Down

I guess I’m becoming enough of a blogger (hmm, dare I say writer?) that I no longer consider an experience complete until I write about it. It’s not so much my muse holding me hostage this time, as I feel like I’m in limbo, and can’t move on to the next thing until I process, categorize, finish it up with words.

Last week after SxSW, my husband and I flew to Phoenix and drove straight up to the Grand Canyon to hike to the bottom (and back up of course). Since, you know, the Grand Canyon is totally on the way home to Seattle from Austin

The original plan was to get a cabin down at Phantom Ranch, but those reservations get made years in advance (and we missed the morning-of cancellation lottery by one! person! grr). So instead we would be carrying our full camping packs down there, and camping next to the ranch at the Bright Angel campground.

The ice

Thursday morning, we took a shuttle bus from the backcountry office to the Kaibab Trail trailhead. The bus was pretty full, and since we all got dropped off at the same time, there was a little bit of a crowd at the beginning of the hike.

Looking back up at the switchbacks of death...I mean, ice.

Almost immediately, we ran into switchbacks covered in sheets of ice. And I don’t mean icy snow, or slush. I mean ice like an ice rink after the wacky smoothing machine goes over it.

Slick. Slippery.

It was precariously slow-going, and there were lots of falls and slides. I was super-scared, and stressed. We had no poles, no crampons, nothing to prepare us for ice, so we were really wondering whether we should keep going.

And if we had been by ourselves, we might have turned around. But you should have seen some of these other hikers we had been dropped off with–sure, some of them had crampons and were crazy-prepared, but a lot of them were wearing tennis shoes and sliding down on their butts laughing. So we figured, if they can do it, we can do it. (Looking back, this probably isn’t the best basis for sound decision-making, but oh well.)

Once we got past the ice and accompanying adrenaline, I was feeling pretty good. Ice at the top meant that the weather in the canyon was absolutely perfect. Not too hot, which is important since you’re essentially hiking into desert (heat is why so many people die hiking the canyon in summer months.)

Halfway

The Kaibab Trail is about 7 miles, and 4700 feet elevation change. About halfway down, my husband took my pack. Yeah, he’s a little bit of a showoff, but this is our thing–he is so fast that taking my pack is the only way for us to keep remotely the same pace. (Or maybe you could say I’m so slow…but he’s super-hiker-guy, so me and my ego are gonna go with he’s so fast.)

Getting serious about this hiking thing.

And oh man, that felt awesome! It was exhilerating to suddenly have about twenty pounds lifted off my back. Because of that, plus the pitch of certain switchbacks which required more effort to go slow, I started running.

Bounding down the trail on every straightaway in this insanely beautiful scene. It was such an amazingly energetic high.

Well, for a couple of miles at least.

It turned out that what I had thought of as leaping! and bounding! my knees and hips considered pounding! and oh, ouch. About a mile from the bottom I felt like my joints had given up in protest. I had never felt anything like that before, I was feeling great cardio-wise but my joints were in so much pain.

All I could think was: This does not bode well for tomorrow.

The bottom

“We” put up the tent, and then we (yes actually both of us) walked over to Phantom Ranch to buy some lemonade and sit in the sun. Next up was a nap in the sun, and then a surprisingly yummy dinner of vegetarian chili and red wine back at the ranch.

After that was a (mostly unsuccessful) attempt to sleep. Pretty much I just lay awake all night, thinking about what all the warning signs at the top of the trail had said…

“Hiking down is optional–hiking up is required!”