Grand Canyon Hike Day 1

Michelle and I have made it back safe and sore from our hike into and then out of the Grand Canyon. I decided to break down the blogging of the trip into each of the three days so you (the readers) will have more pictures and a reason to check out our blog more. (We also have some other posts we need to catch up on, but we can only do so much!)

The night before we stayed at the EconoLodge in Williams with points I had earned from my work travel. Unfortunately the bed was very uncomfortable, the next morning the shower was pretty weak. Because of the bad bed we decided to "sleep" in a little bit and didn't get the amount of rest we needed or as early a start as we wanted.

Here is a couple picture of the contents of our packs. Mine ended up being about 40 lbs and Michelle's was about 30 lbs. About 10 of those pounds was water.

We arrived at the trail head around 10:30 am. It was around 40 degrees at the rim. Here we are excited to get started.

About a mile into the hike you come to the Ooh Aah point. This is when you pass a wall of rock and get the whole canyon out in front of you for the first time. The South Kaibab trail is a ridge trail, and it offers beautiful vistas along its whole length. The picture below is a composite of 11 pictures I took and then stitched together. I do have to say as impressed with how this picture (and the other like it below) it still pales to actually being there.

If you zoom in you can see the trail we will hike below O'Neil Butte in the center. (Click on photo to zoom in.)

Michelle and I with the canyon behind. (Good caption huh!)

Here is another composite photo further down the trail. Now we are level with O'Neil Butte.

Here I am at Skeleton Point. At this point we have just passed O'Neil Butte and are about to descend about a hundred switchbacks

This is at Tipoff Point. It is after all the switchbacks and the picture below is looking back from where we have come from.

Here is a composite shot at Tipoff Point

It was at this point in the Hike that Michelle ran out of water. I still had some in my camel pack so we shared, but the last two miles down all the switchbacks into the inner gorge were extra hard on Michelle. At this point I said a little prayer asking for help for Michelle. About 3/4 of a mile out of the campsite a nice man gave Michelle some water and offered his 18 year old son to carry her pack. We were both very grateful for the help and the answer to our prayer. With this help we made it to Bright Angel Campground and quickly setup camp before it got too dark.