We did it! I know many of you who read facebook already know that we made it out alive. It was a good, although hard, hike. We headed down on Friday, with ~40 lb packs (and we really only took what we thought we needed!). Amazingly (and this is something I never thought I would say), it harder to go down that it was to come out). Up was actually easier for once! Crazy!
Once we got down to the Indian Gardens campground we realized that - hey! - its hot down there! Big surprise right!? Not really. It was hot though. We set up camp, tried to keep the large numbers of ground squirrels out of our things, and rested a bit. John went in search of fossils in the Bright Angle Shale while I hung back and took a nap. Afterwards we took a nature walk with the Ranger who showed us more fossils in the Bright Angle. We had a good dinner - John had spaghetti, and I had a yummy Alfredo pasta. We were glad we brought the tent to sleep in (even though it was hot enough we did not need it) - the campground was infested with mice. Gross. I hate mice. They were even in the water faucets down there. Really gross. If it were not for them we would not have needed the tent or sleeping bags (as it was we did not even use the sleeping bags).
It was a hot night, hard to sleep, and in the middle of the night it started to sprinkle so I had to dash out and grab the rain fly and packs. As soon as I put on the rain fly it stopped raining. Not to surprising. The rain was a nice relief though and in the morning (we did not get up at 4 to hike out as suggested, but rather around 6 or 7am) we were happy to have a bit of rain and overcast weather. This lasted for about a mile and a half, which was a 1/3 of the way out, so that was nice. The other 2/3 were in the sun, but it was not to bad. By the time we got out thought it was pretty hot!
We were happy we made it out so we treated ourselves to a nice cold drink and I had an ice cream, then we just hung out for a while and relaxed. We had a great dinner at El Tovar (highly recommend the place!) and then headed to camp where we had no trouble falling asleep.
Sunday we took the morning to ride the shuttle bus around and go to some of the lookouts. John was in search of the newly updated geology book, which we never did find. It was a nice drive home, and we read the entire Wishful Drinking book by Carrie Fisher (I read as John drove). It was a really nice trip and just what we needed.
2 comments:
I only hiked all the way to the bottom once, in March of '78. Hiked down the Kaibab, and back up the Bright Angel. In a single day, Woot! The Kaibab Trail is nice; since it sticks to a ridge, the vistas are mind boggling. I later did a hike down the Kaibab to the Tonto, then across to the Bright Angel, again, as a day hike.
If I ever go down again, it'll be on a mule.
I have never been down the Kaibab, but my husband has. I am not sure if I will ever hike back down (it was beautiful, I just need the aches and memories to fade lol). I want to ride down on a mule next time.
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