we walked down, each layer of rock left a different color dust coating our shoes, and we got a close look at all of the geologic layers. We
also got to spread the news of Obama's victory to incredulous but very pleased hikers.
If we'd stopped at every spot with a nice view, we never would have made it down!
At the bottom by the river, we discovered that we were the first people from our bus to make it down, which made us feel pretty awesome. We also found out that there's a little village at the bottom of the canyon. Everything has to be carried down by mules, so it's very pricey to buy things at the restaurant ($47 for steak!) but we had a few Tecates there anyway. We had lots of fun playing games at Phantom Ranch (the restaurant) and at our campsite. We also enjoyed watching the Brazilian stretchers from that morning hitting on a group of French girls. Guess all that stretching was about to come in handy!
And then there was the hike back up. Oh boy, the hike back up. The trail we took, the Bright Angel, is a total of 9 miles, and in that distance you gain over 5,000 ft. in elevation. Without the packs, it might not have been so bad, but each of us was carrying at least 25 lbs. of weight on our backs. About 4.5 miles in, there's a campsite called Indian Garden where we stopped for lunch, and Ricardo informed us that we'd only gained about 1,500 ft of elevation (thanks to his amazing watch!), which meant that the next half of the trail was going to be much steeper. This was not a comforting notion.
Thankfully, the Bright Angel trail is very shaded, and the day was not too hot. Otherwise, we might still be down there! At a certain point, the elevation was high enough to make us breathless (the rim is 7,000+ ft.--almost 2,000 ft. higher than Denver!) and we were exhausted. We did not look very macho at this point. We were stopping every 5 minutes or so, cursing our heavy packs and casting envious eyes on the people doing day hikes, whizzing by carrying just a waterbottle and a camera. At some point we began to feel like the mules we encountered on the trail. They looked just as sweaty, weighed down, and miserable as we felt.
It was all worth it, though. We reached the top, and felt victorious! Victorious...and very sore. After eating some dinner, we camped outside the park, and made plans to head for Flagstaff in the morning. We thought we were leaving the area just in time to avoid a storm, but it turned out we were destined to be in it. More on that later!
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