'Grand Canyoneering'

This article was published in the August 1999 issue of 'The Great Outdoors' (TGO):

There was a rustle at my feet. I glanced down and saw the rattlesnake beneath my lowering foot. "Gracious!!" I screamed (or something around that part of the alphabet) before I could stop myself. I lost all conscious control of my body. I described a parabola as I leapt upward and backward at the same time, clearing a good eight feet. My heart rate went into four figures. A stream of quieter, and less rude, swear words helped me gear down. I then saw the golden, pinky-brown snake properly. To add insult to injury the rattlesnake appeared not to notice or care. It disdainfully slithered away from where I'd nearly trodden on it and curled up only a few feet away. It didn't rattle either. Or leap at my throat. Or do anything rattlers are supposed to do if you believe Hollywood westerns where every snake is a threat to man and horse. It was still in the same position several hours later. It was a pretty laid back critter. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from it.

If you do see Crotalus viridus abyssus then you have to be in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon, or Pink, rattlesnake isn't found anywhere else in the world, not even on the Rim. You know you are not only in the 1,904 sq. miles of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, but specifically in the 10 mile wide, 1 mile deep Canyon which bisects it. It isn't the longest, widest, or deepest canyon in the world, but it must certainly be the finest in the world for backpacking. Over 1,000 miles of trail take you up, down and along it.

The two most popular trails in the Park, the South Kaibab and Bright Angel, start on the South Rim and meet at the Colorado river. We decided to take the South Kaibab trail down, camp at Phantom Ranch ranger station by the river, and come back up on the Bright Angel Trail. This is the commonest way of undertaking this popular overnight hike, mainly because there is no water on the South Kaibab trail but there is on the Bright Angel. Thus you don't have to carry a whole day's water coming out of the canyon.

Our packs felt heavy, mainly with water. But we had saved weight by not taking tents: rainfall in the bottom of the canyon is a desert-like 7 inches per year and at 2,400' above sea level the bottom is typically 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the South Rim. In the height of summer temperatures can reach 120o F (49o C). We also had some tinned food, and Red Dog beer. That is one of the advantages of descending at the start of your trip - you can carry heavy food items down, and eat your way to a lighter pack before you have to climb out again.

The South Kaibab trailhead is sited 4 miles east of the main park "village" but a bus service took us out to it. Like the Bright Angel, this is a maintained trail (none of the others are) and so there are no worries about the state of the path. We set off down the first switch backs that take you through the 250 million year old Kaibab Limestone, festooned with marine fossils from its days as an ocean. We had started late in the morning and the sun was drying our perspiration almost instantly. The trail gradually wound its way down to Cedar Ridge, 1½ miles along the trail. Here the view of the Inner Canyon opened up, although the river still couldn't be seen. The river is nearly a vertical mile below the Rim, and constrained within a steep gorge, so there are only a few places you can see it from above, usually when you are looking down a side canyon. And as you get closer to it, it actually gets harder to see as your angle of view into the canyon reduces.

The Kaibab trail is one of the few trails purpose built by the National Park Service. The trail takes its name from the Kaibab plateau on the North Rim and is a native American word meaning, "mountain lying down". When it became a national park in 1916 the only trail in this part of the canyon was Bright Angel Trail, but one Ralph Cameron had turned it into a toll trail and was charging users a dollar to go down. There was a protracted legal battle and the NPS failed to oust him. In the end the NPS decided to build their own trail, just 4 miles east of Bright Angel. It took 3 years, but instead of just building the trail down to the river, they crossed it and continued up to the North Rim, 10 miles as the crow flies from the South Rim or 21 miles by trail... but 250 miles by car!

There were few people on the trail. This was only May, we were told that in July and August the number of visitors, and the temperatures, are brutal. But although the Park gets 5 million visitors a year, only 8%, or 400,000, leave the Rim and hike down any distance into the canyon. At first glance it appears not to be the ideal place to commune with nature, but two factors make the figures a little less depressing: most of them are day hikers and do not stray from the honey pot trail, the Bright Angel, and secondly, backpacking in the canyon is controlled by a rigorous permit system that controls numbers in the canyon. If you intend to camp in the Canyon (defined as anywhere below the Rim), you must obtain a back country permit. It is specific to a particular night, a certain area, and an exact number of campers. Ours was conspicuously tied to the outside of our pack so that patrolling rangers could check it. The Park will heavily fine anyone found camping in the canyon "off permit". This is not the easy going approach to wilderness camping we have in the UK and I was not happy about the beaurocracy involved just to go back packing, but it does have excellent reasons. It protects the fragile environment of the Canyon from being over used and degraded. It also means that hikers can expect solitude and wilderness even in this, one of the most popular parks in the USA. Some of the camping areas are only allocated one permit, so if you have that permit, you know you will see no-one else that night. And even Park employees have to abide by the system.

We carried on down the path, zig zagging through the "Redwall" (the Redwall limestone), one of the rock types forming the steepest cliffs in the canyon. The trails here switch back through distinctive layers of rock, and old hands judge their progress on Grand Canyon trails by these geological markers. You may hear of "a rock fall in the Supai" on one trail, or a "steep descent through the Redwall" on another.

A helicopter repeatedly passed overhead and we knew something must be wrong. Flying anywhere below the Rim is banned, as is any flying above the rim in this sector of the canyon. We later learned two hikers had started a 4 acre fire a few miles upstream by burning their toilet paper which had instantly caught the dry vegetation. Both burning and burying toilet paper is forbidden; it must be carried out. Sounds gross, but the danger of burning it had just been demonstrated to us, and in this desert environment it doesn't biodegrade either; it just gets brought to the surface and blows about. This fire took a team 2 days to control.

After 5 hours and 7 miles of hiking we reached the rocky Inner gorge of the Colorado River and got our first good view of it. From the Rim it looks nothing, and indeed the first Spanish conquistadors to the area estimated it to be only 10' wide. It's actually about 300 feet wide, cold, and fast, and without the 440 feet pedestrian suspension bridge to take us across to the other side we would never have got to Phantom Ranch, the campsite and ranger station built at the mouth of the Bright Angel Creek, a tributary on the North side of the river.

Phantom Ranch started life as a camp where visitors were put up in the early days of tourism. Theodore Roosevelt, that great advocate for the area to be declared a national park, stayed here in 1909. Today it has a bunkhouse for mule riders staying overnight, a ranger station and a campsite lining one bank of Bright Angel Creek. This is the only formalised and manned campsite in the Canyon; elsewhere 'camping sites' have little to distinguish them from the surrounding wilderness.

It was about this time that I met the rattler. I'd heaved off my pack and stepped off the trail into the scrub to relieve myself. As I was unzipping my shorts a rustle made me glance down to see a rattlesnake just about to be trodden on by my right foot. When my heart rate had returned to normal I had time to appreciate the snake which had merely moved far enough to curl up again. It's rare to see a Grand Canyon rattlesnake and I eventually realised I was very lucky. And besides, it's the scorpions that cause most deaths by toxin in this part of the world....

We crossed the suspension bridge and close though we were to the campsite I decided to test my new water filter. I placed it straight into the murky Colorado and immediately gunged up the ceramic filter and had to start scrubbing it clean with my toothbrush. Major John Wesley Powell, the one-armed civil war veteran who made the first descent of the Colorado in 1869 summed up the silty river neatly: "The Colorado River; too thick to drink, too thin to plough". I suddenly understood why his expedition looked for clear side streams when they camped, and indeed Bright Angel Creek had been one of those spots.

We bagged a campsite by the edge of Bright Angel Creek, hung our rucsacs off the ground with all the pockets open, and put our food in a metal ammunition box. Yup, the wildlife have learned that people equal food. After dinner we strolled along to the evening ranger programme. A ranger sat us round under the dark, clear, starry sky and filled us in on the history, flora and fauna of the area. The nights here are gorgeous, with the Milky Way very prominent. Being so far removed from cities the air can be very clear, and local astronomy clubs regularly visit. Later, lying in our sleeping bags it was a great joy to drift off to sleep gazing at the stars, spotting meteors and satellites and trying to name the constellations. And surrounded by utter tranquillity and beauty, it was hard not to feel at one with the universe.

The next morning we started early to try and avoid the heat of the day. Water, particularly when slogging up, is crucial. Our decision to come up the Bright Angel Trail was fully vindicated. It is the most popular trail, but the top half of it has water every 1½ miles, thus saving you from lugging your whole days water up from the river.

The trail crossed Silver Bridge, the other pedestrian suspension bridge over the Colorado at this point. The mules that bring tourists down won't go over this bridge because they are spooked by seeing the river through its wire mesh floor. The trail then followed the edge of the Colorado for the first mile, often cut into the cliff face, before gently winding up Pipe Creek to Indian Gardens. Indian Gardens is a popular destination for day hikers. There is a campsite, decomposting toilet block, ranger station, water pump, and picnic area. This was not the place to seek solitude, but like most places in the Canyon the views were great and everyone was united in awe.

From here it was only 4½ miles up to the Rim. On the way up we met a mule train; a string of tourists grimly hanging on as the mule wrangler took them down. The practice has historical roots from the prospecting days, and it provides the only way non-hikers can get down to the canyon bottom. They apparently have an excellent safety record, but there was no way I would ever trust my life to the footing of a mule I have no control over!

At last we passed through two rock archways over the path and could see we were nearly at the top. Just by the final arch we picked out some Native American pictograms at least 800 years old that are protected by an overhang. As we approached the last few yards the human traffic got busier as we met tentative tourists coming just a few yards down so they could get a feel of a Grand Canyon trail, but who didn't want to commit themselves too much. 450 medical incidents are recorded in the Canyon each year. Heart attacks, exhaustion, sunstroke and dehydration are the commonest problems. The problem with paths going down into the canyon is that it's so easy for non-hikers to get lured further down into the canyon than they realise. It's only when they turn round and start walking back up in the heat of the day that they realise the hard work is only just beginning, and that they should have obeyed the numerous warning signs that tell all trail users to carry at least two litres of water.

We came up in 'tourist central', by the Bright Angel lodge where gift shops, ice cream shops and bars let you celebrate your achievement any way you see fit. Looking hot, sweaty, tired and dusty as we were, there were plenty of armchair hikers who treated us like heroes and were happy to take our picture.

We had a few more days in the Park. The relatively safe, maintained trails we'd just done had whetted our appetites, built our confidence and introduced us to the rigours of Grand Canyon hiking, rigours which should not be underestimated. We broke open the trail map over an ice cream, eased off our packs and pored over the other 986 miles of sparsely populated wild trails ...