Amazed. In many ways, our last day in the canyon seemed like the longest day, but also the shortest. We had several miles still to go when we woke up in Cremation Canyon and tore down camp, so we started as quickly as we could. We were both eager to get out of the canyon and sit down for a while without the prospect of more walking ahead of us, but I knew I was going to miss the trail; the lack of people and noise and distractions was incredibly appealing. Alisha and I still had a couple miles of rough trail to cross before we hit the South Kaibab Trail and our way up and out, and the two arms of Cremation Canyon we still had to scramble did not treat us kindly. The path was steep and loose, and we were tired. Everything ached and protested with each movement, and we didn't make as good of time as we had hoped.
That is, until we hit the more maintained South Kaibab Trail. We could see the trail rising up and out of the canyon from a ways off, and kept our eyes on it until we finally felt a smoother path beneath our feet. We stopped at the trail junction and rested, staring back across the landscape where we had come from and looking up at where we still had to go. There were several hikers already as low as we were, two miles and a thousand feet or more above the river, and they stopped for a chat before descending the rest of the way to Phantom Ranch along the banks of the Colorado River. They described a rough, steep trail above us, and some even advised hiking further to the other way out of the canyon, the Bright Angel Trail. Neither Alisha nor I wanted to hike more miles than necessary and we figured that we had already seen the worst of the trail, so we maintained our plan to hike up the South Kaibab. How bad could it be, really?
Compared to Grandview Trail and the remote, rugged Tonto Trail, the South Kaibab trail was a wide and paved highway. There were a lot of people on it, more than I thought there would be, and the crowds only got thicker the higher we climbed, but the trail was plenty wide enough to accommodate everyone. The South Kaibab is also the trail that runs mules up and down it between the rim and Phantom Ranch, and we got passed by at least three mule trains on our way up, two of them carrying supplies and one carrying visitors. We followed trail etiquette and stepped to the side, pausing as the mules passed us and exchanging polite hellos with the riders as they moved by.
Many people who stopped to chat said something about our backpacks, which almost always prompted a conversation about where we had hiked and how long we'd been out. When we told them what we had accomplished, that we had hike nearly 40 miles in four days across the barren desert, we could see their eyes grow round as they looked us up and down again. A lot of the women we talked to made exclaimation about how proud they were of us, total strangers, and how they wished they could do what we did. We got a lot of "you go girls!" and "wonder women!" from them all. The thing is though, nearly anybody could do what we did. Sure, there are some physical limits, but with the right gear and some experience there is nothing stopping anybody from achieving a hike like this. That being said, when Lisha and rounded the last few switchbacks on "The Chimney" and took our first steps over the rim of the Grand Canyon and were met by cheers and applause from the other hikers gathered there, some of whom we had told our story to on the trail below, I became overwhelmed. We had done something that we had been planning for months, something that we weren't sure we were up for, something that had felt impossible on several occasions both before we even got to the canyon, and once we were inside it. I couldn't help but cry, from relief, from happiness, from exhaustion, and from a hundred other emotions that I still don't have a name for. We had done it. We could do anything.
Want to read the whole Grand Canyon Adventure from start to finish? Day 1 Part 1 here, Day 1 Part 2 here, Day 2 here, and Day 3 here.
No comments:
Post a Comment