Sweet Treat Spas | Sedona Monthly Magazine | Sedona Arizona art, restaurants, hiking and feature stories

GRAND CANYON

Tired of the same old turkey-and-stuffing routine? Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon for some unique Thanksgiving memories. By Erika Ayn Finch

On average, it rains on Thanksgiving Day in Arizona every 10 years. Naturally, that once-a-decade storm would bring downpours, lightning and snow to northern Arizona as we shopped for freeze-dried food and compressed our sleeping bags to the size of loaves of bread, all in preparation for fulfilling a life-long goal: backpacking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We’d spent months training, hiking trails around Sedona with fully loaded backpacks (ignoring the strange looks we received from other hikers out for an afternoon stroll) and waking up while it was still dark outside just to spend an hour on the stair climber at the gym. So, do you cancel a trip that you began planning in the spring, forfeiting the permit that you obtained back when the weather was hovering near 100 degrees and head out in a frantic search for the last turkey in Sedona, or do you suck it up and prepare yourself for miles and hours of slogging through mud and rain? Admittedly, most sane people would choose the former and reschedule the trip – that’s exactly what half of our party, driving in from California, decided to do. But we’re cut from a different, more stubborn cloth. While the storm raged outside the night before Thanksgiving, we pulled out our rain pants, covered our packs in trash bags to keep them as dry as possible and hoped for the best.

Backpacking into the Grand Canyon is hard – logistically and physically – no matter what time of the year (see sidebar on obtaining a permit). It’s not something you undertake on a whim, at least if you hope to come out in one piece. As experienced hikers, we realized this. But I’d been obsessed with the Grand Canyon since I first saw it in 1999. It was actually a factor in our decision to move to Sedona – I wanted to be close enough to the canyon to take a day trip whenever the mood struck. In 2006, I’d hiked to Havasu Canyon, one of the Grand Canyon’s many side canyons, for Sedona Monthly, but it was the bottom of the canyon’s inner gorge that called to me. Sure, we could have taken a mule to the bottom, saving our strength and sacrificing our backsides, but, for me, I needed to get to the bottom on my own power. I longed for the physical and mental challenge: the sweat, the blisters, the lack of showers and cell phones, the chance to put a closet full of outdoor gear to the test. I was also eager for the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment that was sure to follow.

Why Thanksgiving? My husband and I had a few days off work and had no desire to attempt this hike during warm weather. We were also familiar with the stories about trails and campgrounds choked with people and (smelly) mules; theoretically, Thanksgiving would be a quieter time of year. So we’d miss the green bean casserole – at least it’d be the first Thanksgiving where we lost weight rather than gained it.

The alarm went off at 6 a.m. Thursday morning and we lay in bed, listening to rain pounding the roof while flashes of lightning lit up the dark room and claps of thunder echoed perilously close. “I’m not going,” I declared. The idea of hiking across a ridge with metal trekking poles in the middle of a thunderstorm sounded like suicide, not adventure. Moments after my declaration, the rain slowed and the thunder faded – within an hour it was silent again. We shrugged, decided the weather gods were giving us a break after all and stuck some extra batteries into our packs, knowing that with a later start we’d likely be completing the hike in the dark. No big deal.

As soon as we were north of Flagstaff the snow began.

By the time we reached Grand Canyon National Park, there was a good inch of snow on the ground and the visibility into the canyon was zero. Nonetheless we suited up – five layers of clothing on top, three on the bottom and metal spikes attached to the soles of our hiking boots. The silence in the park was eerie. Instead of the usual banter in dozens of different languages we found small groups, most huddled together on the shuttle buses, their disappointment obvious. We parked at the Backcountry Office and climbed onto a series of shuttle buses to reach the South Kaibab Trailhead located at Yaki Point near the eastern edge of the national park (if we’d been at the park by 9 a.m., we would have hopped on the Hiker’s Express Shuttle and headed straight for Yaki Point). We finally reached the trailhead at 2:30 p.m. No one else was around, and as the sound of the bus faded down the road a sense of aloneness completely enveloped me. The trail traffic we’d heard about might as well have been a myth. The mules that vie for space on the trail were corralled a few hundred yards away, and the animals seemed to be laughing at the two lone backpackers attempting to hike one of the most unforgiving spots on earth in a heavy mist with little more than three hours of daylight left. Again, most people would turn around and wait for the next bus to return them to the warmth of their car but, with determined gazes and gritted teeth, we began the steepest descent of our lives.

South Kaibab Trail is a popular route into the canyon – it’s shorter than its counterpart to the west, the better-known Bright Angel Trail, by several miles and provides a more direct route to Bright Angel Campground, our destination for the next two nights. That said, it’s also much steeper than Bright Angel. The trail begins at an elevation of 7,250 feet. In 6.8 miles you drop 4,800 feet to the Colorado River. That level of steepness is difficult to comprehend, and the heavy fog that shrouded the canyon made it even more difficult to grasp. At one point, I looked over the edge and couldn’t wrap my mind around what I saw: The trail continued below us in a serious of endless switchbacks so steep they looked vertical. No human can walk on that, I thought. Yet walk we did, grateful for the metal spikes that gripped the granite boulders and stuck firmly into mud the consistency of potter’s clay. When we told people we were hiking into the Grand Canyon, they all assumed the trip down would be fast and fun – gravity would be on our side, right? Nope. After months of training, our muscles were strong, but how do you prepare your joints for seven miles of bone-jarring descent?

Occasionally, the fog would thin or lift, giving us glimpses of the canyon and reminding us why we weren’t at home enjoying the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We missed the view at Ooh Aah Point (0.75 miles into the trip), ate turkey sandwiches with numb fingers at Cedar Ridge (1.5 miles – restrooms available but no water) and caught our first sight of the Colorado River at Skeleton Point (3 miles). The trail became even steeper after Skeleton Point, though the mist became lighter the farther down we went. As we passed the Tonto Trail junction and reached the Tip-Off (4.5 miles – restrooms available but no water), the point where the trail makes its final descent into the canyon’s inner gorge, we were switching on our headlamps to combat the dark.

Hiking the canyon in the dark wasn’t as frightening as it sounds. The trail is wide, and it’s not like we were enjoying tremendous views up until that point, but the darkness did make the hike seem longer. I imagined family members lounging at home in the stupor of tryptophan and pumpkin pie, planning Black Friday shopping excursions, while I looked forward to a freeze-dried meal of vegetable lasagna, campground toilets and a night sleeping on the hard ground. Grumpiness was beginning to take hold….

We began to catch glimpses of the lights from the ranger station and Phantom Ranch below us – too far below, I sourly thought. Finally, we heard the sound of the river, only to come across yellow caution tape barring access to the trail that would take us over Kaibab Bridge and to Bright Angel Campground. Rockslide. Instead we detoured along the River Trail to Bright Angel Bridge and, finally, the 33-site camp. I’ll be honest: The exhaustion was so complete by the time we reached the yellow caution tape that I contemplated forging my way across the rockslide or just setting up our tent on the spot. Fortunately, my partner in crime was a little more rational and kept us moving forward (the detour was about a half-mile, we later learned). We set up our tent by lantern light at about 8:30 p.m. and dutifully ate our freeze-dried meals, which tasted like a four-diamond feast after snacking on nothing but trail mix and Clif Bars since the turkey sandwiches. We climbed into our sleeping bags, noting it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been when we started our hike so many hours ago….

I awoke the next morning to a tent filled with yellow sunshine and a feeling of intense pain in my calves. My calves: the one muscle I ignored at those early morning gym sessions for fear I’d wind up unable to fit into my favorite straight-leg jeans. Vanity hath been my undoing. Moaning dramatically but inspired by my desire to survey the surroundings, I stumbled out of the tent and into a gloriously sunny day. The sounds of other campers preparing breakfast were overpowered by the babbling of Bright Angel Creek. Bright Angel Campground (with year-round drinking water and restrooms) sits at the confluence of Bright Angel Creek and the Colorado River; many of the campsites sit on the shore of the idyllic creek. All around us, jagged rocks and reddish-purple craggy mountains stretched toward the sky, reminding us of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California (the campground sits at an elevation of 2,450 feet). Cottonwood trees lined the banks of the creek, their leaves a vibrant golden yellow. On the other side of the creek, a family of deer foraged for breakfast. Suddenly, my calves were the last things on my mind as I took in our surroundings. We’d made it. We were at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And it wasn’t raining.

As eager as we were to explore our surroundings, we were quick to realize we needed to save as much strength as possible for the hike out, which could easily take us 10 hours. After breakfast, we slipped on our Teva sandals, thrilled to be out of our hiking boots for a while, and headed up to Phantom Ranch, about a half-mile north of the campground. The ranch is a series of rustic cabins, mule corrals, an amphitheater and the Cantina, which amounts to a small general store filled with tables and chairs for those staying at the ranch or the campground. (Phantom Ranch easily fills up a year in advance, so if you’d rather stay in a cabin than a tent, book early.) True to American culture, the Cantina sells souvenirs, snacks, coffee and even wine – it’s a small convenience store literally in the middle of nowhere. Backpackers can even purchase meals from the Cantina, which helps lighten your backpack considerably. It’s a great idea, and we’d originally intended to take advantage of it, only to discover that, like most aspects of the Grand Canyon, reservations are required months in advance, not a mere six weeks. Credit-card-only pay phones are available at Phantom Ranch, though be forewarned: A phone call to wish California parents a Happy Thanksgiving costs more than $15 for five minutes. There’s no cell service in the canyon.

We spent the rest of the day along the Colorado River, crossing both Kaibab (or Black) Bridge and Bright Angel (or Silver) Bridge under bright blue skies dotted with puffy cartoon clouds. Both suspension footbridges are quite impressive – Kaibab was completed in 1928 and is 439 feet long, while Bright Angel was completed in the late 1960s and measures 420 feet long. The sun warmed our aching muscles on Boat Beach, where we watched a group of rafters on a 19-day trip dock for lunch. It was about 65 degrees along the Colorado, which was a brilliant green-blue color, not the muddy brown we’d anticipated after so many days of rain upstream. Later, we enjoyed a lively ranger talk under an incredible sycamore tree at Phantom Ranch. As Friday wore on and our leg muscles became tighter and tighter, our worrying about the hike out became more and more intense. We noticed, with a bit of trepidation, that when we gazed up at the land high above us we were only viewing the top of the inner gorge – the canyon rim wasn’t even visible along the river.

Saturday morning arrived, and a slew of people began filing out of the campground. We packed up camp as quickly as possible, took a deep breath and headed in the direction of the 9.3-mile Bright Angel Trail that would (hopefully) safely deliver us back to the rim. The trail follows the Colorado for the first two miles and rises gently before turning south and following Garden Creek. Anyone who’s hiked into the Grand Canyon will tell you South Kaibab Trail provides the best canyon views (on a clear day, obviously), but I thought Bright Angel was one of the prettiest trails I’ve hiked. The views of the canyon were unique and the lush foliage a treat. The clear waters of Garden Creek tumble over rocks to form small waterfalls. After climbing the switchbacks of the Devil’s Corkscrew – not nearly as intimidating as it sounds and not even as steep as South Kaibab Trail – you’ll make your way through a beautiful canyon called Tapeats Narrows. At 4.7 miles, we reached the picturesque Indian Gardens, complete with campground, ranger station, restrooms, water and picnic tables.

We stopped for lunch and a brief rest. We were pleasantly surprised at the trail up until this point. The climb wasn’t anything worse than some of the steeper trails in Sedona, and the scenery was so beautiful we were distracted from our aches and pains. It had only taken three hours to come this far, and our confidence began to soar. The weather was even more beautiful than the day before, and we began to feel like we’d underestimated ourselves. After about an hour at Indian Gardens, we started back on the trail, noting the increase in day hikers (Indian Gardens makes for a popular day hike – anyone will tell you attempting to hike to the river and back in a single day is suicide) and feeling slightly envious of their small Camelbaks compared with our bulging backpacks. About a half-mile after Indian Gardens, the trail began to get steeper and steeper and the temperature colder and colder. We put on our iPods and beanies and pushed ourselves as the shadows grew longer. Rest houses are located three miles and 1.5 miles (restrooms at the latter not the former) from the top of the canyon – during the warmer months the houses offer water, but the water gets shut off in October to keep the pipes from freezing. The water is turned back on in April. It was at the three-mile rest house that we started to get tired, and the feeling only progressed the farther we climbed. The breaks also became more frequent, and we were diligent to eat something every hour to keep our energy levels up. We did catch sight of one of the park’s California condors, the largest land birds in North America, which gave us a boost. The closer we got to the end of the adventure, the chattier the day hikers became. When you’ve been hiking for eight miles with 30 pounds on your back, you’re not necessarily in the mood for small talk….

Eight hours and 20 minutes after leaving Bright Angel Campground, we were greeted with bitterly cold winds and temperatures in the 30s at the canyon rim. There was no one at the top to cheer for us or pour Gatorade over our heads, but it all would have felt appropriate such was our euphoria. The sun was beginning to set, and the shadows in the canyon were long, but even if it had been noon in July we wouldn’t have been able to see our campground, 4,450 feet below. I was overwhelmed by the notion that it was my own two feet that carried me so far – no car, no airplane, no gassy mule. We hugged, took photos and put on another layer of clothing. Then it was time for the two-hour drive back to Sedona and a solid day of bed rest. People who’d hiked the canyon before told us we’d have one of two reactions when we reached the top: We’d either swear to never do it again or immediately begin strategizing our next trip. We did the latter – the bottom of the Grand Canyon hasn’t seen the last of me. •