The Great Grand Canyon
Well, I heard this in a Telugu movie, If you hike up Doodh Kaashi you will get to know who you are, this quote just lingered in me all the while I hiked into fat belly of the Great Grand Canyon, I find this quote so legitimate, every difficult hike you accomplish, you explore yourself more. We had a complete 8 days trip, but most memorable parts I carry with me on a high note (or etched in my memory as the word is getting some attention nowadays) are the first 3 days of the trip - hiking, hiking and hiking. Day one was entirely a different one, never experienced a trail in knee level flowing water in a narrow stretch of rocks, with walls rising up to thousand feet either sides - it’s in Zion National Park and it's called Narrows. Day 2 was little crazy, this hike is not for the people with acrophobia, It's Angel’s Landing hike in same Park, imagine walking on a thousand four hundred feet wall edge, they have anchored chains for support at many places in last half a mile hike, one wrong step would probably be the last step, Sebastian and Biswa managed to capture the amazing hike with their Go-pros. I will not spend much time in elaborating these 2 hikes, I consider Narrows entirely distinct one, Angels Landing is a test on your body balancing ability, I would want to write about the Grand Canyon, which by Sebastian's words, was a Solid test of character of each hiker,
Narrows - Manny and Aravind
A view of Angels Landing
NPS – National Park Service of USA, clearly mentioned, hiking down to the river and coming back in a day is not recommended, yet we decided to test it. In each trek I had been previously, each step I took uphill, got the sterling view of the boundless nature below, you don’t see anything when you start, and as you get closer to the peak you get the charismatic view of the earth below you. But this was the dead opposite, we start the hiking with a magnificent view of the enormous canyon below us, as we walk down, the visibility area diminishes and we reach down to the bottom where the dominant Colorado river gushes her way west. Mark my words it’s not easy, according to NPS stats, over 250 people are rescued from Canyon every year.
That's the warning
When I heard the plan of going down the canyon for 8.5 Miles (13.6 KMs) and coming back the same stretch (27.2 KM in total) with an elevation change of almost 5000 feet, I was not sure about my fitness, I had a bad experience last time hiking Mt.Washington. Though I am a master in walking downhill in any condition, coming back up was giving me other ideas. Ten of us started around 9:30 AM in the morning from Bright Angels trail head. After getting down the car with my backpack stuffed with adequate water and food, and walking for 10 seconds, damn!!! Something was seriously wrong, I just realized I was walking with slippers and not wearing shoes, did I prepare myself that bad for this strenuous hike? Possibly I concentrated too much on my breakfast than shoe J I went back and put my shoes on and headed back to trail head. I couldn’t find anyone except Hari who was waiting for me, all 8 of them were out of sight into the canyon, that’s where the cheating game begins, you just walk down freely without any concerns, you just feel the amount of distance covered, and the confidence boost of hiking fast. No, that’s not really true, it's kind of fake. When climbing up mountains you get to face the mightiness of nature within few minutes, but in this case, canyon lures you by effortless descent, coming back is the big game here. As I started my descent, I just started enjoying the tremendous potential of nature, extreme work of water over millions of years, carving the land into a canyon over a period of time where the human race was nowhere near it. Changing colors of rocky walls as you descend explains different stories corresponding to their age, googling would give better details than me. Along with artistic mega structure, every step I stepped down was asking me a question, "Is it possible for you to climb this step back?" after a mile and half we get the first rest area with water, I was just doing fine, ignored it and went down, another mile and half for second rest area, and another little less than 2 miles to Indian Gardens, this 4.9 miles was effortless, we did in 2 hours. We had already descended 3200 ft, Indian Gardens was adorable with trees around for shade and ice cold water for refilling bottles, Aravind, Sebastian, and Manoj were already there enjoying the cool shades of trees which is very rare to get in deserted canyon,
Mighty Canyon
A few minutes later Bro Mahesh, Niraj, Biswa, Hari arrived, no sign of Sadham and Sudhakar!! From Indian Gardens we have 2 trails, one going towards Plateau Point which is almost at the same elevation as Indian gardens, and we get a splendid view of Colorado from there. It’s a walk of 1.5 miles from Gardens, but with the scorching sun on top and no trees for shade or whatsoever is still a challenging one, another one is continued part of Bright Angels leading to the river, which was another 3.2 Miles from there and an elevation change of 1500 feet. We had to make a decision. What next? Plateau Point or River? I was uncertain at that point, Mahesh and Aravind choose to go to Plateau point, Niraj, Sebastian, Biswa, Manoj, Hari were ready to go down to the river, and I was already looking up the canyon thinking how to climb this 4.9 miles back first. I opened the map and started reading the numbers, till then I didn’t know any of the numbers I have written above, this fact just asked me to go to river: “We have already climbed down 3200 ft or something in 5 miles, So another 1400 ft with 3 more miles shouldn’t be that steep, studied the map again and cross checked the contour lines of map, closer the lines drastic the elevation change at that point, I concluded it was not as steep as what we have already descended”, and I was ready to go to river, and regarding Sadham and Sudhakar, either they are already heading back or they will reach and wait at Gardens for Bro and Aravind.
At 11:45 or so six of us were back on the Bright Angels trail leading to the river. This time I just started jaunting without turning back, it was so hot, literally boiling, I could sense the heat waves of canyon hitting me. Luckily, we had a small stream flowing down along with us for the first quarter of next 3 miles, I dipped my cap in water and drank some very often to keep myself hydrated. Once stream took its own route leaving us alone on the trail, we were hit by heat waves even harder, we were sweating out all the way, for the first time I felt a break was needed while trekking down as well. Manoj was with me, we stopped for 2 mins, poured the bottle of water on the head, sipped some electrolytes and started again. Now it looked like Colorado was playing hide and seek, as we cut a corner of trail it was as if river is on another corner, but it was not, you just walk, walk and walk, yet you don’t find the river, there were no mileposts down there to analyze how far we were from Indian Gardens. Finally when we reached the river, Oh Man!!! What a pleasure it was, there was sand beside water, removed shoes, clothes and started walking towards waters, I felt the feet burning for a second, it was damn hot, ran with full strength towards the water.
Seb, Biswa Hari cutting a corner towards river
As soon as my feet sensed Colorado river, I was astonished by the nature's incredible craziness, it was freezing cold, you step on sand it's freaking hot, step into the water its ice cold, I was dumbstruck with this natural phenomenon. Soon everyone arrived and experienced the same, all we did for next 1 hour or so was – get into water for few seconds – come out because water is damn cold – water layer on body will dry away in one min – start feeling the heat waves – and get into water again to get rid of heat. This was the cycle for all of us, around 2:30 we stopped this, clicked some pics, and headed to the rest area. We heated up the food we carried, probably I was damn hungry, the rice and beans with added hot water, I felt like Indian rice-sambar in middle of the hot desert, it was delicious. We decided we start back by 4 PM.
One-way mission accomplished
The real hike began then, entire body is going to be tested to the core, not just physically, mentally as well - you don’t want your troop to leave behind because of you, I did something different this time as opposed to my previous hikes, I usually start with full speed hike and get tired very soon, but this time, I decided to go with slow and steady approach. Along with team we decided on divide and conquer rule, divided the trek into two parts, first one to Indian Gardens, and Garden to the trail head, and each half is divided again into a hike of 15-20 mins and a break. Hari and me started slowly, we could see Niraj few meters ahead of us, but other three were little faster, we couldn’t see them as the trail was cutting corners often. I mentally prepared myself for 10-hour ascent that means we would reach by 2 AM!!! Even at 4 PM, Sun was still blazing, as the Sun started descending, our ascent pace started getting some acceleration, I could hear my heart beat clearly after few steps. We took breaks as needed. Exceptionally, we were ahead of schedule, and we reached Indian Gardens by 6:05 PM, that was really not expected. Seb had reached just 5 mins before us, I was definitely going strong without much efforts. So, the slow and steady option did the trick, a great lesson for me for upcoming hikes.
Indian Gardens - a cool place on the way
Indian Gardens was an ultra refreshing area, rested there for next twenty minutes, talking about how to conquer next 5 miles with super elevation coming up, met a forest park ranger who inquired about how we were doing and if there is any issue. We refilled bottles and had energy bars, I washed my t-shirt to wear a wet one going up, and we were back on foot. Somehow next 5 miles of climb turned out to be most memorable hikes I ever had, we were having so much of fun, teasing each other, talking how energetic each one is for this difficult hike, not even single person was ready to give up at any point. The tiredness was really gone, taking videos, doing all possible nonsense all the way up, that’s when Seb uttered, “This hike is solid test of everyone’s character”, added advantage was Sun was going down gradually and we were getting the shades of canyon along the way, and yeah I was telling to every imaginary foot print I left when I went down “See I am stepping on you to step up with zero difficulty.” We reached 3-mile post with 2 breaks, guess that was just about 1 hour, took a little longer break of 10 mins, got the network on phone, and dialed bro as he too had Verizon. We thought they would have left to the camp ground by now, and wanted them to be at parking to pick us at 10:15. But to my surprise, they were still climbing the canyon and were about to reach in another half an hour, he said he will have dinner and wait for us. The same story continued, we were just climbing up without any hiccups. Tiredness was not at all bothering us, I am not getting words to explain those moments. Before we reached 1.5-mile post, it was dark, we met a group of guys who were not having enough torches, we decided to take them with us as each one of us had head lamps on, it was 8:30 PM sharp when we began. As we climbed for 10 mins, one of the guys in other group started feeling giddiness, and this continued, breaks were increasing as often as 10 mins, we called Aravind up and ordered a big pizza for these guys, you should see the happiness on their faces when we gave them pizza when we reached top.
When I said we were not tired, I really meant it.
It was 10:15 when we made it to trail head, I just punched in air and was so proud of accomplishing this tremendous task in a single day, thanked God for giving such a strong heart, I promised him to tune it even better, you literally feel the satisfaction of doing something really awesome. You get to know your strength, you know how much your body can take, and how to shape it better for future endeavors, you get to see yourself differently now. Until today this was the most difficult and longest trail I achieved in a single day, but these five guys made it look so easy. Next few days we covered few more places, Los Angeles, Death Valley National Park which is 287 feet below sea level - the lowest point in North America, hottest places on earth, 134 F is official record and we got to experience 131 F, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam etc.
If someone asks me what’s the most amazing thing you did in last 5 years until this trip I would have said, "jumping out of a plane". Today if you ask me the same, I would say skydiving and hiking down to Colorado and coming up in a day.
-Bhadra
-Bhadra
