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ain't she grand?

Tuesday (?) morning, we got up just after the crack of dawn to drive the hour and a half from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon. The plan was to hike Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point, 12 miles round trip, and to get out of the Canyon before it hot insanely, ridiculously hot, and before the monsoons came. Our goal was to be on the trail by 8am. I think we made it by about 8:15 or so. Even by then, parking lots were ridiculously full and the trail was crowded.

We'd debated whether to hike Bright Angel or the South Kaibab. I'd hiked Bright Angel before and Laura's goal was to see the Colorado, so in many respects South Kaibab could've been better. It's shorter, goes to the river, as is supposed to have great views, plus I'd never hiked it before. But, it has no water along the way. So we chose Bright Angel instead, with its rest stops every mile and a half.

There was no reason to be concerned about my hydration- I made use of every rest stop except the 3 mile on the way back up. There was a volunteer posted at the mile and a half station on the way down who we chatted with a bit and told us he hoped we were still smiling on the way back up. That's where the signs reminding hikers that going down is optional, but coming back up is not begin, along with signs warning people not to attempt hiking to the river and back as a day hike. Of course, they also warn you not to hike all the way to Plateau Point in the dead of summer. Oh well.
The crowd on the trail thinned out a lot once we got past the first rest station and we had a great hike down, involving much singing. As we passed a pack of mules carrying people back up, the first tourist in line, an older man, informed us that the last tourist in the line was an attractive single man about our age and we should definitely check him out. He was right.We got to the Point about noon and spent about 45 minutes there, eating lunch and taking in the view. I'm pretty sure that of the 20 or so people down there, we were the only Americans.Our trek back out of the canyon was rather uneventful. At the first rest station, we did hear a number of people telling stories of the expensive rafting trips that had dropped them in the bottom of the canyon to hike out. After the 3 mile rest station, the sky had clouded over and we began to doubt the likelihood of getting out of the canyon before the monsoon hit. We'd been warned by Brent's roommate that the trail gets super-crazy-muddy in the rain and makes it a rough hike out. And, common sense told us that the middle of a canyon might not be a good place to be in the middle of a thunderstorm.

We were right at the mile and a half rest station when the bottom fell out. There were tons of people, including the volunteer from the morning, hiding out in the shelter. I put the cover on my backpack and decided that I was so sweaty I didn't really care if the rest of me got wet. Laura attempted to bust out her emergency poncho; unfortunately, it seemed to be made out of plastic wrap and was ridiculously hard to pull apart. And she might have looked a little ridiculous in it... the volunteer warned me that I might want to walk a few steps behind her and not acknowledge knowing her.
By the time we reached the top of the canyon, it had stopped raining, but Laura still had her plastic wrap on. I'm not sure I've ever been sweatier after a hike. Every place we'd been so far, we'd had our clothes in the car, except this time, there was no change of clothes since all of our stuff was in Flagstaff. We tooled around in the visitor center for a little while and then hopped in the car for the drive back to Flagstaff. We got back around 6, ordered pizza, stuffed ourselves and started some laundry. I switched the laundry into the dryer and fell into bed, looking forward to driving to Las Vegas in the morning.

Labels: roadtrip '10, travel

posted by CP @ 6:18 PM 0 thoughts