The Grand Canyon Adventure
The Rim to Rim Trail - The adventure begins – fly from Vancouver to Las Vegas – arrive at 9pm – rent a car and drive to Boulder City just outside of Vegas.
The next morning we were up early to drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon – 277miles and 5 hours later. At the South rim we park our car and get a shuttle to the North Rim another 210 miles and another 5 hours of driving.
This adventure includes Phil, Grace and Annette (Phil’s mum) and we finally reach the North rim Kaibab lodge where we eat some food and stay the night. The shuttle leaves at 5:30am the next morning to drive another 10 miles to the trailhead -
At Last the 42km hike/run begins – we don’t really have a plan in mind just to finish before it gets dark. Annette has been dreaming about this adventure for years and her fear of not making it was not going to come true. She would make it no problem she just had to drink and eat enough and the heat shouldn’t take too much out of her. It was cool at the top of the North Rim a little dark when we started but when sun came up.
WOW what an amazing Canyon…it was huge. It quickly warmed up as we dropped in elevation and at the bottom it was a desert so super hot and dry. The trail offered everything from clean drinking water to plenty of places to take a break.
14 miles later we reached Phantom Ranch the switchbacks down were awesome and we made good time. We ran most of the way down took our time at the bottom and then headed out to hike up to the South Rim.
First we crossed the Colorado River and had about 2000M of elevation lay ahead. Lots of rock staircases and just an amazing trail not knowing where the top was almost a good thing as we didn’t notice it was taking a long time.
Indian Gardens was a great site as it was half way up the South side. Then we hit the 3 mile resthouse and then the 1.5 mile resthouse. Almost at the top and Annette pipes up and says if we run to the top we can make it in 10.5 hours.
This was a great adventure – we would even go back as there were so many other trails to discover.
42km in 10.5 hours with a lot of elevation well done team!
Check out the pictures below to see all the pictures from our Rim 2 Rim trip in the Grand Canyon.
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