Ron and I spent the past week in Arizona. In my last post I talked about some of the sites on the way to the Grand Canyon. This post is about our canyon hike, down and then back up the Bright Angel Trail.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon late on Friday. After a traumatic but ultimately successful search for parking outside our hotel, we made it to our room. Very cold outside! We knew that rain was heading our way, but it wasn’t due to arrive until late Saturday. Regardless, we were going in.

The next day, Saturday, we set out from our hotel at 9:25am. The weather was cold with high clouds, but no rain yet.

I’d hiked part of the Bright Angel trail once, long, long ago, in the summer. It had been so hot! This time, there was ice at the start of the trail. We went carefully and soon left most of the people behind, although there were always others on the trail, including some long-distance trail runners.

It wasn’t long before the temperature warmed up. We paused to take off some layers and then, stopping only briefly to snap a few photos, we made our way to Indian Gardens, 4.6 miles down the trail and a 3,000-foot drop in elevation. Yes, the downhill muscles were a bit tired of downhill at this point!

We had lunch and debated if we should add an extra three miles to our trek by heading out to Plateau Point. My courage was fading as I looked up at the cliffs we would have to climb to get out, but then I interrogated someone who’d just returned from the point and his enthusiastic recommendation decided us. We headed on.

Fortunately, this section was nearly level — and totally worth the effort. The view of the Colorado River was amazing! Absolutely the highlight of the hike.

Well, it was getting late. The day had been beautifully overcast, with curtains of rain over the north and east sections of the canyon. Great hiking weather. We hadn’t gotten wet yet, but it seemed inevitable. We set out, going at a steady pace, and sure enough the rain caught up with us, the drops hitting the light-colored trail dust, turning it dark. We got a little wet, but the rain was fairly light and kept us cool. Eventually I put on my rain jacket, mostly to avoid getting chilled.

Where there had been ice in the morning, there was thick gooey mud in the afternoon. That was kind of a bummer, but what can you do? We tromped on and managed not to fall down (thankfully we had our hiking sticks which helped immensely), and we reached the top a bit before 5pm. We’d done twelve miles on the trail and a bit more than that given that we walked to and from the hotel. So this was one of our longer day hikes — and a terrific one. The highlight of our trip.

I didn’t do any fiction writing while we were on the mainland. A whole week with no progress on the newest novel! But I wrote this post on the plane, so as you read this I’m already back to work.