Day 293: Grand Canyon
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Saturday May 28th
Despite saying we were going to sleep in, the normal group were up early. It didn’t help that I’d ‘roomed’ with Lucy, who had left before sunrise – she actually woke up at 3am, having not adjusted her clock to the new timezone!
At 8:30, 7 of us were shuttled into the Grand Canyon. Cassie dropped us off at the visitor’s centre, where we all caught the free shuttle down to Angel’s Trailhead, the most popular walking track at the Canyon. Leaving Tamsyn and Sharyn to walk at their own pace, the rest of us took off down the path.
The thing with the Grand Canyon is that you down first, then up. The heat at the bottom of the canyon is 25 degrees higher than at the top as well. There are heaps of signs along the track warning hikers to ensure they have plenty of water and food, and not to overdo it. Whilst we were on our way down, we felt fine – it was cool, it was downhill, no problem! As we got to the first resthouse, we decided to continue onto the second, another mile and a half done. Once there, we rested for about 20 minutes, and ran into Dave, who had woken to see sunrise and then trek to the bottom of the canyon. He told us it was ‘bloody hot’ at the bottom and he’d had to take a swim in the river to cool off.
Re-filling our drink bottles, Paula, Dave and I started for the top, whilst Amy and Brett decided to keep going to the bottom of the canyon. That’s when it started to get rough. It was hot – I’m guessing 35 degrees , in the middle of the day – and we were going uphill, nothing but step after step. There were a surprising variation in people still going down – even people with strollers (can you say stupid!) or overweight and unfit people who you knew were going to struggle to get back up. With my cold, I was having difficulty breathing anyway, so we were taking small short rests every 100m or so to recover.
Close to the top, we came across a tremendously stupid sight. A young girl (late teens) had gone off the trail, obviously to fetch something which had blown away. Consider this: next to the trail edge was a sheer cliff face, straight down to the canyon, and this girl was walking along this edge like it was no big deal. We couldn’t believe the stupidity!
Finally back at the top, we were sweating, exhausted, and hot, and demolished a Powerade each to put some salt and fluid back in us. Paula and I headed to the visitor’s centre and souvenir store to have a look whilst Dave headed back to camp, and then I separated from Paula to head back to the town as well. My first stop was McDonalds to get some junk into me – I was starving!!
After a quick rest in the tent, I headed to the laundry. Just about everything in my bag was dirty, and 2 hours later I emerged with some fresh clean clothes (2 washing machines and 3 dryers does not really work, especially when dryers take twice as long).
Back at the tents, the wind was gusting ridiculously strong – we heard reports it was 90-100km an hour. Cassie and the other Trek America leaders who were also at the ground decided it was unsafe for us to sleep in the tents, some of which had fallen and the tent poles had bent. The decision was that everyone would have to sleep underneath the concrete eating shelter – all 40 of us! (Luckily, before bed, a few of us were given permission to sleep in our tents as they’d weathered the storm – including mine – whilst the others slept in either the van or the trailer).
After an early dinner, we headed back into the National Park, taking pictures in front of the ‘Welcome to the Grand Canyon’ sign and watching the sun set. Halfway through sun set though, we all got bored. ‘Maybe if we start to walk back to the van, Cassie will follow us’ someone suggested. So that’s what we did, and Cassie did actually follow us!
Everyone was exhausted from a long day of hiking, but we still had to do a camp close-out – cleaning out eskies; counting cutlery and crockery; cleaning the tents etc. It was 10pm by the time we got to bed, and we had an early start, as we wanted to be on the road at 7:30am in order to get to Las Vegas by 2pm tomorrow.
Despite saying we were going to sleep in, the normal group were up early. It didn’t help that I’d ‘roomed’ with Lucy, who had left before sunrise – she actually woke up at 3am, having not adjusted her clock to the new timezone!
At 8:30, 7 of us were shuttled into the Grand Canyon. Cassie dropped us off at the visitor’s centre, where we all caught the free shuttle down to Angel’s Trailhead, the most popular walking track at the Canyon. Leaving Tamsyn and Sharyn to walk at their own pace, the rest of us took off down the path.
The thing with the Grand Canyon is that you down first, then up. The heat at the bottom of the canyon is 25 degrees higher than at the top as well. There are heaps of signs along the track warning hikers to ensure they have plenty of water and food, and not to overdo it. Whilst we were on our way down, we felt fine – it was cool, it was downhill, no problem! As we got to the first resthouse, we decided to continue onto the second, another mile and a half done. Once there, we rested for about 20 minutes, and ran into Dave, who had woken to see sunrise and then trek to the bottom of the canyon. He told us it was ‘bloody hot’ at the bottom and he’d had to take a swim in the river to cool off.
Re-filling our drink bottles, Paula, Dave and I started for the top, whilst Amy and Brett decided to keep going to the bottom of the canyon. That’s when it started to get rough. It was hot – I’m guessing 35 degrees , in the middle of the day – and we were going uphill, nothing but step after step. There were a surprising variation in people still going down – even people with strollers (can you say stupid!) or overweight and unfit people who you knew were going to struggle to get back up. With my cold, I was having difficulty breathing anyway, so we were taking small short rests every 100m or so to recover.
Close to the top, we came across a tremendously stupid sight. A young girl (late teens) had gone off the trail, obviously to fetch something which had blown away. Consider this: next to the trail edge was a sheer cliff face, straight down to the canyon, and this girl was walking along this edge like it was no big deal. We couldn’t believe the stupidity!
Finally back at the top, we were sweating, exhausted, and hot, and demolished a Powerade each to put some salt and fluid back in us. Paula and I headed to the visitor’s centre and souvenir store to have a look whilst Dave headed back to camp, and then I separated from Paula to head back to the town as well. My first stop was McDonalds to get some junk into me – I was starving!!
After a quick rest in the tent, I headed to the laundry. Just about everything in my bag was dirty, and 2 hours later I emerged with some fresh clean clothes (2 washing machines and 3 dryers does not really work, especially when dryers take twice as long).
Back at the tents, the wind was gusting ridiculously strong – we heard reports it was 90-100km an hour. Cassie and the other Trek America leaders who were also at the ground decided it was unsafe for us to sleep in the tents, some of which had fallen and the tent poles had bent. The decision was that everyone would have to sleep underneath the concrete eating shelter – all 40 of us! (Luckily, before bed, a few of us were given permission to sleep in our tents as they’d weathered the storm – including mine – whilst the others slept in either the van or the trailer).
After an early dinner, we headed back into the National Park, taking pictures in front of the ‘Welcome to the Grand Canyon’ sign and watching the sun set. Halfway through sun set though, we all got bored. ‘Maybe if we start to walk back to the van, Cassie will follow us’ someone suggested. So that’s what we did, and Cassie did actually follow us!
Everyone was exhausted from a long day of hiking, but we still had to do a camp close-out – cleaning out eskies; counting cutlery and crockery; cleaning the tents etc. It was 10pm by the time we got to bed, and we had an early start, as we wanted to be on the road at 7:30am in order to get to Las Vegas by 2pm tomorrow.
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