ScottDate: 5 October 2022
Leaving Lee's Ferry behind as well as the up stream CO river, I headed down to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where I have reserved a room at the Bright Angel Lodge for one night (which is all that was available when I was booking things one month prior). Since I got here early, I took my time and stopped at all of the points of interest along the 25 mile drive into the park (along with the 1,000,000,000 other people). Needless to say, the South Rim is crowded. It reminded me of Las Vegas casinos due to the large number of baby boomers and randomness of their walking patterns (where I was cut off at about every step). Needless to say, the views from the South Rim are beyond spectacular! I took pictures of them (seen below) which of course absolutely show how magnificent it is! (insert sarcasm here).
The Grand Canyon was truly amazing. This is technically the second time I have been to the Grand Canyon. In 2019, Craig, Steph and I tried to hike the Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim in one go (North to South and back to North). It's about a 55mile hike that takes 24hrs+. I had some stomach issues, so I had to turn around at the CO river (~15 miles) so I only made it 30 miles on that trip. Since you start in the evening, I really didn't see the canyon as I was hiking at night and was pretty much out of the canyon when the sun came up again. So I had actually been in the Grand Canyon, but not really seen it. This part of my trip was to remedy that issue as I'm planning to stay around 6 days in the area between the North and South Rim.
My hiking plan was to hike down to the CO river from the South Rim, so I could complete the Rim-to-Rim in two segments. My concern was having knee surgery only 3 months prior may not have given me enough time to heal, train, strengthen to do the 18+ miles and 4000ft elevation loss/gain. I decided to do the Plateau Point Hike which was a compromising 12.1 miles with only 3000 ft loss/gain. The view from the Plateau was awesome as you could see the CO River from there. You can also see the pretty much the entire hike from the top of the GC S Rim, so it was easy to say..."I was there" to anyone who asked.
So I set out on my hike at 730am which should give me plenty of time to be up and down during daylight. Since the park had been having some issues with their water, I ended carrying all of my water with me, which made my pack much heavier than I wanted, not to mention the extra weight on my bruised shoulder from the bike wreck only ~12 days prior. Needless to say, I was hiking in a sorry state, so much that I taped both knees. Note, they are taped differently as I have different injuries to each. But hey, it was a talking point to all of the elderly people on the trail as I had no less that 5 people tell me that they had their knees similarly taped or wish they had! I was a walking PT display! Plus I was sporting two of my Alma Matter's school color, PURPLE (KSU and UW)!
The hike went off without a problem and I made it there and back in only 5.5 hours. Ironically, I was hiking at approximately the same pace up the canyon as I did down into the canyon. Weird. Plus, the map was way off on the distances. According to my watch pedometer, it took 7.4 miles to get to the plateau (suppose to be 6.1miles) and the entire hike was 14 miles round trip. How the way back up was 6.6 miles (0.8 miles shorter) than coming down I can't figure out. I would know if I took a short cut on the way out! This was also confirmed by a couple who I met at the plateau as we leapfrogged each other on the hike out.
My next stop is the North Rim where I'm meeting up with my old buddy Craig to do some camping. Well, as we get older, it's more like glamping compared to the backpacking trips...Time to see the canyon from the "the other side."
