About six months ago, Pete’s Dad and family proposed the idea of taking a trip out to the Grand Canyon.  I, naturally, was all in.

The initial plan was to head out to the South Rim, spend the night; bus over to the North Rim, spend the night; hike down the North Kaibab Trail to Phantom Ranch, spend the night in the canyon; hike out via the Bright Angel Canyon and head home. I, of course, saw an opportunity at hand.

I told the crew that I would forego the bus trip in exchange for running the canyon instead.  After being called crazy in several different ways, I began my limited research of running the canyon.  Okay, I have to admit, I didn’t do much research.  With all the races and events I have planned for this Summer, I was really treating the canyon as an experience.  And it’s probably a good thing I did.

Here are some stats on the Grandest of Canyons:

• Average depth: 1 mile
• Rim elevations: south rim, 7,000′; north rim, 8,000′
• Average temperature in the canyon in June/July: 106 degrees

• Bright Angel Trail: 9.3 miles; 4,380′ descent to the Colorado River; average grade of 10%
• North Kaibab Trail: 13.7 miles, 5,660′ ascent from the Colorado River
• River Trail: 2 miles connecting the Bright Angel Trail and North Kaibab Trail

According to the book Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon:

“Once one descends even ten feet below either rim of Grand Canyon, one has entered a new and different world. This world is the most convoluted, massive, and jaggedly vertical landscape on Earth, a vast complicated labyrinth carved by the vagaries of erosion as it removed 1,000 cubic miles of rock in a dendritic drainage pattern that gnaws into bedrock cliffs thousand of feet high and fractures the landscape into 600 tributary canyons. The vast majority of rock surface here is so nearly impossible to access that it may never be visited by humans. The few practical routes penetrating this landscape – most of which were pioneered millenia ago by Native Americans – are themselves fraught with precipices and pitfalls and decaying sedimentary rock that weed out the unwary.”

According to the limited research I did prior to the trip, the biggest concerns I had were the heat, water availability, and honestly, the magnitude of it all. Everyone I talked to about running R2R warned me of the myriad risks.

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