One Best Hike: Grand Canyon: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Hike from the Rim to the River-and Back

One Best Hike: Grand Canyon: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Hike from the Rim to the River-and Back

by Elizabeth Wenk
One Best Hike: Grand Canyon: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Hike from the Rim to the River-and Back

One Best Hike: Grand Canyon: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Hike from the Rim to the River-and Back

by Elizabeth Wenk

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Overview

Find everything you need to know about the Grand Canyon’s one best hike, from the rim to the river—and back again.

The Grand Canyon’s striking geology and overwhelming scale inspires the millions who stand on its South Rim each year. Let expert author Elizabeth Wenk lead you into the canyon’s depths on the Bright Angel and South Kaibab trails to the mighty Colorado River, and spend the night at Indian Garden or Bright Angel campgrounds, or Phantom Ranch.

While tremendously rewarding, this 16.1-mile loop hike demands much, even of experienced trekkers. Hikers need to prepare for the hot temperatures, lack of shade, long distance, elevation change, and other potential dangers. One Best Hike: Grand Canyon is a step-by-step guide that helps you tackle this trip with confidence.

Inside you’ll find:

  • Trail-tested details on how to choose hiking partners and an appropriate pace, what to pack, when to go, how to get a permit, and what side trips to consider
  • Advice on proper physical conditioning, including acclimating to the desert heat, staying hydrated, and preventing illness
  • Details about the area’s human history and the geologic features, plants, and animals you’ll see

One Best Hike: Grand Canyon, with its can-do approach, nuts-and-bolts advice, and practical tips, will leave you wondering why you waited so long to embark on this truly special hiking adventure.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780899974910
Publisher: Wilderness Press
Publication date: 07/29/2010
Series: One Best Hike
Pages: 184
Sales rank: 925,099
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

From childhood, Elizabeth Wenk has hiked and climbed in the Sierra Nevada with her family. After she started college, she found excuses to spend every summer in the Sierra, with its beguiling landscape, abundant flowers, and near-perfect weather. During those summers, she worked as a research assistant for others and completed her own Ph.D. thesis research on the effects of rock type on alpine plant distribution and physiology. But much of the time, she hikes simply for leisure. Wanting to explore every bit of the Sierra, she has hiked thousands of on- and off-trail miles and climbed nearly 500 peaks in the mountain range. She recently relocated Australia with her family.

Read an Excerpt

Section 1

Bright Angel Campground to Mouth of Pipe CreekDistance... 1.6 miles

HINTMany Grand Canyon Books refer to "river miles." When you next see such a reference, note that the Bright Angel boat beach is at River Mile 97.5 and the Pipe Creek Rapids are at River Mile 88.9 (near the mouth of Pipe Creek).

Beginning at Bright Angel Campground, retrace your route south to the bridge across Bright Angel Creek. Instead of crossing the creek and heading east to the Kaibab (or Black) Bridge, continue west toward the Silver (or Bright Angel) Bridge. The route takes you past a large collection of park service buildings, a water tap, and a corral, before reaching the bridge. Suspended below this bridge is a large water pipe that carries water from Roaring Springs, far up the North Kaibab Trail, to the South Rim. It stays at river level until Pipe Creek and then climbs steeply to Plateau Point, on to Indian Garden, and then up to the rim. The South Rim can store enough water to last only three days.

The base of the Silver Bridge is metal mesh, providing an aerial view of the swirling Colorado's waters— the mules are not fans of this and will not cross it. Halfway across the bridge is a wonderful place to look up and down the river corridor, as you are far enough from the walls to appreciate that you are in a steep gorge, above which are distant buttes. Unfortunately, except on a cool spring day, you should cross the bridge long before the sun shines deep into the gorge, limiting photo opportunities.

Across the bridge, you reach the River Trail and turn right (down-stream). The left-hand direction takes you back to the base of the South Kaibab Trail and across the Kaibab Bridge. A beach of giant cobbles lies beneath the south end of the bridge, and indication of the power of the river, especially when it floods. For the first stretch you walk alongside the Colorado’s banks. Shortly, you pass through a sandy expanse. Your feet slip with each step, making walking difficult. And the vegetation changes immediately, for different species are adapted to sandy substrate than the nearby rock. Water drains through the sand even faster than the rocky soils elsewhere, making it a very water-stressed environment.

Beyond the sand the trail climbs slightly and you look steeply down to the river, for much of the River Trail was blasted into solid rock. You will repeatedly note that you are walking along this nearly flat four-foot-wide boulevard, but vertical walls rise above your head and fall beneath your feet to the river. The basement rocks through which you are traversing, intermingled Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite, form steep, mostly dark walls on either side of the Colorado River, effectively trapping and reradiating heat on already hot days and making this stretch an oven by midmorning.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
  • A Location Hike
  • Human History
  • Natural History
  • Grand Canyon Region Weather

PRECAUTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS

  • Hyponatremia
  • Dehydration
  • Heat Illnesses
  • Hypothermia
  • Falling
  • Blisters
  • Flash Floods
  • Lightning
  • Scorpions
  • Waterborne Pests
  • Altitude Sickness
  • Drowning in the Colorado

PREPARATIONS AND PLANNING

  • Choosing an Itinerary
  • When to go
  • Wilderness Permits
  • Staying at Phantom Ranch
  • Training
  • What to Contemplate Before Descending
  • Familiarizing Yourself with the Landscape
  • What to bring
  • Getting to Grand Canyon Village
  • Getting Around Grand Canyon Village
  • Grand Canyon Village and Tusayan Services

HIKING THE GRAND CANYON

  • Suggested Schedules
  • South Kaibab Trail
  • Bright Angel Trail
  • Side Trips from Bright Angel and Indian Garden Campgrounds

AFTER THE HIKE

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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