Time Machine

So, yesterday was my birthday, and I had the day off blogging - hope that was ok! Now just a quick overview of the salient points; not too long a drive from Monument Valley, only a couple of hundred miles (!) and we were both really excited to go through the Grand Canyon National Park Checkpoint to be told that our first viewing point was just a mile away. Wow! The Grand Canyon! Couldn’t wait to be bowled over, again. We walked rather hurriedly towards the fence, into a gap just vacated by another tourist, and looked over the edge. 

We didn’t say much for a while, each thinking their own, but similar, thoughts. We walked up a viewing tower and peered down, and out, from several levels. Didn’t say much. Headed back to the car past loads of people. Next viewing point? OK. So off we drove, looked over, hmmm, pretty. 

Headed over to the visitor centre. Horrible toilets! Found some information on walking trails and watched a movie about, well, the Grand Canyon. Which, as you can probably tell, had rather underwhelmed us! Are we allowed to feel underwhelmed by what is considered by many to be one of the Natural Wonders of the World? I think we both felt rather guilty about that. Having said that, we did know that it is so vast that it is difficult to take in it’s scale; we also felt like coach party tourists, just stopping off to look and take photos - that’s not really our thing at all. 
We found the trail information that we would need for our hike into the canyon - Bright Angel Trail was the one we had decided on back home. Quite scary. There are posters everywhere reminding you how hard it is to walk down and back out; several different ones recounting deaths of fit and healthy people who had underestimated the hike on several levels - heat, length, elevation, and who had gone in underprepared. They do a good job of making you look at yourself and your capabilities, and we considered long and hard about where we should head to and what we would need to take. It says everywhere - Danger! Do not day hike to the Colorado River. Hiking there and back in one day is not recommended due to long distances, extreme temperature changes, and almost 5000ft elevation change each way. We have 2 weeks of this fab holiday left - I want to enjoy it! So, being rather conservative, even though we think of ourselves as being reasonably fit, we opted for what was considered a ‘difficult’ hike of a 9.6km round trip to the 3mile rest house 2120ft below the rim. It was estimated that it would take us 4-6 hours. Steve made great sandwiches and we doubled up on everything we would normally take on a hike. Fortunately I had packed our old water belts, so we had those as well as water bottles. We were sorted and ready to go :-) Now, off for dinner at the local Steak House for my birthday, and very tasty it was too - not quite up to Gallagher’s standard - but Tusayan is not Las Vegas!

Bright Angel Trail Day dawned bright and beautiful with no wind to speak of. 

As we set off at 9.30 we passed heaps of people, all shapes and sizes, making their way back up the many switchbacks that characterise this trail. They must have set off really early, maybe to watch the sunrise. One thing that disturbed me slightly was that most seemed to have walking poles with them - was there something they knew that we didn’t? It was quite cool to begin with as we were walking in the shadow of the canyon wall, and we hoped it would stay cool for a while. A mule train had descended into the canyon before us - plenty of evidence on the trail - but I really wouldn’t have felt happy sitting high up on one of them. Apparently they are very sure footed, and there have never been any accidents, but I’d still trust my two legs more.

As we made our way down, through the many layers of different colours, each representing a few million years of time, switching back every 15m to 25m, all I could think was, well this is lovely at the moment, but I’m really not, if I’m honest, looking forward to the hike back up! Before we knew it we were at the 1.5 mile point - couldn’t believe it had only taken us about 40 minutes. We found a great, slightly off route, spot to sit and stare and top up our energy supplies with a muesli bar; oh, and take a few (more) photographs. Not long after setting off I was looking up - when really I should have been watching where I was putting my feet - and I noticed a large piece of fallen rock balancing on another. It was the shape of it that caught my attention, rather like a large shark fin, and I called Steve to look. Just as  I did so I noticed the red pictographs drawn underneath it! 

I hadn’t read anything about pictographs in any blurb about the canyon, but I can’t believe the rangers don’t know they’re there. I was quite excited with my discovery! Need to ask a ranger about them when we get back. (I forgot) Within an hour and a half of setting off we were at our destination, 3 mile point. Neither of us felt like we wanted to stop - strange, really when we knew we had it all to do in reverse! - but it just didn’t feel as if we’d actually got anywhere. We knew we had enough water, and we were pretty sure we had enough food, so we decided to carry on down to Indian Garden, a little oasis, and campground, halfway down the canyon. It was where we had initially wanted to walk to, but had been put off by the description of ‘very difficult’ and ‘round trip of 6-9 hours’. It was another 1.5 miles away, but as we dropped down we lost sight of the camping huts which are located there, and we had lost all shade - and it was very hot in the full sun. Not wanting to become a statistic we made the decision that if we hadn’t come to the huts in another 15 minutes we would just find what shade we could and sit and have lunch. A few minutes later we passed a lone Dutchman who informed us it was only another couple of hundred yards. Phew! What an amazing little spot - lush greenery and groves of trees amidst the dry desert, not quite what you expect in the Grand Canyon, but the natural result of a spring which rises there. 

Someone had kindly placed a large wooden bench in the shade of a large tree, so there we sat for lunch and contemplated the return journey. So, if it’s taken us 2 hours and 10 minutes to get here then it’s going to take us about 4 and a half hours minimum to get back (going on their reckoning of 2 to 3 times as long to return as to descend). Ooh, that’s a long uphill walk! When we’d been in Zion Canyon, at the gift shop I’d bought a neck cooler, thinking of our long hot walks to come, and had used it for the first time today - brilliant what you can do with the granules they in disposable nappies! I re-soaked it in the little spring and off we set. Nice easy pace we said, stop any time for photos and at any rate, stop every 15 minutes for a short rest and every hour for 15 minutes. Good plan, it was very hot. We really do want to get back in one piece. So onwards and upwards we plodded, no stress, no heavy breathing, just a bit of sweat, well, quite a bit of sweat, lots of photo stops and there round the corner was the 3 mile rest stop! Hey, what’s that doing there? It’s only taken us 10 minutes longer than going down! We refilled our water belts and bottles, sat in the shelter with other tired trekkers and felt rather pleased with ourselves. Not lost too much fitness, then :-) 

We made it back, from more than 505 million years ago, up the 3040ft easily, and very enjoyably, bobbing in and out of what shade from overhanging bushes we could find, in 2 hours 40 minutes; so much for the 2 to 3 times as long! I guess they need to allow for people walking in the intense heat of summer; today wasn’t really that hot.

Indian Garden is the line of trees in the middle of the photo. We stopped about midway into the trees.

After a coffee and frozen yoghurt we headed back to shower away all the bright red dust which had stuck itself to our legs - loads on Steve's hairy ones, then got back just in time to watch the changing colours of the sunset.

So yesterday we were underwhelmed. Today we weren’t overwhelmed, but during our thoroughly enjoyable 15km hike we came to understand and appreciate the true scale and beauty of this unique landscape. The Grand Canyon can’t just be seen, it must be experienced.