“We’re actually going to a canyon. I hear it’s pretty grand.”—Grand Canyon 2010 (Days 41-46) PART THREE

**This is part 3 of my Grand Canyon series. I kind of misjudged the division of the trip, I had to subdivide once more…even then, this post is pretty long (There is a post-trip post)**

 

After taking an hour-long break at the river, it was time to hit the trail again. We started back up the way we came—it was going to be a very, very long 12 miles. By this time, it was late morning (around 11:30 AM) and the heat of the day was coming into full force. Down in the lower canyon, this meant temperatures approaching 105 degrees F. It was HOT! We hiked slowly, taking plenty of water breaks, and making sure to rest in the shade. Regardless, it was hard work. Around 12:15 PM, we arrived back at our creek side rest stop, where we’d left some of our excess equipment. 

Our team then had a pretty serious discussion. Since the beginning of the trip, we had been debating how our schedule would work. This trip was the first one where we had to plan our hiking times, meals, etc. Previously, we had had second-year wilderness leaders who planned nearly everything for us. Thus, this trip was a slight shock. We had NOLS guides on our trip—NOLS stands for National Outdoor Leadership School. Thus, they let us “lead” and choose our own schedule. Unfortunately, we all wanted to be leaders, and that meant that we argued a lot about our hiking schedule. Southwest Studies (Grand Canyon) had come a lot earlier (about 3 weeks) this year. This earlier date meant that we had to deal with much hotter temperatures in the canyon. Correspondingly, it meant that we couldn’t hike easily during the heat of the day, and thus we had much less time to hike. Scheduling our hiking so that we weren’t hiking during the day was proving difficult; by the time we sat down to plan the remainder of our hike, we were already into the heat of the day in our second day. Our guides had flatly told us that we would face an extremely difficult hike if we weren’t out of the canyon by 11 AM the following day. Thus, we had a little less than 23 hours to hike out of the canyon. Keep in mind that it had taken us 16 hours to descend to the creek. Do the math, and you’d notice that we had a bare 7 hours of rest time, including breaks and sleeping—a pretty difficult schedule. As a final factor to consider, our guides told us that it is standard in the Grand Canyon to take twice as long to hike up as it does to hike down. 

What would you do? Sitting there, in the bottom of the canyon, with these seemingly impossible schedule issues…how would you choose to schedule your time?  We ultimately ended up deciding on the following schedule (Keep in mind that it was 1 PM by this time):

Rest until 3:30 PM (wait out the heat of the day)

Hike 2.5 miles to White’s Butte (our original campsite)

Arrive by 7 PM; Pack up our camp and leave by 8.

Night-Hike to Yuma Point (a 4 mile journey)

Camp at Yuma Point

Get up at 4 AM the following day

Hike remainder of trail; be out by 11 AM.

                As we sat there discussing it, the plan sounded more and more doable—I was becoming complacent as to just how hard the hike back up would be. We rested as our plan dictated until around 3:30, and then we began the hike back up. On the return journey to our campsite, I didn’t carry a pack—something I felt slightly guilty about. I was so tired by this point though, I needed a rest—the rest of the journey was going to be difficult enough. The hike back up to White’s Butte was actually a really big turning point for the team. We started working together, setting a sustainable pace for all, and most importantly, hiking faster. Our improved hiking pace meant that we reached the top of White’s Butte in just under 2 hours—the same amount of time it took for us to descend the same stretch. That piece of news was a huge morale booster for our team—I felt like we could actually keep to our schedule this time. 

                We packed up our White’s Butte camp, and set off for Yuma Point. As we left White’s Butte around 7, the sun was just starting to set—it was going to be a long night. We made pretty good progress completing the flat section in the lead up to a pretty tough climb. We reached the bottom of the ascent as the sun set—it was time for headlamps. Before I continue, let me explain something about night-hiking. It’s a very, very different experience from day hiking. For one, it’s at night, which means that you can’t see any further than the beam of your headlamp. It’s also cooler, something that everyone on our team was glad for. You don’t really realize it in the desert, but the amount of water that you sweat is incredible. By the time I reached the top of the canyon, I could lick my arm and literally gag from the amount of salt on it! 

                As we night-hiked, we began to climb. By this point, I was pretty tired—the trip had become one, long endless day that spread out like a kind of endless hell. Some people on our team really enjoyed the night-hike. I found it very challenging, however; generally, to motivate myself while hiking, I look at how far I’ve come, and how far I have to go. At night, however, this method isn’t really possible because you can’t see anything beyond the reach of your headlamp. Thus, for me, the hike just seemed like an endless torture…I had no idea when it would end. Fortunately for my sanity, the night hike did eventually end. We rolled into Yuma Point at around 11 PM, having completed that section of the hike in the same amount of time that we descended—again, another morale booster for our team. 

                Although we were really tired, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep, our guides insisted that we eat a proper meal. Marc, one of our guides, cooked a delicious pasta meal for us—sadly, better than both of my meals combined. It was a really good idea, and we all went to sleep on full bellies. Wake-up call: 4:30 AM; six hours to sleep.

                That pasta was a little bit too good—the following morning, we overslept by half an hour. Three members of our team set alarms…and we slept through them all! I, funnily enough, was the first person to wake up—I woke up with a desperate urge to use the facilities. I looked at my watch, saw it was 5 AM, uttered various words that shall not be repeated, and set about waking everyone up. We all rose pretty quickly—we all knew that we had a deadline to meet—11 AM was only 6 hours away. We packed up and got on the trail pretty quickly. Again, that team spirit which had helped us so much the day before came back to help us again. We moved quickly and efficiently along the trail, making excellent time. We reached the junction with Dripping Springs Trail a little bit before 8 AM. While stopping to eat breakfast, our guides decided to give us a mini-lecture on proper wilderness eating. Our breakfast consisted of left-over snacks that were not that filling. Our guides proceeded to explain that meals in the wilderness need to be high-calorie, high-energy meals (Bagels and Cream Cheese, for example). I began to notice that poor nutrition was adversely affecting my hiking ability. 

                We hit the trail again just as the sun was beginning to hit us. We had made excellent progress thus far, and our pace didn’t slow much as we smoothly slid into our teamwork-mode. We rounded Dripping Springs in a little under an hour, and reached Hermit Trail around 9 AM. The final section was before us! We didn’t rest for long—our water supply was beginning to run dangerously low, and we needed to get up the hill before the sun finished us off altogether. At the top of every Grand Canyon trail, there are the ubiquitous switchbacks, and so we threw ourselves head-first into those. By this time, the day was really starting to get hot—and we were very exposed on the side of the canyon. We hiked slowly, and took plenty of breaks—although there wasn’t much water to go around. I haven’t really talked much about my feet on this trip, but I must say both my feet and my boots are troopers. My feet ended up with a lot of blisters/bruises/cuts/calluses on them, but they got me to and from the Colorado River and back. The same goes for my boots. 

Now, back to the side of the Canyon…At one break where we stopped, I felt very dizzy and disoriented. I don’t know how bad I looked on the outside, but I clearly looked bad enough to give my guides concern. I realized, once I thought about my symptoms, that I was severely heat-stressed/bordering on heat-stroke. Our guides made us take an extra-long break to allow all of us to cool down. Fortunately, after that brief brush with severe illness, we left the difficult switchbacks and started up a gentle slope that took us around the side of the Canyon and up towards the trailhead. The remainder of the hike was fairly uneventful—except for the growing optimism that we were nearly at the top. Finally, at just after 11 AM on Saturday, October 2, 2010 (incidentally, my brother’s birthday), we reached the top. There wasn’t any massive celebration awaiting us; just the knowledge that our hike was finally over.

**End of Part 3 of 3. Link to Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/Harry.Lambert2/UWCAlbum02?authkey=Gv1sRgCLDKzaGfnMjc2AE&feat=directlink**