Thoughts on Hiking in the Grand Canyon

I am reading a book I purchased in Grand Canyon village, "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon." Had I read this book before our visit, I would have NEVER gotten anywhere near the South Rim or North Rim for that matter.

I am so glad we did not choose to hike down on any trail! My adrenaline junkie husband did go down on two trails totally unprepared but not far, relatively speaking. He had a tough time climbing back, a really tough time. And he is not in the worst shape for his age. 

One of the lessons I learned from the wise and seasoned guide, Michael P. Ghiglieri, is that "canyoneering is not mountaineering." Hiking on flat ground, hiking on mountains, and hiking in canyons are quite different.

Hiking on flat ground is obvious unless you are hiking in the desert with shifting sands, sink holes, intense heat, rattlesnakes, scorpions, or alligator-infested swamps.

Speaking of scorpions, one of our guides, Derrick, told us that he rented a house cheaply in Phoenix and, upon moving in, he realized that the house, while empty, had been colonized by scorpions. He was in the process of trapping them and using up a lot of glue traps until he realized that scorpions are cannibals. So, he left the traps in place longer until they were quite full.

Hiking in the mountains you learn early on how unfit you are, and that realization weeds the unfit out in the early game and you can return to the staging area, your life is spared.

Hiking down into the Grand Canyon, the trail appears easy, the air may be cool, there is often a breeze, and you are making good time going down. Then the unfit and unprepared must hike back up.

Ghiglieri wrote that "it is often a hot, dry, hard, agonizing, and often torturous physiological contrast to the descent, the unfit get weeded out late in the game and get weeded out brutally. Sometimes fatally."

The levels of heat and thirst in the Grand Canyon are unforgiving. And in wintertime you can get buried alive and freeze to death from sudden snows. And you can get trapped in rock crevasses. And during the monsoon season you can drown from floods coming from miles away.

Ghiglieri wrote, ...."many of us hiking in Grand Canyon seem more like bizarre medical experiments tossed into an alien landscape of hostile, temperatures, desiccating winds, and fierce solar radiation to see how long we can walk before we collapse."

It is an alien landscape filled with sharp edges, huge boulders, crumbling rocks, slippery rocks, sheer cliffs, huge walls, desert climate, intense solar radiation, dry heat sucking all electrolytes out of your body, and danger at every turn.

If the Inner Canyon temperatures are as bad (and they are) as the temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona in 2017 when 155 construction workers died of heat stroke, it is a no-brainer to stay away from such dangerous hikes. 

Hundreds of hikers made it back safely while others died, and the ratio seems in favor of those who survived. Just because the pull of the wild and dangerous is there, should we answer yes, I am coming no matter what?

Be careful if you decide to hike solo or in a small group! Better yet, hire mules, hire guides, and go hiking in large groups. Stay together and do not deviate from the detailed map and carry plenty of food and especially water. Most people need two gallons per day, others more.

P.S. I am not sure now which subject I am going to have more nightmares about, hiking down into the Grand Canyon and running out of water, stranded on a trail with no escape, or sharks on the loose, swimming unseen and close to us in the ocean while the Jaws song is playing in my brain.

 

NOTE:

I met a 51-year-old very athletic woman, Army high-ranking officer, who had hiked the Grand Canyon all the way down to the Colorado River from the South Rim when she was 34 years old, with her then 3year old son and her husband. She carried her son in her backpack while her husband carried the gallons of water needed to survive and food. They hiked down at daybreak and came back up the same day. She remarked that her son, an adult today, still has some memories of that hike.

I am not sure why adults put their children's lives in danger, i.e., infants, toddlers, and elementary school age ones. I understand that some adults are adrenaline junkies, others have a need to challenge themselves against the most desolate and dangerous places Mother Nature has to offer, for bragging rights, but to me, life is more precious than gambling it away to prove that you can do it, you came back alive and now have temporary or permanent injuries to prove it.

But my friend Laura did it for her faith, to be closer to God and that is an amazing reason.

Of the more than six million people who visit the Grand Canyon annually, most of whom only spend 90 minutes inside the park which is a World Heritage Site and one of the most amazing of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders, fly or drive from near and far to this massive void because it is a large area of wilderness unlike anywhere else on the planet. It is not a safe place but people are overcome with such an adrenaline rush of awe and wonder that it shuts off the rational part of their brains.