Day Six: Hiking Out

N.B. This is the ninth of nine posts about my trip.
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Alas, no, this was not the kind of "hiking out" you do while sailing. After all, this was a rafting trip.

We had camped close to the Bright Angel trail -- at a very popular campsite, to judge by the number of pesky, persistent flies -- so we could up paddle to the trailhead first thing. A mere 7.8 miles of switchbacks and approximately a mile of elevation awaited us. To say that some of us were dreading this is an understatement.

The journey, though long (it took me 5 hours) was livened by changes of scenery - not just varying rock formations, but also some waterfalls and plants and even a few animals (squirrels, lizards and - curse them! - mules). I took well over 150 pictures on the hike up, but my camera did not really like the sand, water, and mud I'd been feeding it over the past few days, so even when I was able to flick the shutter open manually, strange things happened.

One of the aggressive and devious desert squirrels:

Elliot, Andrew, David, Larissa, Kris, and Kathy on an early switchback:

David, whose lungs are acclimatized to low oxygen levels from his cigarette habit, soon surged ahead and caught up to the other jackrabbits. I think he and KG ultimately finished shortly after Julie. Not that this was a race, of course. Though if it had been a race, Julie would only have won the "adult competition" or the "LJP competition"; Tyler (a teenager whose dad signed up for the rafting trip independently of LJP) says he arrived at the rim first.

Speaking of which, this is not the rim:

The formation on the left reminds me of traditional Chinese paintings of mountains; also of the mountains depicted in the Kings' Book of Kings:

View of the trail from approximately the two-thirds point, I believe (the shack there is probably the 3-mile station):

View out across the canyon... still climbing:

There's no mortar holding this together, folks:

Two openings in the rock wall. Presumably the "door" was carved out for the path. But I like to think the "window" wore away naturally:


When I got to the top, I found Drew and Tyler, who were waiting for their dad Curt. They very graciously told me the name of the motel we were all staying at (not quite sure what I'd have done without that information), then got some ice cream and headed for the shuttle bus. As I was about to get on board, I ran into Joe (another of the jackrabbits). He was on his way to look for his friend Andrew. And not just looking. He hiked back down to find him and keep him company the rest of the way up.

Several people had some unexpected physical challenges to deal with on the hike up; Joe and Ryan each went literally out of their way to help others in need. But everyone soldiered on, and everyone made it up.

The group quaffed and dined at the rim, and some of us also got up early - not quite as early as sunrise, but close enough to see dramatic lighting changes - to walk the rim trail and take breakfast nearby.

Thus endeth the Grand Canyon experience. There was some excitement on the return trip, I suppose, but hardly worth mentioning; parting was both staggered and bittersweet. Many good memories and many good folks.


N.B. This is the ninth of nine posts about my trip.
Grand Canyon Trip Navigation: [First Post] [Previous Post]