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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Picking the right snowshoe is always the question that comes up with some many options how do you narrow it down? What are you mainly going to use the snowshoes for – walking, hiking, running? If it’s mainlywalking with a bit of running then you have a huge selection. If it’s hiking will lots of steep hills you want to make sure you get some snowshoes that offer a lot of traction to 
Whoops! But Gale was to the rescue using his McGivor skills. Taking the lid from the kippers container he moulded it, using a rock, into a tent pole sleeve – we should have kept it for next time we need a repair. It totally worked!! Phil and Grace chatted with their hiker friends from last night and mentioned that they packed a little light on food and looks like noodles and sauce was all that was left for dinner. A few moments later our Seattle friends were over giving us some food as they had extra and didn’t want to carry it out the next day. Lucky for useveryone wants a light pack on the last day. They had a lot of extra food in the end they gave us 3 freeze dried food packs – We had the biggest feast yet out on the trail – it was awesome.
Although the next day we still had chocolate bars for lunch as we didn’t want to stop and cook some food as it was only going to be about 4 hours of walking- If you don’t loose something off your pack – Phil? Carry everything in your pack as we usually do but thetent fly was wet so it was being carried on the outside of Phil’s pack – about 3km down the trail Grace said to Phil “are you carrying the tent fly inside your pack today???” 
Phil says “No, is it not on my pack?” Hunting through Phil’s pack…. andno tent fly? We drop our packs and Phil is going to run back to find it – at the most he will have to do is 6km that’s not too bad it’s pretty easy and flat trail today. It’s decided that Annette and Gale will hike on ahead and if we don’t reach them by km 5 then they will wait for us. Grace stays with Phil’s pack and anxiously awaits his return. Only took about an hour and Phil comes running down the trail with the tent fly in hand – Yeah tent fly it’s going on the inside of the pack now.
Phil and Grace are now on the go to catch Annette and Gale before Km 5 and they did it. Finally some speed hiking for these 2. It was a great trip but too bad Gale didn’t let us know his sleeping mat had a hole in it. We may have been able to fix it. The West Coast Trail,conquered by great backpackers and great guides. What’s next? I think I heard Annette and Gale talking about the Chilkoot Trail??
Calling for Gale… he’s up ahead…. on the first ladder and had climbed to the top having a rest. As we encountered more ladders thus, became the question “Annette are you going to take your pack on this one?” and most of the downs she kept her pack but the up ladders it was just too much weight. Phil would climb up the ladder and drop his pack at the top and come back down for Annette’s pack Grace helped out a few times.
Knowing this was the hardest part of the trail everyone felt confident we would be able to make it to the end as planned. The first night was kind of crammed as we stopped at beach access B. This meant we didn’t have to make the long ladder trek down to Thrasher and back up again it was worth it. By this time we had met 3 groups of people that knew Phil and Grace from Calgary – who would have thought?
