Road Trip: Day Eleven

Grand Canyon Village, AZ

We have the whole day at the canyon today so we sleep in a little later than normal. Most tourists restrain themselves to walking along the rim of the canyon, while some will dip into it using the popular Bright Angel trail. More experienced hikers use the more challenging routes. I decide we’ll take South Kaibab trail down into the canyon; it’s secluded but it won’t kill us.

Almost immediately we see a couple of mule trains. The first carries tourists, the second carries their baggage. This near the rim we’re sheltered by a curve in the canyon and walk mostly in shade. Three quarters of a mile and 600 feet down the trail is a bundle of huge rocks which are our first stop, “Ooh Aah Point”, doubtless named because you say “Ooh" when you see the view and “Aaargh” when you slip over the edge. From here we can only see the upper canyon, the river is shyly hiding in the inner canyon.

We get talking to a pair of hikers who we heard well before we saw them. They are heading down to Skeleton Point, three miles along and 2040 feet down. Do we think we’ll go that far? Maybe. It depends how we feel at the next stop. Most of the folk on this trail are friendly, almost everyone says “Hi” as you pass. Sometimes they tell us how far down they’ve been and we tell them where we’re going. There’s a kinship between those who walk the trail out here.

Our second stop, Cedar Ridge, is a wide plateau. Steps have been carved for walkers trying to reach it, but they’ve been worn down by the hooves of the mules. We hop over peak after peak and reach Cedar Ridge with our calves tingling. There’s precious little shade here, but there are mule hitching posts, which puzzle me initially: they look like ballet bars. We talk again with the chatty hikers, whose exuberance alone seem to carry them along. We also chat with an English couple. The man, looking at the sky with English pessimism, declares they’re not going to Skeleton Point and will head back up before the weather turns nasty.

Having read that Skeleton Point is the first place on this trail where you can see the Colorado River, I’m keen to push on. Courtney, worried about how hard it will be to climb back up, thinks we might be better off following the English couple. I eventually have my way, and we carry on.

The trail is harder from this point, and I start to wonder if I’ve made the wrong decision. Every step I’m waiting to hear Courtney tell me that her knee hurts or she’s twisted her ankle, but every time we catch a marvellous view my doubts recede. We both take heart when, reaching Skeleton Point, we see the chatty hikers eating lunch. “We were taking bets on whether you’d come down here or not!” they shout to us. We sit and talk and eat a while with them. They point out a place where the Colorado reveals herself to us, and tell us they saw a couple of rafts pass by just before we joined them.

The older woman is in fantastic shape. She works for the National Park Service and lives in Grand Canyon village. The younger woman is visiting from New York. I ask if it gets a little crazy living in Grand Canyon village, because it’s so small and remote? It does, she says, to the point that park workers and their kids get every other Friday off just to return to civilisation. But life in Grand Canyon village does have its plusses. Just last week she had an elk in her back garden, stealing her underwear. She tells us we’ve chosen wisely for a one-day visit; South Kaibab is her favorite trail.

Buoyed by how easy they make it look, we start hiking back up in good spirits and with a brisk rhythm. We’ve been in the canyon two and half hours already and the late afternoon sun is beating down on us. Very soon we’re out of breath and have to halt, panting, at the side of the path. Three more stops to catch our breath and we’re back at Cedar Ridge, where our jovial friends are sitting on a dead tree. We sip gingerly at our water, trying to conserve it. “That was the hardest stretch!” they chirp, before heading off. If they’d been any less nice we’d have watched their cheerfully diminishing forms with envy, such was the ease with which they negotiated the trail.

Although the last stretch is technically easier, we’re both knackered. Plodding up like old mules, I feel as if we’re stopping to catch our breath every two minutes. At one of the hairpin bends we meet a family of three coming down. In proper hiker fashion we ask them how far they’re headed. “Oh, we thought we’d go all the way” the mother breezily replies. It’s impossible to walk all the way down and back up in one day. We tell them how far we’ve been and how long it took us and their eyebrows rise. They’re dressed for an after-dinner stroll, and it looks as if they have a pint of water between them. We drop a hint about the time of the last bus and abandon them to their fate, in awe of their mind-boggling ignorance.

Back at “Ooh Aah Point” the rocks are casting shadows. We flop into the shade, unperturbed by the vertiginous drop below us. More weary footsteps later, we finally reach the point where we passed the mule train nearly five hours earlier. Two hundred and fifty people are airlifted out of the canyon every year. Relieved we won’t be making up those numbers, we raise our pace for the last few hundred yards and hug each other at the top.

Waiting for the bus back we drink copious amounts of water and pet the mules through the bars of their enclosure. The chatty hikers drive past, roll down their window and shout “Have nice lives!” We certainly will, I think, when our bodies stop aching.