Weekend # 16: April 26 - April 28, 2008
The Grand Canyon - Tonto Trail
I have been trying to get to the Grand Canyon for a few years now. At some point I want to try and kayak the whole thing. But until I get good enough to do that, I wanted to at least see it from the rim and do some hiking and maybe some backcountry camping. So when my friend Joe called me and said his wife had agreed to let him out of the cage for a few days, I said let's do it.
Unfortunately, we did not plan addequate time to obtain the necessary backcountry permits. While anyone can just show up and do a hike, if you plan on doing multi day hikes, you will need to do some serious prior planning. The cushy lodges are booked up more than a year in advance. In order to get a backcountry permit, it is recommended that you apply the earliest you can, which is four months prior to the proposed start month. If not, you're likely to get denied.
We were lucky enough though, to be able to get approved for a permit though. Unfortunately, just before we were ready to leave, Joe had some family obligations he had to take care of, so he was unable to go.
At last minute, the only person I knew that was both in shape enough, and willing enough to do something like a backcontry camping trip in the Gran Canyon was my friend JP. He's curretnly deployed in California for the Army as a Drill Sergant, so I dropped him a line. He was able to get leave to do the trip so we were officially in business.
Instead of flying into Flagstaff, AZ , I arrived a day early, and flew directly into Phoenix. I picked him up the day before the hike and we took a trip to REI so we could get our last minute items and anything we forgot at home, like sleeping bags!
Pages on this Site
To see all the costs associated with this trip, check out my Plan page. While I did staty in hotels the day before and the day after, you can definately minimize costs by camping those days. And figuring out a way to not have to rent a car would save you a good amount of money as well.
To see all the pics, check out the Photo Gallery page. There's a few good pics there. I didn't take as many pics as I usually do on this trip and I put up only about 20 percent of the pics I took. But there's enough here to get an idea of what the trip was all about.
To see my comments on the trip, check out the Trip Log page. If you don't feel like seeing all my bogus comments.. To sum it up... We came, we saw, we trekked, we were hot, we left. :-)
The Gear List for this trip is pretty much what I have used for most of my trekking and or camping trips. The only item that I needed to buy that I didn't already have was the dromedary bag, which is a 10 liter water bag to carry bulk water.
If you are looking for more information on the Grand Canyon, here's some of the Info I have cobbled together. You can google it and get a load of information out there.
