April 9, 2022
- Start: Mather Campground (mile 682.6)
- End: Cottonwood Campground (mile 698.8)
- Distance: 16.2 miles
Sleeping in the hiker-biker camp at the Grand Canyon’s south rim was an incredible way to begin the day, but it wasn’t exactly a quiet one. The campground itself was sedate throughout the night, but I guess I didn’t realize the national park service shuttle busses would begin running around 5 am (!!) to take early morning tourists out the the various trailheads for their sunrise photos.
This was an interesting (and somewhat unpleasant) wake-up call with people standing around nearby and loudly chatting at the bus stops while the rumbling motors and squeaking brakes of the busses broke the tranquility of the pre-dawn morning.
I lingered in my soft, down quilt for at least an hour after waking up, just waiting for the sun to emerge and warm the walls of my tent a bit before I got moving. And then I rolled outside for an early breakfast with Volt, Barb, and Ian (the two Canadian bikepackers we’d met at the campground last night).
SOUTH KAIBAB
After packing up camp and dumping our trash one last time, Volt and I set out on the paved walking path leading away from the campground and heading back toward the trail that would lead us north to the South Kaibab Trailhead.
We’d already gazed across the Grand Canyon from the uber-popular Bright Angel trailhead yesterday. And I was plenty familiar with the Bright Angel’s route down to the Colorado River from my rim-to-rim-to-rim trip back in May 2017 and a more recent hike down it with my family in June 2020.
But this time I’d be taking a different route. The Arizona Trail directed hikers down to the Colorado River via the less populated, and slightly shorter South Kaibab trail to our east. So we needed to hike another 2.1 miles to the edge of that trailhead on the south rim before we could begin our true descent.
Volt broke the tip off his trekking pole off as we moseyed through the park toward our trailhead. This development wasn’t good news. Not only did he want to use his trekking poles for balance on the descent, but he also needed them to set up his tent for the final 100 miles of the AZT.
Yet Volt took the bad news in stride and continue smiling. Nothing was going to ruin the Grand Canyon for him, not even a partially broken trekking pole.
Once we got to the top of the South Kaibab trail, we took turns taking some photos before heading down the red dirt path through the fresh throng of day hikers. The shuttle bus just deposited what seemed like 100 of them at the trailhead just minutes before we arrived on foot, and most of them appeared oblivious to the other people around them.
I understood their distraction though. The vermillion cliffs of the Grand Canyon are one of the many things that a camera can’t quite capture. Part of it is the scale. It’s just so awe-inspiring when you look across the vast open space with nothing but magnificent canyon for as far as your eyes can see,
These stunning views are why this national park is dang popular. Contrary to the take of many wanna-be comedians, the Grand Canyon is not just a giant hole in the ground. Each layer of the the canyon that you descend through brings a completely new perspective of your surroundings and I knew the best views were yet to come.
INTO THE GRAND CANYON
Volt was hiking quite a bit faster than me going downhill – maybe because I was stopping so frequently to take photos or perhaps because he has fresh young joints that haven’t been beat up by nearly five decades of outdoor adventures. But I didn’t care that he was pulling away from me. I wanted to savor the entire journey down.
About an 90 minutes into the descent, I could see the mule trail working their way up the zigzagging switchbacks of the trail. But I was less focused on them than the massive panoramic landscape through the portion of the upper canyon. It was just fantastic!
As we descended even further, I found myself noticing how my poorly body was enduring the physical challenge. You’d think seven miles of downhill would be easy because your lungs aren’t having to do much work. But the reality of this steep downhill hike is that it is incredibly hard. It wasn’t just my sore knees and ankles, but my feet too. I could feet two new blisters forming on some of my toes from my weight shifting forward to the balls of my feet for so long.
Just ask anyone who’s climbed a mountain with 5,000 feet of prominence and they will tell you that the descent is plain murder on your joints to your muscles. And that’s what I was essentially doing here during my Grand Canyon traverse – I was just hiking the 4,500′ descent of this adventure first and beating up my quadriceps before tomorrow’s grueling 5,500′ ascent back up to the north rim.
ROCK BOTTOM
By Skeleton Point (three miles down), nearly all the day hikers had turned back and heading back uphill to the south rim. The crowd had definitely thinned to a trickle with only a precious few people trying to make their way all the way down to the Colorado River and back in a day.
The switchbacks continued dropping below colored bands of rock, and eventually, I could see the muddy brown river below me growing larger. Then I spotted the black bridge that spanned the Colorado River at the end of the South Kaiab Trail. Four river rafts were moored on the north side of the river at a beach landing just to the left of the bridge, but they were just blue and white specks from way up here.
Shortly after noon I finally made it to the tunnel at the mouth of the bridge. It had taken me over three hours to descend this far, and the radical change in air temperature was hard to ignore. Not only was it getting 3.5 degrees warmer with every 1000 feet of elevation I descended, but the day itself was warming up under the blue cloudless sky.
Up on the south rim of the canyon, it had been a cool 42 degrees when I departed the trailhead this morning. But now, down inside the canyon, the temperature seemed to mirror the hot Arizona deserts I hiked though near Tucson or Kearny. It had to be 40 degrees warmer now!
There was no shade or clouds to protect me from the intense sun either. Just steep canyon walls that stretched vertically upward toward the sky. The entire experience was so much more impactful than my words can adequately capture it here, and I was grateful to get the chance to experience it yet again.
Nonetheless, I was ready to celebrate when I finally reached the tunnel immediately before the black metal bridge. This tunnel was the first bit of shade I felt in hours, and it was gloriously cool inside. It was like a cave carved into the rock, and once I made my way through it, I was at the beginning of the suspension bridge with its wood decking stretching out across the wide river.
The Colorado River that flowed beneath the bridge seemed to be the color of chocolate milk today, and it looked a lot less pleasant than the last time I’d crossed over it. You definitely wouldn’t want to rely on this for your water source if you could avoid it, and I was glad I’d soon get to a better water source near Phantom Ranch.
As I walked over the long span, I glanced to my left and could just barely make out the silver bridge where the Bright Angel Trail crossed the river a half mile down river. It didn’t really matter which route we’d used to descend from the south rim, since both of these trails would eventually merge on the north side of the river (near the Bright Angel Campground where we had our permit to spend the night this evening). But the AZT designated the South Kaibab Trail as the main route, and it was two miles shorter, so I would be using the black bridge this time around.
A New PLan
When I made it to the opposite side of the Colorado River, Volt was reading some signs about the construction of the trails and bridges and patiently waiting for me. It was barely 12:30 pm now, and we just needed to walk the half mile up the soft, sandy River Trail to Phantom Ranch where we planned to take an extended lunch break.
Phantom Ranch is one of the more unique places to stay inside the Grand Canyon – but only if you can afford the $213 cabin rate AND you’re lucky enough to get one of the coveted slots that seem to disappear within seconds of becoming available. There ranch is essential a series of small wood cabins at the bottom of the canyon along well as a canteen that serves food for ranch guests and snacks for hikers who happen to make it that far.
Volt and I planned to stop at Phantom Ranch and eat our lunch in the shade of the trees near the canteen, and then we’d likely push on the remaining 8.5 miles to Cottonwood Campground. After all, I was still fairly certain there weren’t 16 AZT thru-hikers camping down at Cottonwood tonight.
The stop of Phantom Ranch was more than just a convenient rest stop though. I was kind of hoping I might find some hikers with a permit for Cottonwood Campground who realized the distance there was much farther than they wanted to hike. Then we could just swap permits and continue on.
But, if that opportunity didn’t pan out, Volt and I were going to just roll the dice and hike to Cottonwood anyway. While sitting around camp last night, I noticed that the ranger who’d issued our backcountry permit for the Bright Angel Campground didn’t even put our actual names on it. Instead, our permit had a completely foreign name on it and said we were from Belgium!
And so, Volt and I agreed we’d continue on to Cottonwood regardless of what happened. If push came to shove and a backcountry ranger asked to see our permit, we’d just pretend to be some poor Belgian AZT hikers who missed the turn for their campground and ‘accidentally’ hiked all the way to Cottonwood instead. After all, how likely was it that a range would actually make us backtrack 8.5 miles???
PHANTOM RANCH
I was more than ready for lunch by the time I saw the trail junction turning into Phantom Ranch too. I remembered there being a series of tall trees near the the canteen, and I planned to lay in their shade with my shoes off for at least the next hour of the afternoon.
But when I arrived, I was surprised to see the trees were either completely gone now and/or they didn’t seem to have enough leaves on them to provide any shade. The only place I could really escape the sun now was under a small eave on the canteen’s side porch.
I stripped of my shoes and socks while I waited for Volt to show up, and then went off over to the canteen’s window to order a cold lemonade and an apple. After 20 minutes, Volt still hadn’t arrived and I was starting to wonder if he’d hurt himself. We’d only parted ways a half mile earlier near the river. He should have been there by now.
While I waited, I was joined by a handful of ultra runners taking a quick break in the shade too. Today was the annual trail run where participants start at the Grand Canyon’s south rim around midnight and attempt the 48-mile, 20,000 vertical foot challenge of a rim-to-rim-to-rim (or R2R2R) trail run.
The runners coming through Phantom Ranch right now (13 hours into the event) were already on their way back to the south rim, having completed over 40 miles of this massive undertaking. Most of them were in good spirits too, and several more were trying to off-load extra snacks onto me so they didn’t have to lug them any further!
I chatted with nearly a dozen trail runners over the next half hour as I continued to wait for Volt, but he never appeared. Where could he be? I wondered. It was really hard to miss all the signs for Phantom Ranch. Surely he couldn’t have walked right by it.
Maybe he stopped to take care of some blisters between the river and here. Or maybe he got bitten by one of the infamous pink rattlesnakes inside the Grand Canyon and had no way to send a message up the trail to me.
After more than an hour, I decided to put my shoes back on. I asked one of the trail runners sitting near me to keep an eye out for a hiker matching Volt’s description on their way to the river. If he saw Volt anywhere on the trail, just let him know I was continuing on to Cottonwood Campground.
That’s when a super tall runner piped up and said he was fairly sure he saw Volt heading up the North Kaibab Trail. He wasn’t 100% sure if it was the same hiker, but it sounded like a good description of a guy he passed just north of Phantom Ranch.
Well crap! If that was Volt, he must have missed the turn. And now he was probably an hour ahead of me. Would I ever catch him now??
The BOX
The unfortunate downside of waiting until nearly 2 pm to depart Phantom Ranch meant that I was going to have to work my way through the hottest part of the canyon during the hottest part of the day.
The next section along the North Kaibab Trail was a 4-mile long box canyon with massive vertical walls known as ‘The Box.’ The park recommends against traversing The Box while the sun is directly overheat because the tall granite rock walls seem to reflect heat off each other, amplifying the temperature while you’re walking through the canyon’s narrow opening.
Heading into this chasm midday was definitely less than ideal, but there was one saving grace. Bright Angel Creek runs through much of The Box. So before entering the narrow canyon, I walked down to the water’s edge and doused my sunshirt and its hood with cold water to help mitigate the impact of the heat. Then I pulled the wet hood upper my head and began hiking north.
As I worked my way up the North Kaibab Trail, I crossed paths with dozens of the R2R2R participants heading my way. If the runner was in the midst of a walk break, I’d often ask if there was a hiker matching Volt’s description ahead of me. Some just shrugged in tired indifference. Others said they couldn’t remember.
Finally I passed two girls who told me yes, they’d definitely seen him. They’d even talked to him, and Volt asked them to pass on a message. He missed his turn and didn’t realize his mistake until it was far too late to double back. He was continuing on to the campground and would see me there.
Whew! That came as a relief. Now I had a source (beyond the random runner at Phantom Ranch) telling me they saw him. Volt hadn’t become fodder for the pink rattlesnakes after all.
This good news put some pep in my step. Volt was somewhere up ahead of me, and he almost certainly stopped to take a break to eat lunch, right? So maybe I wasn’t a full hour behind him after all. He had to be tired after powering down that long knee-busting descent on the South Kaibab Trail. If I just picked up my pace, maybe I’d catch him before the campground.
That notion was easier in theory than reality though. It was still so hot in this canyon and the sweat was evaporating off me as soon as it hit the air. I knew I needed to drink more water. And I needed to keep snacking. Otherwise the elements were going to beat me before I even had a chance to think about catching Volt.
BLISSFUL
An hour north of Phantom Ranch, I returned to the creek to douse myself with water again. My shirt was completely dry now, and I knew I needed to filter at least another liter of water before returning to the trail if I wanted to avoid dehydration.
I ask another pair of runners if they’d seen a backpacker wearing an olive-colored sun hoody ahead of me. When they responded in the affirmative, so I asked how long ago they passed him. They shrugged and said it was super close. Maybe three or five minutes ago. Not long at all!
Again, this egged me on and I used all my energy to push myself forward. Volt was just five minutes ahead. I just needed to pick up my pace a little bit more!
True to their word, it wasn’t long before I saw the silhouette of another hiker walking up ahead of me in the distance. My heartrate surged with excitement. Yet to took me another 10 more minutes to truly get close enough to realize it wasn’t actually Volt.
The hiker just ahead was wearing a similarly colored sun hoody and carrying a backpack. But this person had an accordion-style mattress pad secured to the top of their pack. Volt used an inflatable pad, so there was no way this hiker was him. Dang it! Where was he?
I caught up to the hiker just as we turned a bend, and that’s when I realized not only was this person not Volt, it wasn’t even a guy! The hiker ahead of me was a woman about five years older than me and she was leaning up against a rock wall trying to ease herself into the sliver of shade beside it.
I stopped in the shade beside the woman, who introduced herself as Blissful, and dropped my pack for a quick break. Blissful seemed happy to see someone else and told me she wasn’t feeling good right then before describing nausea that was coming over her in waves.
Blissful’s symptoms sounded like dehydration or an electrolyte imbalance to me, so I encouraged her try something salty from her food bag. These past few miles through The Box were enough to really drain a person. Blissful agreed and pulled a fresh new bag for potato chips out of her pack as we rested in the shade.
I soon learned Blissful was an AZT thru-hiker too, which surprised me because I hadn’t crossed paths with her (or even heard of her) up to this point. Was it possible there really were 16 AZT thru-hikers ahead of me that weren’t on my radar?
Figuring she might know the answer to this question better than me, I asked about who she’d been hiking around recently. That’s when she shared that she was actually about 30+ miles behind me until yesterday! She’d left Flagstaff around the same time as Elliott, and even hiked with him briefly, but she’d felt really underwhelmed this last section of the AZT, so she eventually just decided to skip ahead to Tusayan yesterday.
She was waiting at the Grand Canyon’s Backcountry Office when it opened at 8 am this morning and successfully applied for a same-day permit to camp down at Cottonwood Campground tonight. Then, after a quick resupply to the General Store to resupply, she arrived at the South Kaibab trailhead about 20 minutes behind us this morning. The only reason she was ahead of me now was because I’d stopped at Phantom Ranch for an hour.
This new development was rather interesting. Cottonwood Campground was already full according to the ranger who refused to give me a permit for it yesterday around 1 pm. But the campground had vacancy as of 8 am this morning?!? Blissful’s news seemed like more proof that there weren’t really as many thru-hikers ahead of us as we’d been led to believe.
I told Blissful about the ranger’s claim that there were 16 AZT hikers ahead of us, and all about the risk we were taking by bypassing Bright Angel campground where out permit said we needed to stay. She just laughed. That was utterly preposterous. As far as she knew, the only AZT hikers ahead of us were the same exact people I was tracking. Then she kindly offered to let Volt and I stay with her in her campsite at Cottonwood if we wanted – just so we didn’t run afoul of any rangers checking permits.
I thanked her profusely, and agreed it would be nice to camp with someone else. But first I needed to catch up to Volt. He had to be here somewhere! So, after I made sure she felt good enough to hike on her own, I bid her goodbye and said I’d see her at the campground.
COTTONWOOD
Not long after I left Blissful, I finally spotted Volt. He was sitting down on some rocks near the junction for Ribbon Falls and just waiting for me like he didn’t have a care in the world.
I apologized for taking so long. I’d waited at the Phantom Ranch canteen expecting him to turn up any minute. But maybe I should stopped for him right at the side trail leading to Phantom Ranch instead. He shook his head and apologized too. It was his fault for missing the turn, he said, before asking if I’d gotten his messages from any of the dozen or so R2R2R runners he told to look for me.
We had a good laugh about the mix up, and then I told him about Blissful and her offer to share her campsite at Cottonwood. Our problem was solved. We could hike the remainder of the way to the campground with no more worries. A ranger wasn’t going to send us packing.
Minutes later, Blissful arrived at the trail junction too and I made introductions all around. Volt and I were on the fence about heading down to see Ribbon Falls. I’d seen the falls before and I knew the bridge was currently out, which meant we’d have to ford the raging, cold creek if we want a close up view.
In the end, we decided to pass on it. We were all too tired to ford a river after such a hard day. We would just take a few photos of the upper falls that we would see from our route on the trail instead.
As we made it the final mile or so to the campground, the canyon opened up and a fierce wind started blowing. Somehow this new element made the uphill trudge to Cottonwood feel even longer. But when we finally arrived, the campground is virtually empty. Only one other site was occupied and the overflow area for AZT thru-hikers (near the mule holding area) was completely empty! And there wasn’t even a ranger in sight.
We still set up our tents in Blissful’s assigned campsite, and Volt somehow managed to get his tent up despite his broken trekking pole tip. Then the three of us ate dinner together and had some terrific conversation with the amazing inner canyon as our panoramic backdrop.
Eventually the gusty winds grew stronger enough though to force us into our tents for the night. A strong storm was heading our way and tonight’s wind was just the prelude. Blissful shared her worries about the upcoming weather and said she didn’t think she haw a warm enough gear to get through the another storm if the temperatures really dropped down into the the teens like the forecast said they would.
It was still 50 miles from the North Kaibab trailhead (up on the north rim) to the town of Jacob Lake, and there wasn’t much protection from the elements once we got up on the Kaibab Plateau. She’s worried there won’t be anywhere else to ride out the snow when (or if) it comes in two days. Consequently, she’s going to get up early tomorrow to try to make it up to the north rim early enough time to make some prudent decisions.
Highlights
- The views inside the Grand Canyon were just something else. They never cease to amaze me each time I hike inside this wondrous national park!
- Getting to know Blissful was an added perk to the day. She’s a real hiking badass and has completed a bunch of foreign trails, including the 1,900 mile Te Araroa in New Zealand and she had a double hip replacement just two years ago!
Challenges
- The descent down the South Kaibab Trail was much harder than I’d hoped with a full pack. I have some new blisters and a lot of aches and pains. This was one of the first times I had to break out the Ibuprofin before bed.
- Losing Volt during the half mile between the Colorado River and Phantom Ranch created a bunch of unnecessary anxiety. And our game of telephone using R2R2R hikers as messengers left much to be desired, but at least it all worked out in the end.
- I can’t believe we are having to deal with the insane wind (again). I’d really hoped the canyon would have shielded us from it until we got up to the north rim.