I Hiked This

This is the South Kaibab trail in the Grand Canyon. Picture this covered in mud and ice. I hiked this thing, even though I'm terrified of heights.

How terrified? Think James Stewart in Vertigo.

I love to hike, and we did a lot of it in Arizona, but I wasn't enthusiastic about this adventure when we started out. Not only was I scared to death, but the trail was a mess of mud and ice. Then again, I wouldn't have been thrilled about this trek under the best of conditions -- this picture doesn't begin to tell you how narrow the Kaibab is, how steep it is and how far you fall if you go over the edge. As one of the rangers told me, "in the Grand Canyon, we don't have rescue missions, we have recovery missions. We just pull out the body."

I don't want to overdramatize this--a couple hundred thousand people hike below the rim every year, but few are as cowardly as I am. Not only that, but this hike didn't start out very well. The fearless Mrs. Rhino and I got about a quarter of a mile through these switchbacks when my 70 year old mother (who otherwise loved the hiking on this trip) and two out of our three kids decided they'd had enough. So, up the mud and ice slick we went, dropped them off at the top, and started all over again accompanied only by our oldest son. We slid through the ice and mud, tried to avoid the mule caravans and the mule shit, and found out pretty quickly that one of the truisms of the Grand Canyon is that almost anybody can hike down. The trick is hiking back up.

Only 5% of the visitors to the Grand Canyon ever go below the rim. We didn't get to the bottom (only went about two miles round trip--two and a half counting the false start), although Vinny did when he visited. That makes him part of a very elite 1% of Canyon visitors. Someday, maybe I'll join him.

By the way, this photo is from the National Park Service. Mrs. Rhino took some of her own while I was holding on to the Canyon walls for dear life. I'll post some of those, as well as some that she took in Sedona (which is incredible), later this week.

I'm glad I didn't read this book before my trip.