Discouraged. We were finally on our way! After a brief rest on the rim at Grandview Point my sister and I were finally ready to take our first steps into the Grand Canyon, after (only) 9 miles of walking on the road to get to our starting point. The wind on the rim was bitterly cold and we were eager to find some relief down lower, where temperatures could be as much as 20 degrees warmer than at the rim. We chatted with other hikers who were on their way out of the canyon, some with backpacks similar to my sister's and mine, others with little day packs, and they told us of a steep trail down to Horseshoe Mesa, the first official stop on the trail and a popular dayhike destination.
The trail was just as steep as the reports had promised. Alisha and I slipped down switchback after switchback, sometimes crunching on sand and dirt, sometimes stepping down and over larger rocks. To get in to a place like the Grand Canyon you really only have one choice, but knowing that didn't make the trek down any easier; in fact, both of us at one point or another questioned the wisdom of undertaking a hike like the one we were attempting. The absolute worst were the cobblestone "stairs" that looped out in front of us as far as we could see down the canyon wall. They weren't true stairs, but were set at odd enough intervals, with bigger and smaller stones, to make navigating them miserable. My knees and ankles began to protest less than halfway down the upper canyon wall, and there was nothing I could do about it. A group of hikers who passed us on their way up stopped to chat and kindly shared their supply of asprin with me, which took the edge off the throbbing pain in my knees but did nothing for the swelling and stiffness that was setting in.
We began to rest more and more frequently, stopping for water breaks where before we had drank and walked, stretching our snack breaks out even longer, trying to delay setting out again. At some point shortly after we had stopped for lunch we came to one of the few shady spots on the trail and stopped again, leaning our packs against the tree trunk and trying to talk about anything other than our hike. With the combination of the heat and the pain, the long hours of walking and our increasing isolation from other human beings my sister's and my conversations became more and more funny, until we got to the point of hysterical laughing over the stupidest things, then continued laughing because we were laughing at something so simple. The action came to a halt with a slam when I got one of my infamous bloody noses, and we had to scramble to find tissues burried somewhere in our packs before I bled all over everything. Leave it to me to use up more than my fair share of tissues and toilet paper when we were sure to run out of both of them on our way through the canyon.
It took us a while to settle down again, and even longer to get the nerve to continue the hike to our first campsite of the night, still miles away. A "flat" trail to Horseshoe Mesa waited for us, and by flat I mean a less steep trail that still angled to lower elevations, but to us it was a welcome respite. We made up a little time and distance, though by that time both of us were in considerable amounts of pain and every step took us farther away from ice packs and a soothing shower. Horseshoe Mesa arrived before I had expected it to, which was nice, but the last mile of trail to our campsite was not. We were greeted by horrible loose egg-sized rocks that slid out from under our feet, causing us to slip and slide down a narrow ravine that dropped hundreds of feet to the inner canyon plateaus. We weren't talking much at that point, keeping our eyes on our feet and concentrating on not toppling over with fourty pound packs on our backs. When we finally got off the mesa slopes we had less than half a mile to Cottonwood Creek, the first camp area of the hike, and we camped at the very first place we came to. We didn't even bother to look around and explore our options. As much as both of us wanted to pitch the tent and stop moving for the night we forced ourselves to make dinner and take some time to stretch our sore bodies, knowing we would be thankful we did in the morning. It wasn't long after we ate, and well before the light had faded from the sky, that we crawled into our sleeping bags and dropped off to sleep for our first night in the Grand Canyon.
Did you miss the first part of our adventure, The Road? Read about how I made a big mistake and caused us to walk even further than we needed to here.
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