A Grand Epic, All in a Day’s Run
Posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009
“Bad idea.”
That was the advice of the guy at the Park Service desk for the IMAX movie at the Grand Canyon when we told him we were planning on running across the canyon the next day.
“Really bad idea. We’ve had 15 deaths in the canyon so far this year.”
Good thing we didn’t tell him we were planning on running back, too.
There were four of us on the trip, two guys and two gals. I was the only one with any ultramarathoning experience, but the other three were legit endurance athletes who had done LOTOJA, run marathons, completed Ironman triathlons and were in good shape. Two of the others even had a top-20 finish in Primal Quest last year. I was cautious about taking the group of ultrarunning newbies out to something of this size, especially self-supported, but ultimately felt quite safe that the group could handle the effort. Our plan was to run the Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim across the canyon to the North Kaibab Trail, check out the North Rim and head back across to the waiting car at the South Rim parking lot. It would be about 47 miles and a little over 10,000 vertical feet of climbing with the same of descent.
“Have you girls done any hiking before?”
Ooooooh, that was completely condescending, and from Park Service guy’s female partner no less. Sure, we understood that it’s part of their job to discourage folks from taking on the canyon in a challenge that might be above their ability, but launching a clear gender dig like that was uncalled for. I could see the steam coming out of my friend Ivy’s ears as she pleasantly let the chick in the Ranger Rick jacket know she had done a bit of hiking before. The understatement of the trip from a woman who has done 10-day adventure races of more than 500 miles. As a bemused and thoroughly pissed Ivy replayed the patronizing question the rest of the night, I knew at least one of us would make it.
Morning came early, but turns out it wouldn’t have been the worst thing to have started even earlier. The whole day proved to be a series of little compromises that allowed us to finish, but with more of a “solid B” grading of the effort. The first compromise was for food. Mickey D’s opened at 5 a.m., so instead of being over the rim by 5, we decided to be on the doorstep of someplace for a little hot grub at that hour. Seemed reasonable, but by the time we got into the park and were dropping down the Bright Angel Trail, it was 6:02. Not to mention that my belly was full of a foreign, greasy ball of goo. Somehow, none of us ended up with any stomach problems at all through the day, which may have been one of the most important “good luck” elements of the trip.
The start was (obviously) all downhill, and my approach to descents is usually “don’t fight it.” I love bombing the downs, especially technical sections where I have to lock in on my footwork. This is a part of mountain running that beginners tend to overlook, but you can make up loads of time by shelving your fears of the Superman layout-style fall and pushing the tempo just a tick past the comfort zone. The Bright Angel Trail is the most-used trail in the canyon and is reinforced with logs to prevent erosion. Unfortunately, the logs were spaced out just wrong for the legs of the girls, and they needed to maintain a moderate pace on this stretch. I initially started to feel like we were letting an opportunity slip by not pushing our pace; we were in shadows, the day was still cool, and we had gravity on our side. Once I saw how the trail wasn’t really fitting the stride of the girls, I started recalculating how the day would go.
We had set a cutoff time for the North Rim based on the theory that we wanted to be on the climb out, around the Indian Gardens campground, by the time the sun was down. The forecast predicted an overnight low of 29 degrees, and I was concerned about hypothermia. The last time I had run the Grand Canyon, in 2004, I watched another rim-to-rim-to-rimmer stumble out of the dark canyon a couple hours after my group, delirious and in significant hypothermia. I didn’t want to see this in any of our party this year, so we stashed warmer gear and some food below Indian Gardens and planned to be back there by dark, when the cold would set in.
Past the river, we talked about the timing, and I let the group know I didn’t think we would be climbing out of the canyon by dark if we went all the way to the North Rim at the pace we were going.
“So?”
I was with Adventure Racers.
I had a mountaineering mentality about cutoff times, which was why I felt we had to have one and I was getting anxious about missing it. My friends had the “keep going ’till you get-er-done” mentality from Adventure Racing and weren’t concerned about sunset or getting a little chilly. We each did have at least one long-sleeve layer with us, and hiking an established trail out of a canyon with headlamps in the dark is not the same as traversing an exposed snow field, rappelling a 30-foot drop or crossing a 40-degree scree zone when coming off a summit. I listened, and was convinced it was not a dangerous decision for the experienced people we had to keep going.
O.K. then, we were committed to making the push, even if it meant dragging out of the canyon after midnight. More little compromises that were based on reasonable decision making, but kept us farther from that “A+” effort.
One of the things about ascending out of the Grand Canyon is that you always know where you have yet to go. If you see rock and no horizon, you still have more to climb. It’s natural to look up, but it’s a really bad idea. At some points, it doesn’t seem so far, yet there are miles and thousands of feet yet to climb. You see others ahead, and cross paths with many on the bustling trail, but the important thing is to keep moving. The heat of the day was bearing down upon us, and the rock continued to tower above. It was starting to get a touch grueling, but: left foot, right foot.
Then, people day-hiking down started giving more encouraging reports – “Only two miles from the Supai Tunnel,” “about a mile and a half,” “you’re almost there.” I played leapfrog with a group of girls who were also from Salt Lake City, keeping amused by eavesdropping on their detailed descriptions of the sizable puddles of mule waste we would encounter. I came to assume from their horror that despite being tough as nails, they were not country girls. Finally, got back into a bit of a rhythm and put a little distance into that group, reeled in a few others and got my summit push on. I could begin to hear the bustle of the rim, a low grumble of conversations, and then, distinctly, I heard a car door shut! What a welcome sound, for that could only mean one thing … up a straight stretch and around a turn – whoop, whoop!
The North Rim was burgeoning with hikers and sag wagoneers. Trees obscured it, but I was confident there was a horizon again.
After a couple minutes, the group was together at the top and it was time to give a good look into everyone’s eyes. One unwavering truth is that if you go back in for the return trip, ya gotta get out. Amy seemed a little serious about hitching a ride back to the South Rim and I’m sure she could have given a little damsel-in-distress (blink-blink “I’m just sooo tired” blink-blink) and had a dozen volunteers, but I think the “Pain is temporary, Glory lasts forever” spirit got a fresh breath in all of us, and we steeled to the challenge.
Smiles and a little giddy laughter carried us back into the canyon. I suppose if I think hard, I can recall some places were a little sore, but I mainly remember being so happy to be going downhill again. It was different, and my body needed a little different.
Despite all the grind and occasional misery of the adventure, the people we ran into on the trail were truly wonderful. Never was that more embodied than shortly after we dropped back into the North Rim Trail as we crossed paths with a group we had recently passed on the way up. They were a bit surprised to see us going back toward the South Rim again but had encouragement and a heaven-sent offer – “Do you want any real food?” After a day of gels, bars and gel blocks it’s hard to describe how amazing that sounded. They generously passed off some trail mix and chips and then, like a shining idol descending from the skies, the most wondrous ambrosia: a glorious hunk of summer sausage!
It was probably no more than three and a half inches long and standard summer sausage diameter, but the four of us descended upon this hunk of salty, meaty delight like starving hyenas on an impala carcass baking in the Serengeti sun.
Eyes narrowed and tensions heightened as the morsel was passed around. As the flesh nugget made its final round, I went to savor the final, delicious bite. I raised the barely half-inch cube toward my watering mouth, when Amy interjected, “Hey! That’s two bites.” My hair raised and I glared defensively. Are you kidding? This bite was the size of a Starburst! After a long pause, I dropped my shoulders and bit off half the chunk (more like two-thirds) and gave her the last taste.
Revived, we were back to the trail and quickly back alongside the river. The sun was dropping and I wanted us to stay on some sort of a pace with many miles and a “little climb” to go. We continued to caterpillar along, spreading out at our own paces and then coming back together to ensure everybody was doing well. I held off on my headlamp as long as possible to keep my vision sharp at dusk along the river. Animals would be coming down to the water at this time, and I didn’t want to get tunneled into a headlight beam and surprise any four-legged friends. Through a stretch with tall reeds that had occasional game trails crossing, I popped out some intermittent clapping like at dusk in bear territory. The mountain lions that are the largest carnivore in the park are rare, but even a startled mule deer can be aggressive. I saw two mulies near the water, but no close encounters that night.
I expected the light to disappear like a switch when the sun dropped away from the canyon, but instead it was a lingering twilight. Ever so slowly, the dimmer dropped on the day’s light, and then the first stars came into view. Once the star parade had begun, it rapidly evolved to a jaw-dropping extravaganza. Stars and planets, sweeping galaxies and twinkles you can only catch out of the side of your eye. They all came pouring out into the dark night’s sky. A couple shooting stars even darted across the canvas, but at that point I had only a solitary wish, for the horizon at the South Rim.
Making the Colorado River Bridge was largely encouraging, other than the knowledge that “it’s all uphill from here.” Most surprising at this stage was how temperate the air remained. I had been worried that the sun dropping would bring rapid cold and drive our risk of hypothermia, but the warmth continued to radiate off the sun-baked walls of the canyon in the still night. It was actually quite pleasant for a night hike as we pushed toward Indian Gardens.
Near the gardens, we recovered our stashed clothes and food. Timing was perfect, as it was starting to get a bit crisp in the evening air. The push out for our team then evolved into little personal battles. The pitch dark became like blinders, narrowing each of us into our own headlamp stream. The sore places became less like little bruises and more like ice picks, and the cold wind started to pick up as we neared the rim. The lights from the South Rim were hovering above us, but for a long time never seemed to get any closer. Legs were calling out for rest but when we stopped moving, the cold started creeping in around the edges like the frost on a winter window. Don’t look up, don’t look up, aaargh, still so far away. I started making deals with my mind: “Four more switchbacks and you can check how far we are again.”
Past the Three Mile Restroom and one more meeting of the caterpillar to make sure we were all going to make it, then it was smell-the-barn time. I knew I wouldn’t stop again until the rim. I have to say, I had forgotten there were TWO stone tunnels toward the South Rim, because when we got to the first, I was a little too eager that we were nearly home. I had thought it would be no more than a couple hundred yards from the tunnel to the rim, but if you don’t judge that from the correct tunnel, it can be a bit disappointing when you’re still grinding along 10 minutes later. Once we hit the second stone tunnel, the little lightbulb over my head was bright enough to guide us back to the South Rim.
Well after midnight, we wandered, dazed, into the lobby of the lodge. No finisher’s medal, no massage school students with a tent set up, just a round of hugs and a guy kind enough to set down his mop long enough to snap one picture.
I don’t want to go around telling anybody how to live their lives; heck, I usually don’t know what’s coming next in my own.
But.
If you haven’t.
Go to the Grand Canyon.
Writing the reasons to see it are like trying to capture the canyon in a photo.
Go and you’ll understand.
Mark Scholl, M.D., is a Cloudveil Inspired Mountain Ambassador and an orthopedic surgeon. He is a team physician to ReAL Salt Lake of the MLS, the U.S. Ski Team and Solitude Mountain Resort. He is an ultrarunner, backcountry skier and amateur snow science geek.
excellent write up
Thanks for the great report! Brought back memories of my rim to river dayhike success a few years ago. Your adventure is encouraging to anyone who loves the outdoors.
I did the Grand Canyon run some years ago, but with a difference – We didn’t want to feel rushed, so we ran to the North Rim one day using the Kaibab trail, and came back the next day on the Bright Angel Trail. What a wonderful experience – and I’m eager to return. Last April I was at the South Rim as a tourist and checked with the Rangers to be sure a permit is not now required. He said, when I told him what I wanted to do, with a bit of fatigue in his voice, “I’m not going to try to talk you out of it.”
It’s really quite doable. Just have enough food and water. The ranger station at the bottom of the canyon even offered us lemonade!