part two

We left off part one of our hiking in the Grand Canyon story, with Dan and I defending our food from the vicious Grand Canyon squirrels at the three mile rest stop on Bright Angel Trail. We stayed there quite a while to wait out the hottest hours of the day, before braving the heat to hike the last mile and a half to Indian Garden Campground (now Havasupai Garden). From the South Rim down to Indian Garden you lose just over 3,000 feet in elevation so as you can imagine the trail is just switchback after switchback and still quite steep at some parts.

Though it was still extremely hot after our long break, we decided to keep going as we were both feeling great.

Another excerpt of Dan’s journal entry:

From Indian Garden it’s another mile and a half hike out to Plateau Point. It’s quite flat which is nice, and the views are spectacular as you walk out on the plateau with nothing around you but open space to see the Canyon. While we waited to begin our hike out to the Point we attempted to play cards. Our first attempt ended with a strong wind blowing away some of our cards, as well as our sleeping pad and sleeping bag. Once we retrieved them and pinned everything down, we decided to explore the little cabins in the campground to see if we could play cards there instead. Unfortunately, we quickly realized that the little cabins insulated the heat way too well. We didn’t last long before we had to leave there as well.

We got to the point where the trees end and suddenly you’re in a completely open area with no trees, bushes or anything. In other words, if lighting struck we would be the tallest thing out there for it to target. We hung back and waited a bit to see how the storm progressed as the rest of the group decided to return to the campground. One man kept going; he was clearly a very experienced hiker and bore a striking resemblance in appearance and attitude to John Locke from Lost (which Dan and I were watching back in 2016). The thunder started really picking up and it began raining. We started turning back and took shelter under a large rock as the storm surrounded us.

Even at this point, Dan was convinced we could wait it out a little and make our way out to the Point. Thankfully as I tried to convince him that was a horrible idea, we spotted John Locke returning, as even he had realized he was in over his head. We could see lighting striking into the Canyon not far away. We talked with him for a few minutes and he confirmed that even he wouldn’t go out there right now. Just then, there was a loud boom of thunder and we all started back towards the camp together.

Once we got back to our campsite, we realized we had made a horrible mistake. We had this terribly romantic idea of sleeping under the stars in the Grand Canyon and at the last minute had decided to not bring our tent in with us. We also left behind one of our sleeping bags and one of the sleeping pads. I honestly don’t know what we were thinking, or maybe we actually just forgot to grab the second sleeping pad. In the end, all we had was one sleeping pad and a sleeping bag to put on top of the metal picnic table at our site.

We had thought we’d sleep on the ground, but it was covered in little rocks (we probably should have expected that), plus the Grand Canyon is definitely a place where you can find all manner of snakes and scorpions… so the picnic table became our bed. We snuggled up and Dan stretched one of his arms over me to try to hold both edges of the table, hoping to prevent us from rolling off. Needless to say neither of us slept much that night.

We managed to get up at 4:30am the next morning so that we could make it to Plateau Point for sunrise. A few other groups had already started their ascent up the canyon, while we decided to go further in. Maybe not the best idea as after our hike to Plateau Point and back, we still had another 4.5 miles to hike UP this time and the temperature was expected to be just as high as the day before.

I’ve since realized that I have a tendency to stop listening to my body completely when hiking, especially uphill. Not always, but in this case I saw the challenge of getting to the top and subconsciously decided to power through. I didn’t even realize that I was picking up our pace when I started leading the way, until Dan pointed out that we made it up faster than we had made it down. It was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me, but now I know I need to make a conscious effort to pay attention to my body when I’m really pushing it.

We stayed at the second rest house a bit longer than our stop at the first and chatted with the other people there as we ate. The last mile and a half stretch took us much longer. This last part was the steepest, and it felt like it kept going on forever. Eventually we hit the first tunnel, and there was some relief from the heat, but it took awhile after that to get to the next one. Eventually we made it there and took a short breather. There were so many more people on this leg, going down and not tired, and it was a bit rough seeing the other side of it. It was the sweetest relief when we finally made it to the top.

At this point, we were fired up. We felt like we had conquered the canyon! Though in actuality, we only made it less than two thirds of the way to the bottom. We got some pictures, rested a bit, and bought some cold things to drink at the grocery store. Looking back I still can’t believe it, but we decided then and there that we wouldn’t stay another night at the Canyon, but instead we felt ready to take on the seven or so hour drive to Salt Lake City.

There’s absolutely no way we would do that now, but I guess we were 18 and full of energy. It took us a bit to get everything packed up, but once we did we hit the road. A couple of hours into the drive we were both craving some ice cream. We found a spot in Page, AZ called the Big Dipper and both got a ton of ice cream which we ate while watching the Martian which was playing on the TV there. Funny enough, our first date was going to see the Martian in theatre exactly nine months and one day before. Turns out hiking in the Grand Canyon 12+ miles in 115 degree heat leads to some intense cravings. A little while later we HAD to have McDonald’s fries (maybe they helped replenish all the salt we sweated out?).

I started driving after that so Dan could take a turn napping, but it wasn’t long before I woke him up. There was a huge forest fire blazing along a hill right beside the highway. It was incredible and horrifying, seeing the kind of destruction a forest fire causes up close. Many of the exits off of the highway were closed because of the fire, and I was worried that the highway would be closed up ahead if the fire spread further down. Thankfully it wasn’t and we made it past safely. At about 2am we decided to make our last stop for some food, at Denny’s. It hit the spot just like the ice cream and fries had. We finally made it to Salt Lake City at 4:30am, exactly 24 hours since we had woken up the previous morning to hike out to Plateau Point.

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