Miles 100-163. Water makes you walk the extra mile. Or five.
This blog post was originally posted on The Trek right here.
1 Day before the start.
We leave our car in Flagstaff and instantly miss it. It’s black and bulky and reminds us of a black and bulky lab dog that lived in Peaches (the orchards in BC where we worked). And best of all, it has heating. I’ll miss that every cold morning.
It’s not too far from the highway, so we walk there and start hitching. Three hours and two kind and fun rides later, we’re in Grand Canyon Village. After setting up the tent in Mather Campground, we visit the community library. It has just moved to a new building where a bank used to be, so the walls are, stereotypically, a sad shade of white. The librarian, a very lovely lady, invites me to help her put up Halloween decorations to add some color, so I spend some fun, quality time sticking bats onto walls.
We start our thru-hike at the Tip Off
— a place about four miles into the Grand Canyon. You go down, back up, and continue south. By 9 a.m., you can already feel the heat. I’m amazed at the tenacity of life inside the canyon — it clings to rocks, pushes into cracks, seeps water from crevices, and grows, exposed to wind and sun — perhaps a little shriveled, but alive.
Going up, I notice that humans also like to push themselves into the depths of the canyon, often without water, for some unknown reason, despite posters warning about elevation, heat stroke, and dehydration.
No wonder the park responds to about 294 SAR incidents per year.
I could never run a marathon, but I can walk one every day
— when there is something good to walk towards. Water is always a good motivator.
Our first water stop is McDonald’s in Tusayan. It’s free and has ice cubes in it, which makes pouring from cups into our bottles a bit awkward, but it’s all worth it when, a couple of hours later, you still have cold water.
Right after Tusayan, we see three javelinas and two tarantulas.
We planned to do 20 miles on the first day, but the trail was so flat we reached the 20-mile mark by 3 p.m. There’s a Pink Jeep Tours vehicle parked by the outlook tower, and while the group of tourists climbs the tower, the guide chats with us and fills our bottles with cold water. We decide it’s too early to camp, so we walk six more miles to the next water source. Tomorrow, it’s about 25 miles again to the next good, reliable water.
There’s an elk doing karaoke well into the night, and as we wake up, a pack of coyotes begins its choir practice. We walk before the sun is up. From the forest, wild horses watch us and gallop away once we notice them.
The trail is flat and easy, with not too much shade.
We pitch our tent at the junction to a wildlife tank and watch a huge full moon rising on one side and wind farms spinning peacefully on the other.
Two more days until we reach Flagstaff — or so we planned, but the weather had other plans and that whole Flagstaff vs Big Storm chapter requires a separate blog post.