The Grand Canyon: Rim to Rim in One Day

Amy, Michah and Keith at Bright Angel Point on the North
Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. Photo: Keith Daellenbach

by Keith K. Daellenbach

In June 2016, a month after starting a new engineering manager job at a Portland company, my boss allowed me to head out on an epic 24-day road trip with my wife, Amy, and our 10-year old son, Micah. I am grateful for the generous vacation right after starting a new job. We made the most of it driving over 5,100 miles, hiking 103 miles, and visiting nine National Parks, two National Monuments, one National Recreation Area, and two Native American tribal parks in the desert southwest and in Colorado. It reminded me of the road trips I took with my family when I was a kid in the Brown family Ford Ranch Wagon, a veritable boat launched each summer for discovery. The highlight of last summer’s tour was the one-day, rim-to-rim hike across the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Of the Grand Canyon, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.” While the Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919 by President Woodrow Wilson, it was President Theodore Roosevelt that first established it as a National Monument in 1908.

A little more than half way through our trip exploring the Colorado Plateau, we arrived to Grand Canyon National Park. Earlier in the trip, we were only a few miles from the headwaters of the 1,450 mile long Colorado River at Milner Pass (10,759’) on the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park approximately 750 miles upriver from Phantom Ranch. The drive up to the South Rim is admittedly not particularly noteworthy, but once at the edge of the Grand Canyon itself, the earth opens up with a vast maw miles across and over a mile deep. I could not help but chuckle recalling the irony of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold’s character in Vacation (1983) who, upon first seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, impatiently responds to his wife’s question, “Don’t you want to look at the Grand Canyon?”, with an abrupt scenery scan and, “Ok, let’s go.”

Originally, I figured we would split up the hike with a stay at Phantom Ranch lodging at the Colorado River crossing, but by the time I planned this hike, those accommodations had long since been snapped up. So too were all sites at backcountry campgrounds (Cottonwood, Bright Angel, Indian Garden) along the route. The application for these backcountry permits occurs some five months before the hike. Not to take anything away from staying overnight in the Grand Canyon, completing the 23.5 mile hike in one day means far less gear required as it is essentially reduced to a long day hike. The beauty is no backcountry permit is required for a day hike.

Each year, this National Park receives over 350 requests for assistance by hikers experiencing a variety of issues including fatigue, heat exhaustion, underlying medical conditions, and lack of preparation or planning. Warning signs along the rim are ubiquitous, including those blaring “Caution! Down is Optional, Up is Mandatory!”. Given the summer heat an be suffocating, paying heed to these warnings is warranted. We planned for each of us to have plenty of caloric food, lots of salty snacks and protein, and plenty of water and electrolyte drinks. Amy made sure we each had lightweight hiking pants, full sleeve shirts, sun hats, and sun screen. If we had to stop at night, where the desert temperature can drop dramatically, each of us had a lightweight down or polar fleece jacket and an emergency space blanket just in case.

There are probably several ways to dial in logistics for this point-to-point hike. It makes sense to start at the North Rim and hike to the South Rim because trailhead at the North Rim (8,241’) is over thirteen hundred feet higher than the trailhead at the South Rim (6,860’), so there is less elevation gain than elevation to descend. For transportation to the North Rim, we packed our day packs and, wearing only our hiking clothes and shoes, parked our car at the Maswik Lodge and took the one-way Trans-Canyon Shuttle (www.trans-canyonshuttle.com, $90/per person). This van shuttle departs twice daily from the South Rim at Bright Angel Lodge for a 215 mile, four and a half hour trip. It crosses the Colorado River over Navajo Bridge at Marble Canyon (river mile 684.2 as measured from U.S./Mexico border) just down river from Lees Ferry on the way to the Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge. There, we checked into our frontier cabin adjacent to the historic lodge (ca. 1930’s) and had a feast in the cavernous main lodge dining room. One last niggling bit of logistics required arrangements for transport from the Lodge two miles back up the road to the North Kaibab trailhead. I didn’t want to add any distance to the already long hike, so I offered “Jack” our Trans-Canyon Shuttle driver, who was staying on the North Rim overnight, forty dollars to take us there at three in the morning. He responded by saying he would be able to do it if we could agree on the price of twenty dollars. Sold!

So, after our feast and evening stroll around the grounds of the lodge, we retired to soft, warm beds and set the alarm for 2:30 a.m. We awoke, and Jack was outside waiting for us with the engine running and drove us over to the trailhead under cover of darkness. By 3 a.m. we were underway. An ominous flash of lightning lit up the forest, and a few rain sprinkles dried up quickly in the desiccated air. Over 14.5 miles, the trail descends 5,761 feet to where it crosses the Colorado River at 2,480 feet. For the most part, it is a gradual descent along a wide hiking trail. The upper sections navigate across cliffs of sedimentary rock hundreds of feet thick; in some places the route has been blasted into the cliff itself so it is nearly a tunnel with only one side open out to a precipitous drop. There is, in fact, one short section blasted directly through buttress of rock named Supai Tunnel. While expertly trained, this descent on the back of a mule would be unnerving for me.

As the morning wore on, the stars overhead lost their illumination and the first hints of sunlight striking the upper cliffs now high above us took on colors of purple, red, orange, yellow, and cream. We continued our descent. One of the remarkable things about this hike is the abundance of potable water. The Kaibab Plateau through which the Colorado River cuts the Grand Canyon dips north to south, so surface water and melted snow permeating rocks on the north side of the canyon essentially flow towards the river while surface water permeating rock on the south side of the canyon essentially flows away from the river. This manifests itself at Roaring Springs, 4.7 miles hiking below the North Rim. Here, tremendous volumes of year-round water emanate from a Paleozoic layer between permeable Muav limestone resting on top of an impermeable Bright Angel shale.

This water is treated at Roaring Springs and is pumped both up to the North Rim and, conversely, allowed to drain down to Phantom Ranch where it is pumped across the river in a pipe on the underside of the silver suspension bridge (ca. late 1960’s, river mile 601.15) and up to the Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim. Nearly six million people visited Grand Canyon National Park last year and most of them came to the South Rim, so it is a tribute to the bountiful Roaring Springs and the engineering feat which pumps 500,000 gallons of water a day up to the South Rim Village. When all drinking water fountains are in operation along this trail, which are between one and seven miles apart, cool, clear water from Roaring Springs is available. It is possible that this pipe distribution system could erode and break leading to no potable water at the fountains for sections of the trail. Always carry plenty of water on all trail sections and note that water from Bright Angel Creek (north side of river) and Garden Creek (south side of river) can be filtered for use if the fountains are not in operation.

Keith, Amy and Micah beside the Colorado River in Grand
Canyon National Park. Photo: Keith Daellenbach.

As the day warmed, at each fountain, we religiously stopped, ate, drank water, and doused our hiking shirt and caps in water and put them back on. Evaporative cooling fended off overheating for some time before our shirts and hats dried out before the next stop. Once in the canyon, the perspective changes from the glorious vistas over the gaping chasm to close in-cliffs, side canyons, and desert scrub flora, including prickly pear cactus and blackbrush. Along the way, we saw desert spiny lizards and mule deer.

We reached Phantom Ranch (built ca. 1922) before noon and poked our heads into the dormitory accommodations. While clean, to me, it looked a little dodgy given some of the region’s rodents carry infectious diseases like hantavirus. While we were there tanking up on water, a ground squirrel tore into the backpack of one of the Phantom Ranch guests. If it were me staying there, I’d prefer a tent. In any case, don’t feed the wildlife as they can not only spread infectious diseases through fleas and ticks, they can also be aggressive causing injury.

It was here, where clear Bright Angel Creek deposits into the Colorado River, that one-armed Civil War veteran Major John Wesley Powell and his pioneering geographic expedition arrived on the 84th day of their expedition on 16 August 1869. Starting in the Wyoming Territory and down the great unknown of the Green and Colorado Rivers, they explored and mapped one of the last truly unexplored regions of the contiguous United States. They spent a couple days repairing their wooden boats and drying out meager rations. His original name for this creek was Silver Creek, but later renamed it to its present name. We went down to the river’s edge and watched the muddy water race by; the river there is about 150 feet wide.

We crossed over the silver bridge, and the temperature was hovering slightly over 100˚F. Amy felt like we were walking through time, starting with the Precambrian basement Vishnu Schist rock—1.7 billion years old and containing intrusions of red-flecked Zoroaster granite. Indeed, the Grand Canyon is one of the most complete records of exposed geologic layering in the world. While the rocks are ancient, the canyon itself is young. Like a layer cake rising against a blade, it formed primarily in the last six million years as the Kaibab Plateau uplifted allowing greater river gradient and therefore fast erosion by the river.

Hiking up 4,380 ft. in elevation from the river over 9 miles along the Bright Angel Trail to the South Rim, one eventually leaves the metamorphic schist of the Inner Gorge and passes through layer after layer of sandstone, shale, and limestone formations that were the result of millions of years of marine depositions into the Panthalassic Ocean prior to the formation of the supercontinent Pangea. The rock layer that caps the South Rim is 270 million years old. Along our way, we broke one of the cardinal park rules by hiking during the oppressive mid-day heat but we took our time. We were careful not to overexert and actually felt fine, taking frequent rest and water/food breaks. We ended up in semi-rescue mode of a former infantry soldier who had served in Iraq and, while very tough mentally, was woefully unprepared lacking basic provisions. We leap-frogged each other out of the canyon and by the last time we saw him a couple miles below the South Rim we had given him water, food, ibuprofen, ace bandage, a trekking pole, and a headlamp (which he returned to our lodging later that night).

The last push to the top above Indian Garden Campground climbs through a wall comprised of 3,000 ft. of cliff formations that look impenetrable from below. This remarkable trail threads its way through natural weaknesses in the cliffs. In the evening, as we were nearing the rim, we saw a flash of lightning . I measured 45 seconds on my wristwatch—a little over 9 miles away (speed of sound is roughly 5 seconds per mile). Indeed, the storm cell appeared to be parked about that distance away over Phantom Ranch. As the measured time between flash and sound decreased to 35 seconds (about 7 miles away), I told Amy and Micah we would have to pick up the pace on this exposed trail near the rim to make sure we reached the safety of buildings on the rim before the storm overtook us. Fortunately, after 16:44 hours of hiking, we arrived at the South Rim just after sunset and dove into the gift store at Bright Angel Lodge just as it started to pour. Here, we purchased “rim to rim” T-shirts. Micah gave his all on that final push to the top and threw up in the restroom, feeling better afterwards. Tough kid. With that behind us, we celebrated our accomplishment that night with a hot shower, meal, and a soft bed at Maswik Lodge a few hundred yards from the Rim—our epic completed.

Americans have a propensity to boast about how great our country is, and the Grand Canyon is truly one place that will not disappoint. If you’re planning a visit the Grand Canyon and want to hike, consider skipping the bureaucracy and heavy pack and hike through geologic history on a long day-hike traverse of this amazing national treasure.