Reverse Hiking

This morning we woke up at 5:00 AM to go to the Grand Canyon to witness the sunrise and to hit the Bright Angel Trail for a little hiking action. The Bright Angel trail will ultimately take you down to the Colorado River and to a camp ground about 10 miles away. That was a little much for our purposes today. Luckily there are a few different stops along the way that the US Park Service has created which breaks it up. We opted for the short one which is about 1 ½ - 2 miles and drops down about 2000 feet.

This was of course my first experience with what I think of as Reverse Hiking. Having to go down and then come back up. It was harder than I thought coming back up. Combine the fact that we were already starting to come back up at about the 4800 foot mark and also that I was following one Brian J. Pelletier back up (those of you who have hiked with him know how that goes) and I was pretty much sucking wind the entire time. Oh yeah, I am fat and out of shape too. That certainly did not help. Regardless, color me a fan of the good old fashioned “Go up then down” hiking. Score One for Maine.

That being said, the hike was absolutely outstanding. The views were breathtaking and you really felt just how small you were. We passed through a couple of caves in the trail and even saw some ancient glyphs which were on the sidewall of the trail and had been there for 1000s and 1000s of years. As we trekked deeper and deeper into the Canyon, the sun was rising and creating an unbelievable display of color and shadow highlighting different parts of the Canyon and illustrating its depth. The walls of the Canyon kept growing more and more until eventually you felt like you were under the edge completely. You could not make out where the top of the rim was. It was simply unbelievable.

Along the way we saw several asses. Both the large, all-terrain, extra heavy duty beast of burden kind, and the idiots who you can tell are miserable and just looking to make it a miserable for all involved. Luckily the large stinky hairy mammals outnumbered the people. There were several Mule Tour Groups who went down into the Canyon with a destination of the Colorado River. I think that if I ever come back here, I might look into that. It certainly would beat the hell out of hiking back up. Other than that, maybe I can petition the government to install and elevator.

We are now off from one extreme to the next. We are about to head out to Vegas (by way of the Hoover Dam). While there is no Canyon in Vegas, there are sure to be plenty of asses.