Grand Canyon

After Las Vegas, we spent a few days in the Grand Canyon. Kadi had been there before but only on a quick bus tour that brings you to a few lookout points before you taking you away again. She really wanted to go back again, and into the Canyon this time.

We are pleased to say that on this trip, we pretty much did the full Grand Canyon experience :)

After checking out the many viewpoints on the first day, we decided we were up for something a bit more strenuous, so the next day we figured we'd hike down a bit into the Canyon. Having just met a few guys who had hiked from the rim (7,200 ft/2,400 m) right down to the river below (2,500ft/830m) and back again, we decided we were up for the lesser hike down to the mid-shelf and back up (the canyon has a couple of levels and the mid-shelf looked a bit easier...ie not right down to the river at the bottom).

So we set out the next morning with a busload of others, and were pleased with our progress as we passed more and more people on the way down (and no one passed us going down). The conditions were pleasant and it was actually fairly easy to keep the pace up. We came across a few groups getting carried down on mules, and we laughed to ourselves "look at those lightweights!"

About two hours later we arrived at the mid-shelf. At this point, our original plan was to cross the canyon at this level and start climbing up further on. But we couldn't really find the way across and deep inside, we wanted to go down to the bottom where the river was. Plus we were still feeling very fresh so we decided to keep climbing down. We should make you aware that there are warning signs everywhere advising against climbing down to the river and back in one day. Apparently 400 people are rescued from exhaustion and dehydration every year.....what goes down must come up!

When we did get to the bottom another 1.5 hours later, we noticed that there weren't so many people down here (apart from two crazy ironman runners who were running down and up). We knew the rule of thumb was that it takes twice as long to get up as it did to get down (remember, this is the opposite to climbing a mountain as the hard part is climbing back out). So 3.5 hours decending would mean another 7 hours going back up. We never really considered this but it turned out to be roughly correct. So, all-in-all, we spent 9hrs 40mins on the full round trip. We calculated later that the total distance was 18 miles/29 km, with a total descent of 4,700 ft/1,570 m over rough uneven terrain. If we had worked all that out in advance, we probably wouldn't have done it. Needless to say, we were absolutely shattered afterwards but delighted we weren't one of the 400 people who get lifted out, or one of the lightweights on mules who got carried out!

The next day we would have been very happy to sleep in but needed to get up at 5am to go white-water rafting on the Colorado River through the bottom of the canyon (don't worry, this time we were driven down to the bottom). The rafting was fantastic and we had a great day covering 50km on the river including about 7-9 rapids along the way with a fun group of 4 others. We also stopped along the way to explore a cave with a waterfall coming out of it. We figured we might get splashed a bit from the rafting, but again, we underestimated the canyon and got absolutely soaked! A great day all the same which finished on us getting lifted out of the canyon by helicopter! It was a cool lift out right by the canyon wall :)