What Goes Down Must Come Up

We arrived in the Grand Canyon & were lucky enough (again!) to get the last backcountry permit for a campsite halfway down the canyon the following night. With that in place we spent the day cycling the rim road - very pleasant as the only permitted vehicles were the occasional bus and we stopped off at some amazing views of the canyon.

After a free night in a very nice USFS campsite just 10 mins from the park we set off down the Bright Angel Trail, which somehow traverses the steep, multi-cliffed walls of the gorge, weighed down by our heavy packs. We arrived at our campsite early at Indian Garden promptly set up our tent before continuing the rest of way down, feeling quite smug with our now v light loads, to the raging Colorado River & Phantom Ranch, where we had a well deserved lunch. It was a beautiful trek down one of the side canyons with colorful layers of rock & plenty of yellow aspen. The return leg to our campsite was a little more strenuous, but much easier with just our day packs!

We ate our ramen noodles dinner (no carrying exotic meals on this) and played cards until it was dark, and there wasn't much else to do except to turn in for r an early night. After packing up we did a quick 3 mile walk to a beautiful lookout point, then we donned our heavy packs to climb the 3000 ft over 5 miles back up to the rim. It was pretty tough but we made it in a very respectable time of just over 2 hours (not bad when they inform you that it should take 3-4 hours).

We gorged on pulled pork, mac-n-cheese and other well earned goodies, showered, laundried, and drove back to our little camp spot.Read more