Transcription:
Friday, April 30, 2021
BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON
Standing on the edge of the Colorado River 4,700 feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon is not the awesome experience you’d expect it to be – at least, not for the reasons you’d think. All sense of scale is lost. The depth is unfathomable because it is literally extraordinary.
Looking around, though, I’ve come to a quick realization of how extraordinary everything about my situation is, and that is what brought on my sense of awe. We are in a place so few people in the world will ever see, and we got here under our own power. In addition to the extreme depth of our location, we are nestled among rocks that are billions of years old. There are no other layers of rocks below these granites and gneisses that I can’t stop taking pictures of. There is magna. That’s what comes next from here. (Don’t worry, Brody – the magma is still waaay too deep to turn into lava… here.) The canyon itself is the merest blip on the comparative time scale – a mere 5 million years in the making.
And then there’s fragile little me, surrounded by all these baffling facts, full of awe despite my inability to comprehend how far away that rim really is.
We get to stay another night at Phantom Ranch, so we took today to let our poor muscles have a bit of a break, and only chose mostly-level places to explore. We did a little River Overlook Trail before the sun got very high, then meandered a couple miles up the North Kaibab Trail and into Phantom Canyon, where I managed to whack my knee while scrambling over a boulder to get to a waterfall. That’ll be fun on tomorrow’s hike out.
The temperature had hit 101⁰ by the time we’d finished eating our last peanut butter sandwich in a quickly disappearing sliver of shade, so we retreated to our air-conditioned cabin (aah! roughing it!) to wait out the heat.
We ate dinner outside (freeze dried beef stroganoff tonight!) and watched the camp’s other inhabitants drift by. Many arrived here on mule back, and you can tell the $60 steak dinner didn’t make any of them blink. (Our $30 breakfast this morning would have cost $6 at Denny’s. I don’t begrudge them a cent of it – even the tiniest pancakes don’t grow on trees down here – but my pocketbook breathes a sigh of relief to see my freeze-dried pouches.)
The canteen is also available for day users, and these are the people who are making rim-to-rim-TO-RIM trips in a single day. Rim-to-rim is already insane, but the North Rim isn’t open to regular visitors yet, so if you want to hike (RUN) there, you have to go back, too. 48 miles. Almost 10,000 total feet of elevation gain. IN ONE DAY. We watched in awe as they stretched, refilled their water and electrolyte pouches, and then set out again. We talked to a pair of twin sisters who were doing it as a 45th birthday celebration. After going down one side, up the other, and back down again, they seemed to be in much better shape than I was a full day after just going down. These are a different type of human being than I.
And then there was the other guy attempting rim-to-rim-to-rim who had to be air-lifted out. He looked a lot like Victor, up there, when we saw him around 2:00. The helicopter didn’t come until after 6:00. I hope he’s okay, but… ugh.
And now we tuck in early. The forecast for tomorrow is hotter than today, and I am avery delicate flower. Direct sunlight – even when it isn’t butt-blazingly hot – makes me wither up. I want to get as much of this 5,000-foot uphill climb done before the sun rises as humanly possible.
Thither & Yon 