Life is "Grand"!

 As you can imagine, Terry has been doing the heavy lifting in making sure that our adventures  have been documented in this blog.  After our latest chapter, hiking the Grand Canyon, she asked me to take a greater role in writing this entry.  Considering the fact that she finished the 28+ mile hike despite almost passing out twice, how could I say no? (*Terry says this is exaggerated)

What does this mean to the faithful followers of the blog?  This entry will probably be heavy on the hyperbole and light on the facts(what do you expect from me?), and I'm going to write it in first person from my perspective. 

We headed to  Grand Canyon National Park on Wednesday without permits to hike below the rim, so we hit the road at 6:00 in the morning in order to get a good place in line at the back country permit office.  A few first come, first serve permits are offered every day, and if we were able to score one, our plan was to hike 14 miles to the bottom of the canyon at Phantom Ranch (Bright Angel Campground)  on Thursday,  hike 7 miles back up to the Cottonwood Campground on Friday, then hike the remaining 7 miles back to the rim on Saturday.  To make a long story short, our early start earned us the permits that we wanted (were afraid?) to get. We were ready to tackle the North Kaibab Trail.

We went to the north rim, as it was closer to us and we liked the remote nature of it.  The south rim is very busy, more commercial, and a lot farther from us.  The first picture was taken during our Wednesday driving tour of the north rim.  We also visited some old Indian ruins on the north rim. These are the remains of some ancient pueblos used for summer homes.

We spent time on the front porch of the lodge at the north rim, and then enjoyed a great pasta dinner in the dining room. We packed up the gear we would need for the hike and went to bed early in our little cabin.

One LITTLE(?) glitch with that packing of gear? Count the hiking boots in the trunk. One, two, three....three. Hmmm. Perhaps someone would like to hop in and out of the canyon? (That someone would be Glen by the way)  Luckily we had put in our trail sneakers as well as most of the boots. Glen decided he would have to go with shoe choice number two. 

Thursday Morning -- up at 4:00 in the morning to get an early start in order to avoid the heat that we knew would be a factor at the bottom of the canyon.  The lower down you go, the hotter the canyon gets, with 100+ degree temperatures projected for Phantom Ranch, our day's destination.  I was able to take several pictures, even though I was working hard to keep up with Terry on the downslope.  She won't admit it, but I think she enjoys making me work on the downs.

It's time to throw in a few facts that will be meaningful to those of you who have done some hiking.  During our 14 mile hike down into the canyon, we lost over one mile of altitude -- 5700 feet .  Of course, since our route was an out and back one, we gained that altitude as well.  More details regarding the steepness of the trail later.  For each step of the 28 mile round-trip trek, we carried full packs; none of that wimpy day-pack stuff.  We didn't take the time to weigh them at the beginning of our hike, but when we weighed them at the end, we found that Terry had been carrying 30 pounds of pack and stuff, and I had been carrying 50 pounds.  I don't know who decided that we needed all of that stuff, but at times I wasn't impressed by their decision making.
We handled the first 7 miles of the hike in 3 hours and reached the Cottonwood Campground; the place that we would be camping on our second night of the journey.  At this point, things were going very well.  The fact that we had been traveling downhill meant that it had been a relatively easy hike to that point.  (If any hike is easy when you're carrying a bunch of extra weight on your backs, that is) 

Another mile into the hike, we actually hit a steep incline.  I noticed that Terry was slowing down a bit, so I called for a drink break.  At that point, I realized that her asthma had kicked in(she hadn't taken her inhaler because of the downward nature of the trail) and that she was actually close to passing out.  Why hadn't she called for a break, you might ask?  Apparently she was tougher than she was smart, which means that she was infringing on my usual territory. We took a break, Terry took a couple of puffs off of her inhaler, and  we were ready to continue on down the trail.

We traveled another few miles  down the trail, and even though it was still mid-morning, the temperature started to take its toll.  It's always a challenge to drink enough water and to keep the electrolyte levels up while hiking, and the downward nature and moderate temperatures early in the hike had lulled us into underestimating our fluid replacement needs.  To put it politely, Terry uses up a lot of fluid when she hikes, and while neither of us had had enough to drink, it hit her harder than it hit me.  On one of our rest breaks, I noticed that she wasn't sweating much any more. For her, not sweating much means that her body is dangerously close to the condition of heat exhaustion.  We used to use the saying, "No sweat man," to mean no worries, everything was fine.  In hiking,  this saying means that the body is in the process of shutting down in protest of the exercise and heat combination. 

We had passed beyond the point of no return, as we were closer to our destination than we were to the campground that we had passed through a few miles before.  All of a sudden, our recreational hike started to take on the flavor of an exercise in survival.  We decided to reduce some of the stress on Terry's system by having me leapfrog with her pack for the next section of the trail.  I carried my pack ahead while Terry rested and hydrated, and when I had traveled a ways down the trail, I dropped my pack and hiked back to Terry.  I then carried Terry's pack while she hiked along with me.  A mile or so of this procedure along with intense hydration had Terry sweating again, and reduced my elevated stress level back to normal.  Terry insisted on carrying her pack for the final stretch of the hike, and short of wrestling her for it, I knew that I couldn't keep her from carrying it. 

Phantom Ranch, with the accompanying Bright Angel Campground, was certainly a welcome sight.  We had spent 14 miles and 8+ hours on the trail, and the temperature at the end of our hike was over 100 degrees.   Without guilt, we purchased some souvenirs in the Phantom Ranch store -- you can only purchase those items at the bottom of the Grand Canyon -- and Terry had some of the "world's best tasting lemonade".  We spent the rest of the day hanging out in the stream that passes through the campground, which helped us recover from the stresses of the hike.

We had signed up for the vegetarian chili option for dinner at Phantom ranch. Dinner is served in scheduled time slots, and served family style. We sat at a table with a girl from Switzerland, some young men from the Netherlands, and two Japanese couples. The conversation was lively, and the topics ranged  from our hikes to cycling to lobster.  We learned that it had taken the Japanese couples over 12 hours to make the hike that we had done -- talk about a long day on the trail!

A young family from Mississippi had hiked in from the south rim, and we spent quite a bit of time chatting with them about their trip. It turns out that they had recently been in Glacier National Park, and had taken a raft trip there. The guide in their raft was none other than Maddy Brooke...the daughter of the owners of the St. Mary KOA where we worked in Montana! Small world.

While Friday's hike was "only" 7 miles, it had a solid 1500 foot elevation gain and we were still in recovery mode from the day before.  In order to avoid potential problems with heat, we hit the trail at 5:30.  After 4 hours on the trail we arrived at the Cottonwood Campground, and we quickly set up camp, found shade, and became slugs.  During the day we located a path that lead down to the stream, where people had obviously spent a lot of time and effort in making a nice pool below a small waterfall.  I had been given directions to the pool by another camper who said that I could find my own trail, but "watch out for rattlesnakes".  Needless to say, we used the common trail.

I had carried a backpack stove with some store bought meals with the intention of cooking a hot supper, but it almost didn't happen.  The stove fired up okay, but the flame was yellow and intermittent, and it wouldn't produce enough heat to boil the water.  I hadn't used the stove(other than making sure that it lit) for a couple of years, so I was at a loss to know what to do.  I was within seconds of throwing up my hands and declaring a Cliff Bar supper,  when I looked up and saw the forlorn expression on Terry's face.   I took one more look through the stove's gear and found a tool that I hadn't noticed before.  This was the magic tool, and after I used it to clean a fixture, the stove worked like a charm.  Spaghetti in a bag never tasted so good.

 Saturday's hike was going to present some challenges, so we hit the trail at 4:00 in the morning to take most of the heat out of the  equation.  Packing up via headlamp is always fun, and the little mouse that kept wanting to get in Glen's pack was cute, but not a welcome addition to the pack weight. We left him behind. The hike was 7 miles in length, with an elevation gain of 1000 feet in the first 2 miles.  During the final 5 miles we were climbing over 3000 feet, with an ending elevation of 8200 feet.  This means we were going to battle a combination of fatigue from multiple days on the trail, a serious elevation gain,  and the challenge of exercising at high altitude.  We would also have to hike where the mule rides share the trail. Smelly mule droppings, pee, and sandy trail carved up by hoofprints would add to the fun. For those of you who have encountered any of these challenges, you understand the difficulty of the combination that we were going to encounter.

In a way, Saturday's hike was a bit anti-climactic.  It was a physical and mental challenge,  but it passed without drama.  Yes, once the sun rose we were treated to some amazing scenery -- scenery that we had to earn, which always makes it sweeter.  Yes, we were tired and, at times, just wanted to finish the hike.  We tried to remember to enjoy the journey instead of focusing solely on reaching our destination.   Why do we do things like hike the Grand Canyon?  Maybe it's the sharing of adventure that makes such an experience so special, maybe it's being immersed in one of the world's natural wonders that makes such a journey worth taking, or maybe it's simply an attempt to answer the question "I wonder if  I can ...."



























This last photo is for Ethan D.....we found one in the real size....and are really glad they don't come in the size of that statue Glen was standing beside. While he was not aggressive in any way, we liked him fine in the one foot range.