January 18, 2010

Hiking down to Phantom Ranch


Well the Grand Canyon looks big from the lookout stations at Bright Angel lodge, Moran Point, or any of the others. Once you start hiking down towards the bottom you realize just how far it is to the other side or just to the bottom. I hiked back down the S. Kaibab trail to the Colorado river, hung a left and arrived at the Bright Angel Campground. My legs are now like jello and my calves feel like I've fallen and bruised them! I set up the tent, checked out the creek, snapped some pictures of deer and then took a nap.

Just before dark I met Jason from TN and we ended up going to the Phantom Ranch lodge for coffee and hot cocoa (which tasted like hot water). That's where they found the scorpion pictured in the post below this one.. scary. The prices for rooms and food were ridiculous and I'm hard pressed to believe it was worth the money. Everyone who stayed at the lodge hiked down with 10 pound backs while me and the other campers were toting 30lbs+. It's all good because we saved $40 for dinner that night, $20 for breakfast the next morning, and $100 on sleeping arrangements.

I woke up around 6:30a that morning and ate breakfast, took a few pictures, and packed up my gear. My neighbor was doing the same thing so we decided to hike up together, Keith was part of the reason I made it back up before dark. We hiked up the Bright Angel Trail with an extended (3 miles extra) trip out to Plateau Point from Indian Gardens. The hike up was so hard and so mentally challenging. Once we hit the 3 mile mark the trail was completely iced over so we're slipping around everywhere and every 5 steps is equal to roughly 2. We would take about 40-60 steps then rest and catch our breath between chewing trail mix all the way up. Once we got to the top we decided to go have a steak dinner at this hotel's restaurant, but missed the bus twice. So we decided to eat at the Bright Angel lodge since we were literally starving.


Full and happy to be done hiking we headed back to Keith's car and he gave me a ride to mine and we parted way with the intention on meeting up in Zion national park in 2 days. That's in the next post so keep reading!

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