| Trail Stats - click here to see the lengths of each of the trails we took and the changes in elevation. | |
| Trail Map - click here to see a trail map of South Kaibab and Bright Angel. | |
We hiked the Canyon in October of 1998. It was the first time that either of us had attempted to hike all the way down and back up so we didn't know what was in store for us. We arrived at the Canyon at around 5:30 am wearing long pants and jackets since it was only about 30 degrees out! We parked our car caught a bus over to the Kaibab trail head. |
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| We started down into the Canyon around 7:30. Layers of clothes were coming off every 1/2 hour or so. The sun was coming out and it was getting warmer and warmer as we got farther down into the Canyon. The hike down was not bad at all. It took about 3 1/2 or 4 hours. We didn't take any breaks at all. We were planning on resting near the Colorado River when we got to the bottom. | |
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| We walked through Phantom Ranch campground and found a place to sit down by the river to rest and have some lunch (some power bars that we brought with us). We tried to put our feet in the water but that only lasted about 2 seconds! The water was freezing! After we were all rested up, we walked across the bridge over the Colorado River and headed towards Bright Angel. | |
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The walk started pretty rough since it was all sand... walking through sand is not the easiest thing to do. We had a 1.7 mile walk over to the Bright Angel trail. The path followed the river for quite a while. It was about 110 degrees at the bottom so we were making frequent stops to dunk our heads in the cool water. At one of our stops we found a little cabin that had visitor log. We signed our names and added a little note. After a while, we were no longer close enough to the river so we had to rely on the water we were carrying. |
We were heading up Bright Angel trail. It wasn't so bad at the beginning. We were going strong... maybe a little too strong. We didn't quite pace ourselves for the long journey ahead of us. We were lucky to go through Indian Garden Campsite where they had running water. We stopped and filled up our water bottles. This was a pretty popular place to take a rest. |
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The rest of the hike was long, steep, and very difficult. It was all switchbacks heading what seemed to be straight up the canyon. It was very decieving - just when we thought we were getting close to the top, we made another turn and saw a long, long, long trail ahead of us. Our rest stops became more and more frequent. It was starting get late and we just wanted to get out of there. |
After 15.4 miles and 9040 ft change in elevation, we FINALLY got to the top! We were completely wiped out and stopped at the lodge to have a drink and rest. We were so happy to see this place and be able to sit down! WE DID IT!!! |
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