April 7, 2022
- Start: Russell Tank (mile 651.3)
- End: Tusayan (mile 676.3)
- Distance: 25 miles
Although it was just breezy yesterday, strong winds blew in overnight and early this morning making it colder and gustier than normal. The drop in temperature made me glad I’d filtered all the water I’d need last night too because my hands were simply too cold to do it.
As I broke down my tent from its flat, grassy spot at Russell Tank, the air felt so chilly that I even needed to wear my rain pants and rain mitts over my normal clothes to curb the cold from biting wind. This was clealrly one of those days where Mother Nature felt the need to remind me that it’s still early spring. I may not have to hike in any snow here, but we were still at 6,500’ elevation in early April.
TOWARD TUSAYAN
As I started walking north around 7:40 am, I knew I’d wanted to hike a minimum of 18.3 miles today. My goal was to get to the Upper Ten X tank, which was the last water source before the town of Tusayan.
I’d didn’t plan on stopping in Tusayan on my way north. It was nothing more than strip of highway immediately outside the Grand Canyon for people who drove into the national park every year. It was really nothing more than a handful of hotels, some gas stations, and a few mediocre restaurants.
The town was essentially a tourist trap where everything was ridiculously overpriced. The town’s McDonald’s was known as the most expensive McDonald’s in the U.S., and I wasn’t in the market for any last-minute Grand Canyon t-shirts, post cards, or other or souvenirs. So yeah, hard pass on staying in Tusayan. I’d get my next shower at the Mather Campground inside the national park tomorrow.
Yet, I still wanted to get as close to Tusayan as possible today because it would mean fewer miles when I’d headed into Grand Canyon National Park. I’d need several hours of daylight to take care of some essential errands, including getting a walk-in campsite on the South Rim, picking up my resupply box from the Grand Canyon post office, and heading to the Backcountry Office to get a permit to camp at the bottom of the canyon as we transited though the park.
Thus, every additional mile I hiked closer to the park today should result in an extra 20-30 minutes more time to get those necessary tasks done tomorrow.
KAIBAB NATIONAL FOREST
The forest floor seemed to be covered in wildflowers this morning, including round clusters of white blooms that I couldn’t identify by sight. I felt pretty confident it wasn’t milkweed, Queen’s anne lace, or yarrow. But I don’t know enough about my flowers to say what exactly they were.
I’ve been referring to this website to identify the wildflowers I see out here on this hike, but the fact of the matter is, Arizona has such biodiversity that I sometimes have a hard time figuring some of them all out. Maybe I should break down and yet the iNaturalist app. I’ve heard other hikers rave about its ability to recognize plants and flowers from just a photo – thereby taking much of the research (and guesswork) out of the process.
Up ahead, the backcountry was turning into a network of wide dirt forest service roads that criss-crossed each other beside the trail. I pushed myself to hike harder to stay warm on the relatively flat terrain as it headed toward the Coconino Rim – the escarpment just south of the Grand Canyon.
By 9:40 am, I was able to finally strip off my rain gear as the warm sunshine came out and broke though the tall ponderosa pines. Pickup trucks, dirt bikes, and OHVs seemed to appear on the roads, while people with truck campers and small RVs sat parked in random boondocking spots out here in the Kaibab National Forest.
By late morning, I made it to the location of the Grandview Lookout tower — which seemed to just be sitting off alone on a random fire road. According to the signs nearby though, some variation of a lookout tower has been in this spot since 1905 when early fire guards used to patrol the Kaibab National Forest on horseback.
The current lookout was an 80-foot steel lookout tower, and near its base sat a two-room cabin were built by the Civilian Conservation Corp in 1930s. A tall log gateway for the Arizona Trail was nearby, so I dropped my pack and decided to rest here while I ate second breakfast and waited for Volt to catch me.
When Volt arrived just before 11 am, the two of us decided to climb up the flights of stairs of the fire tower to see if we could catch some views of the Grand Canyon. We were nearly to the southern edge of the park’s boundary now and would be skirting west along it until we got to Highway 64 and the park’s main entrance.
The wind was still blowing strong enough that I only climbed up the first 60 feet into the air. I didn’t like how unstable I felt that high, especially since I could see down through the thin metal stairs and small landing grates.
Volt was braver, so he continued climbing up to the tower’s cab, but then he wasn’t able to go any further. The hatch to the little room was padlocked and he had to turn back after taking a handful of photos from the highest steps he could reach.
Sure enough, you could just glimpse the edge of the Grand Canyon to our immediate north from the tower. It wasn’t the sweeping views we’d have from the Grand Canyon Village or South Kaibab trailhead, but this sliver of a view was enough to make it feel real. We were almost there!! We could see the Grand Canyon!
BAD NEWS
After returning to solid ground, I took my phone out of airplane mode so I could send a picture back home and update my family on my progress. Yet as soon as I got signal, my phone immediately lit up with notifications and text messages from several friends asking me if I’d heard the news. One of our fellow soldiers, MAJ Barbara Kerrane, had just died.
The news hit me like a sack of bricks! I’d known she’d been ill. She’d been diagnosed with cancer back in 2017. But everyone had hoped that she’d beat it. That past five years had been a roller coaster ride of treatments, with what seemed to be one step forward and two steps back. By this winter though, the doctors deemed her diagnosis terminal.
I knew all this, of course. But I was still wasn’t truly prepared. These texts unsettled and shocked me. I hadn’t been ready for her to go yet. She was only 43 years old. She’d had a husband. And two little kids. And now, the damn cancer won. In an instant, I’d gone from celebrating our first peek of the Grand Canyon to feeling crushed by the sadness of this loss.
BROWN BLAZING
Volt noticed my demeanor was suddenly different when he descended the bottom flight of stairs. He asked me what was wrong, and I shared the unpleasant news about losing a friend. It sucked and I just wanted to be alone for a while, I told him.
I returned to the AZT and began walking by myself along the flat, grassy landscape for the next 6 miles as the trail wound westward along the boundary line of the national park. Desert View Drive was to my north and a myriad of wide dirt forest service roads to my south, but I didn’t care about any of it. Helicopters kept flying overhead taking happy tourists out on aerial tours of the Grand Canyon, and none of them knew someone was walking in the forest beneath them and grieving.
I stopped for lunch in a grove of leafless trees and let Volt catch up to me. I was too overwhelmed by my unexpected feelings today to make conversation. Yet I didn’t want to walk into the Grand Canyon in this forlorn state of mind. I’d been looking forward to the Grand Canyon for the past 660+ miles.
I knew needed to get myself back into a good headspace, and right now I wasn’t there. Despite my general loathing of Tusayan, I told Volt that I was going to walk all the way to town and get a hotel room. I couldn’t stay out on trail tonight. I was going to go to the front country where I could press the reset button, and just start over again tomorrow.
True to his character, Volt could sense I needed company and didn’t let me just go off by myself. Instead, he told me he was completely on board with my plan. It didn’t matter that we’d have to walk another big mileage day to get to Tusayan. We’d spilt an outrageously over-priced hotel room, we’d eat some Mexican food, and we’d have a margarita in Barbara’s honor.
We scoured our maps to figure out how many more miles it would take us to get to Tusayan. Neither of us had planned on going that far today. I’d only expected to go a little beyond the TenX tank, which was now just two miles ahead.
And that’s when I suggested we just forge our own path. Rather than follow the AZT as it zigzagged across the plateau, why not just grab the closest dirt forest road heading west and just take it to town? We’d just ‘brown blaze’ to Tusayan – deliberately walking down on the wide fire roads maintained by the US Forest Service instead of following the AZT.
This alternate route would save us about a mile overall from the Arizona Trail’s true path. But ‘brown blazing’ wasn’t about the distance we were saving. I just really needed some fast, mindless walking. And following the drab brown USFS markers down these long the dusty roads to Tusayan seemed like the best bet.
TUSAYAN
We rolled into the southern end of Tusayan right around 4 pm thanks to the easy walking on the wide improved dirt roads. Stucco-covered hotels sat along the town’s main strip, and so did a massive eagle statute that I felt compelled to pose beside.
Normally I would have gone straight to the 7-Mile Lodge, a cheap, no-frills motel in town that’s hiker friendly. But they didn’t take reservations. It was a first-come, first-serve kind of joint, and we were pretty late in the day to expect them to have any vacancy, especially given our proximity to spring break. So I pulled out my phone and found us a room at the Holiday Inn instead.
After showering off the dust from our ‘brown blazing’ adventure and the last four days of hiking, it was time to head over to Plaza Bonita, where Mexican food would become the tonic for my sorrow! Somehow I felt much better with the noises of random, loud tourists chattering around me. Their excitement about the Grand Canyon’s beauty seemed to boost my spirits by the minute.
This change of perspective was 100% what I needed. Laying in my quiet tent in the desert this evening would have been like a giant weight sitting on my chest. Instead of grieving Barbara’s passing alone, I was celebrating her life jut outside one of my favorite national parks, and that seemed like a much more fitting goodbye.
With a full belly and a more positive outlook, Volt and I set about town searching for somewhere to wash our stinky hiker clothes before heading to sleep. But Tusayan didn’t seem to have a laundromat. Neither did our hotel. So we ended up on the opposite end of town at an RV park and campground feeding quarters into a random laundry machine as the sun went down.
That’s how I worked through my grief. Doing laundry. Drinking beer. Telling Volt a few stories about Barbara. And then stuffing my face with sweet desserts from the ridiculously overpriced general store.
Tomorrow would a new day. I was heading into the Grand Canyon!
Highlights
- I got my first glimpses of the Grand Canyon today from the 80-foot Grandview Lookout Tower. I can’t believe it’s right there!!
- Deciding not ride out my grief over Barbara’s death and heading into town was one of the best choices ever. Tending to what my soul needed allowed me to celebrate her life instead of mourn her loss.
- I’m pretty sure I created a new hiking term today with ‘brown blazing.’
Challenges
- It was a very cold, windy morning when I left Russell Tank. The spring weather forced me to don my rain gear and hike hard for the first two hours of the morning just to stay warm.
- Despite the cooler temperature today, my face got very sunburned in afternoon. Perhaps brown blazing on wide forest service roads without any shade wasn’t the best detour ever.
- Trying to find somewhere to do laundry in Tusayan was ridiculously difficult. With so many tourists and hikers, you’d think it would be an easy find.