Tom Grundy's Grand Canyon 2008 hiking Page
Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of death marches, hell hikes, and other fun things. Yes, it is time for Tom and Julie's annual rim to river Grand Canyon hike. To see the illustrious inception of this august institution, see the Grand Canyon 2007 hike page. So, we went climbing one afternoon, then ate dinner and drove up to the Canyon observing the smoke and glow from a forest fire to the east. We couldn't remember what time we started last year, but decided on a 5:30 wake up. It was pretty windy that night, and I didn't envy the firefighters.
5:30 am rolled around soon enough, and it was already light enough to see. We got underway shortly after sunrise around 6 am and quickly made our way down to the Coconino Sandstone, where we stopped to observe and take some pictures of 2 condors sitting on a ledge (one tagged "-4" is SB# 314, and is a ~ 5 years old puppet raised female, the other looked young). We also stopped to observe a ground squirrel doing what it was supposed to, eating flowers (instead of begging for food or eating into people's packs). It was really devouring them. There were also a lot of birds chirping and twittering like mad. Mostly we couldn't see them, but one Oriole was perched on the top of a tree below us. Then we continued on down to Indian Gardens for a bit of a break. We went a few weeks later than last year, and there were more flowers out this time including tall fresh yucca (nolina?) stalks. Occasionally we got a nice whiff of some sort of flowering plant. We got down to the river around 10:20 and decided to push on to Phantom Ranch, since Julie had never seen it. There was some plodding loose sand and the wind was really blowing as we crossed steel bridge. We didn't spend much time at Phantom Ranch, and after a bit of lunch, we headed back. By now things were pretty hot, so we doused our hats when we got the chance, and took advantage of all the shade we could find. Luckily the breeze helped keep things bearable.
We saw a rattlesnake crossing the trail just before getting back to Indian Gardens around 2:15. It didn't seem very interested in us or in posing for pictures, although it did coil for a strike when I got too close. After another break there in the shade of some cottonwood trees, we headed back up the trail for the final slog. We got back to the rim before 6 pm. It was exceedingly windy up there, and the blowing sand and dust really scoured us, and the temperature plummeted drastically. My eyes were quite red and scratchy for the rest of the evening.
The Grand Canyon shortly after sunrise
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Some Condors warm up in the morning
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Julie hikes on down into the inner gorge
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The silver bridge to Phantom Ranch
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ahhh. cooling the feet
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a rattler says "no pictures"
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interesting unidentified beetle
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Grand Canyon afternoon vista
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we made it (boy is it windy)
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