Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon

Like many conferences, the one that I am attending had an excursion afternoon, and when you’re 1.5 hours’ drive from the Grand Canyon the obvious place to go is … the Grand Canyon.

(Warning: In my family we still talk about all the Uluru sunset pictures that one of my sisters took many years ago on a school trip, and that was in the days of slide film. I took 180 photos today; fortunately you’ll only get a dozen or so in this entry, and then a few more in the next. Since it was a return journey, you may find that there are photos of the same locations, but the light changed as the day progressed.)

We’d been given some advice about shuttle buses and walking around the rim, and being back in time to catch our coach … but I’d found out that there was a geocache down one the trails into the canyon, a prospect that seemed much more exciting and real than wandering around up on top with hordes of tourists (who, me, a tourist?). I read the description and it seemed feasible to do it in the time we had (how far can 1.6 miles be?), so, in order to optimise time I headed for a shuttle bus with three friends from the conference who — more fool them — thought I knew what I was doing. (Look, I’m aware that I seem to be writing in a tone that portends future disaster. Let’s be up front and say the day went really well, lest you be disappointed when nothing happens later on!)

After some initial photos of the canyon from the rim at the “trailhead” (= start) for Bright Angel Trail, we headed over the edge and into the canyon. The trail is well-graded and near the top passes through the rock of the canyon wall.

As we made our way down we were aware of the warmth of the sun and of the (mild) effects of the altitude (at 2080m it’s only 150m below the summit of Mt Kosciuszko (Australia’s tallest mountain)), and we tried not to notice the discomfort of those travelling back up the trail in varying stages of sweaty weariness. Partway down, my friend Jane — seen in the first photo below — decided to turn back (she recently had knee operations), leaving the remaining three of us to continue on.

2.5 km after starting out, having zig-zagged our way around multiple switchbacks, we reached the Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse which was our (well, my!) goal. Here I gathered the information needed for the cache (it’s a virtual one, rather than an actual physical object), we restocked our water, checked the temperature (around 32°C/90°F), and started making our way back up.

One of my friends was recovering from unwellness and I’ve become rather unfit lately, so it was a slow journey back up with plenty of photo opportunities (breaks!). Fortunately the late afternoon sun was now casting a shadow over most of the trail and there was even a breeze at times, so it wasn’t as hot as it could have been. The longer shadows made the ridges and contours of the further side of the canyon more visible, but also created some striking contrasts between us in shadow and the sunlit valley. We also saw a chipmunk eating berries from some currant-like bush.

Zig after zag, we made our way upwards, every so often looking back to see the trail where we’d been. To our surprise, we also encountered another friend coming down; I’m not sure if she entirely understood just how far down it is (it is strongly recommended that you don’t even contemplate going right down to the bottom and back up in a day).

It was with a sense of achievement that we reached the top again (with the need to rest for my unwell friend, it took us about 1.75 hours to do the 2.5 km up, compared to about 1 hour going down), and I am really glad we made the effort to actually go into the canyon instead of just pottering around with the teeming hordes of gawkies up on top. It may not have been the full trip, but it gave a good insight into the trail.

Okay, I lied. There are 16 photos.