A mile down the Grand Canyon! Boy was it grand!

After a fantastic time at Eloy**, we repacked our backpacks to head down for a few days into the Grand Canyon. A 4 hour drive from Phoenix got us there. Unlike other national parks with great sights, the Grand Canyon is the only one that remains hidden, shy, and creeps up on you. It waits till you drive to the parking lot. It waits till you walk out of the trees and saunter to the edge. For some the anticipation builds while some are not even ready to get the anticipation started. We parked our car and tiptoed towards the edge of the South Rim. I led Deepa with her eyes closed and tried not to look myself till I got to the railing at the rim. It was my first time and Deepa’s second time (she had visited when she was about 13) at the canyon. We shuffled along like a blind couple with me reaching out my right hand for the railing. We then opened our eyes with childlike anticipation. To say that we experienced a visual orgasm would not be a lie. The view exploded in our faces. We were engulfed by such immense grandeur and beauty that it almost seemed that the earth was showing off to compensate for the rather pedestrian flat terrain on our drive to the canyon. Over the railing the earth simply gave away for nearly a mile bursting into an array of formations in brilliant shades of red, green, and blue.

Photos don't really do the canyon justice...

These formations resembled temples from Asia and several of them were in fact named after them. There was the Rama Shrine, The Shiva Temple, and the Krishna Shrine. The rocks at the valley floor were called the Vishnu basement. It was simply breathtaking in every direction and we couldn’t believe our eyes, lost our speech while not being too sure about olfactory capabilities either : serious sensory overloading! I can only imagine what Copper Canyon (bigger than the Grand Canyon) in Mexico would look like! Dazzled, we moseyed our way to the backcountry office to get overnight hiking permits. We lucked out and got permits for 3 nights on the Hermit trail (starting 2 days later )which was reputed to be an unmaintained and narrow trail fraught with rock falls and jaw dropping ledges. We just made it back to soak in the sunset views and dabble in the soft light with our camera. Photos hardly capture the depth and the sheer beauty of the canyon-a mile deep , 277 miles long and 10 miles wide.

A photo of the canyon, from the rim.

We were lucky to catch the full moon

Deepa settling down in our tent at Mather campground.

Red towering cliffs on one side and drops on the other.

We camped on the rim at the Mather campground. The temperature plummeted during the night to barely above freezing! We spent the next day driving around the rim ans soaking in different perspectives of the canyon. We also offered a lift to a retired French Canadian couple, Richard and Hugette,  who invited us in for drinks when we dropped them. We caught the IMAX movie on the Grand Canyon which gave us some great aerial perspectives. We went back to our tent with eager anticipation for our hike down to the Colorado the next day. We were up by 6, packed our backpacks, breakfasted on some terrible oats ( no more oats on hikes ever! Need dosas!) and were at the Hermit Rest trail head by 8am. The day was going to be a long knee busting descent of nearly 5000ft to Hermit Rapids on the banks of the Colorado, covering 9.7 miles! The recommended hikes for first timers at the Canyon are The South Kaibab Trail and the Bright Angel trail owing to the fact that it has frequent rest stops with potable water, more hikers, wide trail and pretty hard to to get lost on it. But for the same reasons, permits are hard to come by. So the more demanding Hermit trail it was. The upper parts of the hike was on landscape with the whiter Kaibab limestone before giving way to Hermit Shale that givens the Canyon its reddish appearance.

Gorgeous temple like formations rising from the valley floor.

As we descended into the canyon through a really narrow path, we caught occasional breathtaking glimpses of the valley below. Decorated with green desert shrubbery, the sheer expanses of cliffs dropped precipitously for nearly mile down from the rim and then ran out into giant red flanks all the way down to the river. All around us temple-like formations jutted out into the azure sky, each of which announced its imposing presence with stark clarity and almost mocked at us hikers from their dizzying heights, daring us to muster a climb  if we could. Our first rest stop came at about a 1000 ft below the rim after 1.6 miles at Santa Maria springs where we refilled our bottles, iodized them and set of briskly once again. Our trail leveled off for the next 3.3 miles as we traversed to the right below the the trail-head, delicately making our way through some enormous rockfall debris and boulders precariously perched on cliff ledges. We gradually descended into the middle level of the canyon stopping for short breaks at Lookout point ( yes one yells lookout! when you approach the ledge )and Breezy point with soaring walls to one side and sheer drops on the other. Lunch was a few cliff bars (yuck...and delicious water down our parched throats.) By 2pm we got to the top of what was called the Cathedral, a set of spires of red rock that we weaved around and then descend steeply for the next couple of thousand feet through relentless switchbacks punishing our feet and jolting muscles that we never knew existed.


A couple of hikers going the other way warned us about a rattler on the trail, but unfortunately we did not see any.
We got to Hermit Springs at about 3pm just 1.5 miles from our final camp at Hermit Springs. Everything now was towering around us, now that we were almost at the bottom of the canyon. We stumbled our way along the trail like village bumpkins walking around for the first time in Times Square just gawking in awe at the grandeur all around us. Although the canyon can easily accommodate 3 Empire State buildings stacked on top of the other without a problem!  It was close to 5pm by the time we got to Hermit Rapids on the Colorado river. The river was pretty fast flowing there creating some grade 4 rapids. It was a chai brown in color owing to the silt. Our legs were like jelly and we rested on huge slab just watching the river flow through the canyon before it disappeared around a bend. As we sat there nursing our aching feet, it was tough to wrap our minds around the concept that the erosive forces of this mighty river together with the continental drift over millions of years had carved our this beautiful canyon. We just felt like a fleeting moment in geological time and yet, being in the present, soaking in the scenery with the winds of the canyon on our faces, we felt incredibly alive, peaceful and joyous.

The Colorado river at night creeping through the canyon.

That evening, the weather was a cool 60C and perfect. It was time to pitch our  tents and cook dinner ( Trader Joe's Pav Bhaji with Lemon Basil Rice) and take some night shots of the full moon gliding across the sky over the raging rapids. We slept like babies soothed by the gurgling waters barely 30 feet away from our tents.
Day 2 was a day filled with exploring the ridges that rose from just behind the tent. We chose a pretty steep slope dotted with grassy patches amongst rock cliffs. The idea was to scramble our way to the ridge, walk along it and take some nice photos while

Head lamp smiley traced out in the air!

enjoying a good lunch break. The climbing required intense focus. We did not have ropes, so we chose a route that was probably a 5.2.(US rock climbing rating). Took us about an hour and a half to scramble up a thousand feet and all the time we were right at the banks of the Colorado, seeing more and more of the meandering river as we gained elevation. We gained a ridge by about noon, sat down to have lunch and shoot some photos. We saw some rafters coming down the river. Rafting the Colorado would be really cool. Definitely want to come back to do that. Down climbing a 5.2 requires intense focus, so we were all pumped up going down back to the tent. Had a blast! We got back down at about 3pm and had another hot lunch before packing our tent. We decided we would hike up to Hermit Springs just 1.5 miles from Hermit Rapids to get a head start to our hike out to the rim.

We spied on some rafters from a high ridge.

A waterfall close to Hermit springs.

So a relaxing hike to close out an exciting day of scrambling and exploring. We pitched our tents once again at about 6pm, cooked a dinner and read a bit of the book we had carried down, " Ranger Confidential". Not a bad read .. just some interesting anecdotes from a ranger about her experiences primarily in the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. We crashed at about 9pm as we needed to get in as much rest as possible for the hike up to the rim the next day.We were up at 5 am, got the stove going and had two packets of noodles for breakfast. We had had enough of that terrible oats and decided to have a big breakfast. We loaded up on bars and trail mix in our pockets for our hike up, hoisted the backpacks and were hiking out of camp by 630am! The weather was cool and perfect. Sunrise came in all its glory, casting golden shades on the giant walls around us. It was a perfect start. We had nearly 5000 ft to climb and quickly got into a rhythmic plod, stopping every 30 to 45 minutes to refuel, soak in the scenery and take photos. We were slowly chewing up the miles and more importantly the elevation. Because of our early start we took it slow and steady. Before long we passed our landmarks that we had encountered on the way down and settled down for a long lunch break. The final 2 miles to the top of the rim was a relentless climb which we felt the park authorities had stretched out unnecessarily. But by 3pm we got to the top! We did it, hiking to the Colorado and back in one piece ( well 2 actually, considering the both of us). The high it gave us actually helped us mosey our way out of the park, take a scenic drive through pretty Sedona and the Red Rocks that included a pit stop to gorge down a banana split. We then split from there to make it to Krishna Cafe in Chandler AZ by 9pm!! We had missed South Indian food for too long and the situation was desperate! We sent the waiters scurrying around to fetch a thali, with its several stainless steel cups polished to sparkling luster in no time by methods that we better not describe here, and a Special Mysore Masala Dosa that crackled and hissed in my fingers on its way to a bottomless pit. We promptly devoured everything in front of us and flopped back on the chairs with gustatory glee and supreme satisfaction. We got some oomph from the somph ( those delicious fennel seeds that I would like the federal government to make mandatory in all restaurants) and dragged ourselves back to Siddarth's haven by 10pm. We then imprinted our smiles on the pillows and dissolved into bed.

A satisfying day of hiking. Almost at the rim !