Today was an exciting milestone - it was the boys’ longest hike to date! We hiked the South Rim of the Grand Canyon from Mather Point to Hermits Rest, for a total of 18 km. That is a solid hike, indeed.
Our initial plan was to take the free park shuttles (red and blue lines) to the farthest point (Hermits Rest) and hike the 18 km route along the canyon’s rim back to the truck. We caught the blue shuttle precisely at 6:30 am as intended, took it to the transfer point, and after waiting for the red shuttle for 20 minutes we took a closer look at the schedule and realized that the second shuttle doesn’t start until 8:00 am. What the heck?! So we pivoted and started our hike heading out to Hermits Point instead. Not a problem except for one (quite important) detail - we had planned to fill up our water bottles at the spring at Hermits Rest before beginning the hike (which was now no longer our starting point), so we started the hike with half full water bottles. Not ideal.
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| Waiting at the shuttle stop. |
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| Liam and Ian planning our route. |
It was cool and overcast for the first few segments of the hike which made for an enjoyable walk. We were the only people on the trail so we had all the viewpoints completely to ourselves. In addition to incredible views of the majestic canyon from numerous angles, we saw a huge hole that was an old uranium mine (who knew they used to mine inside the Grand Canyon?!) and lots of wildlife including mule deer, rabbits, and lizards.
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| I did not love the unpaved segments of the rim trail. They went much too close to the edge of the canyon for my comfort zone. |
We had made it about 6 km to the end when the sun came out strongly and we ran out of water. We had a family meeting to troubleshoot and decided together to hop on the free shuttle and take it to Hermits Rest for lunch and a water fill up. This turned out to be an excellent plan. We all drank a litre of water and thoroughly enjoyed our tuna on crackers. We checked out the Hermits Formation and the General Store before heading back to the trail to complete the hike (in the reverse direction). Those last 6 km felt much easier after our break.
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| Seamus’ favourite canyon formation. |
After completing the red segment of the trail, we hopped back on the shuttle and headed into Grand Canyon Village. We visited the studios in the village where we learned about the Emery and Ellsworth Kolb brothers who were early photographers and filmmakers of the canyon.
By this point the boys were due for a treat so we scored some well deserved ice cream and iced coffee. This rejuvenated us enough to make it to the Yavapai Geology Museum for the 3 pm ranger lecture on the geology of the park.
And that was it - we were exhausted. We made it the last 20 minutes back to Mather Point where the truck was parked, collapsed inside, and headed for our campground. It is monsoon season here, which means daily afternoon thunderstorms. We saw lightning and thunder over the canyon on the walk back but we luckily didn’t get caught in any rain.
