Grand Canyon Bright Angel Trail

[rggibbons]

Hi all - It's been many months since I've posted here but I still enjoy checking out the board from time to time and wishing I were back in Southern California!

I've wanted to hike the Grand Canyon for years, as I hadn't been there since I was a kid. Earlier this week I was able to go to Vegas to meet my hiking buddy Jim for a day at the Broadcaster's convention (NAB) and then we drove to the canyon and hiked the Bright Angel Trail on Thursday, April 14th. It was a terrific time!

The weather was perfect, chilly in the morning, as we started around 6:30 AM, and then of course it quickly warmed up as we got lower into the canyon. We took a nice break at Indian Garden and passed a couple guys who were hauling down a big load of firewood for a river rafting trip that was running low. Wow - those logs looked heavy! We finally made it down to the river and it took about 3:45. We hung out for a half hour wading in the freezing river and then headed back up.

I was wondering the whole time if going back up was going to be a total slog, but actually we both felt pretty energized and ended up doing it faster than the descent, which was very surprising - about 3:20, for a total of about 7 1/2 hours for the whole thing. It was a great day and the scenery is obviously just stunning!

I'm planning to be back in SoCal for a visit again at the end of May and hope to do a Skyline hike on May 28th, if it's not too HOT. I'm looking forward to seeing Ellen again and hopefully some other friends from the board here! ~Robert

[Sally]

Hi Robert,
That's nice that you made a trip to the Grand Canyon on a perfect day. Could you tell me what the elevations are at the top and bottom of the trail, and the milage? Just curious!
I don't know if you remember, but we hiked a bit of the Skyline trail together last year. I hope you get to fit in a Skyline when you come over to SoCal in May.

[93ludegirl]

That looks cool! I have to move to the south rim in a few weeks, so i'll get to check all that grand canyon stuff out soon

[rggibbons]

Thanks, Sally and 93ludegirl, for the comments.

I definitely remember hiking on the Skyline trail with you last year, Sally! That was a perfect morning - I met so many nice people that day.

The elevation at the South Rim at the Grand Canyon is apparently 6860 feet and at the river it's 2400 feet, with the round trip being just over 15 miles. That scary warning sign at the top says that under no circumstances should anyone even consider hiking to the river and back in one day! For the average hiker, that's probably true - Indian Garden would probably be about as far as you'd want to go. But for many of the hikers on this board, who are very active, it probably wouldn't be a problem. Like I say, we were back at the rim at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I'm not even some uber-hiker. Of course everyone has to know their limits and abilities, and those last couple miles coming back do feel pretty steep at the end of the day.

There's a nice page here with more details on the trail.

http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/bc/gc_tr_ba.htm

Hope to see you again, Sally, on Skyline! ~Robert

[tomcat_rc]

Thanks for the report and link. We will be making our first trip into GC this weekend. We will do a classic So. Kaibab down to Phantom and return via Bright Angel. Weather looks perfect for the trip. We did a 24 mile / 4k hike two weeks ago to check our conditioning.

[tinaballina]

nice work, i have a love/hate relationship with that trail.