Grand. The third day of our adventure dawned bright and clear, the amount of water flowing in the stream the only indication that we had gotten rain the night before. We ate breakfast as we tore down camp and stopped at the stream to top off our water bottles before heading out; there was no guarantee of water for the rest of our hike. We struck out at a good pace over fairly level terrain, looping around the back two arms of Grapevine canyon before making our way down toward the inner gorge and the Colorado River. A half day's rest, even with the storm, had done wonders for our bodies and minds, and we were ready to take on anything else The Canyon could throw at us.
One of the bad things about hiking along the Grand Canyon is the number of tributary canyons. Sure, these canyons are what provide water in the parched oven-like inner canyon, and yes, humans have used those canyons for thousands of years as a place of shelter, food, water, and rest (like we did) but having to constantly loop in and around those deep tributary canyons proved taxing, especially when you could see the trail on the other side of the abyss below your feet. We had learned the day before that talking helps the time pass quickly, so we cast around for any topic of conversation that occurred to us and ran with it. We also set ourselves goals, hiking two miles then taking a ten minute break, which made the thirteen miles we had to cover that day more managable. Instead of sloping mesas and steep cliffs we mostly hiked on rolling terrain that, while fairly featurless, allowed thousands of cacti and thorny desert shrubs to take root. We had to navigate prickly pear cactus fields carefully, or risk coming out of one with blood running down our legs.
Around nine miles in our pace began to slow and we started to lose time. Our conversations became more forced, with longer pauses between topics as we drifted off into our own heads before one of us snapped back with the realization that we needed to keep talking or risk becoming miserable. We passed into a small side canyon called Boulder, where we came across what turned out to be the last water source on our hike. Luckily we topped off while we rested next to the cool stream, discussing camping there some day whenever we healed from this trip years in the future. Eventually we moved on, slowly, our ankles swollen and throbbing. My blisters weren't too bad, and I was glad I had tended to them the night before in Grapevine. My main concern were my knees and ankles. My sister, however, was having trouble with her feet. For her own reasons she chose to hike forty miles within the walls of the Grand Canyon in Chacos. Chacos. Like, the open toed sandals that are fine around camp, but for hiking? Yes, they are marketed as hiking sandals, but I don't think the company really intended them to be used to hike forty miles in rough desert terrain while carrying a forty pound pack on your back. Her feet might have been worse off in her actual hiking boots, but her feet were in rough enough shape in the Chacos to make her miserable. I was so irritated with her when I realized they were the only shoes she had, but to her credit we maintained the same pace together for the entire hike, and I'm pretty sure my ankles and knees hurt just as much as her feet, so we were reasonably well matched.
The last two miles felt like twenty. There were plenty of times I just wanted to call it, sit down, take my pack off, and stay wherever we were for the night. We didn't give in though, and made one last push into the ominously named Cremation Canyon, the site of our last camp for the trip. We made an effort to find a somewhat sheltered spot next to a boulder, though we weren't high enough above the wide, dry creek bed for my liking. We set up our gear, still damp from the night before, and stretched our legs and feet as we heated water for dinner. We ate quickly, retiring to the now-dried tent when the wind picked up and rain threatened, though thankfully we only got sprinkles. I woke up in the middle of the night to perfect calm with a light bright enough to see dim silhouettes of my sister and our gear diffusing into our tent through the outter rainfly. I opened the small window vent to peer out and was greeted by the brightest stars I've ever seen, shot through with a swirling cloud that could only have been the Milky Way. Our final night in the canyon couldn't have been better.
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