We survived hiking the Grand Canyon . . .

. . . barely. :)

This is us before the hike. We were clean, smiling, energetic and pain-free.

This is us the next day after dragging ourselves out of the Grand Canyon. We were dirty, exhausted, extremely sore, cold and still smiling. :) It was a beautiful hike, even if it was hard.

It really was a great trip, full of epic adventures. The first epic thing was that we took a short detour to the Hoover Dam on the way to the Grand Canyon after meeting up in the Las Vegas airport. It truly is massive.

Once we made it to our hotel by the Grand Canyon, we started repacking our bags to fit all the camping/hiking stuff in the two packs and one backpack we took on the hike with us. Since there were four of us, we switched off carrying the packs and the backpack. Which was a good move because after 1.5 miles or so of carrying the approximately 40 lb pack, I was ready for a break. :)

The next day we parked near the park shuttle and headed off to the South Kaibab trailhead. We began hiking down at about 9:30a. The views of the canyon from this trail were just amazing and they changed around every bend. We stopped pretty frequently for pictures. :)

We were also passed by mule trains a couple of times. It was pretty cool, though by the end of the first day I was ready to hop on, even if they were going the wrong direction.

There were several rest points along the trail, often about 1.5 miles apart, so we used them as rest/snack points and markers for switching packs. We stopped for lunch at Tip Off, which was 4.5 miles from the start. Yay for MREs! They were actually pretty good, which I'm sure was partly just because I was so hungry. 

The trail was pretty steep the entire way. It was hard on the legs to go down it, but I am so glad we didn't have to come back up that trail. 

As we went down further, we started seeing the Colorado River. You can't actually see it from the rim.

Then finally, when my legs were about to give out, we made it to the bottom! Unless you hike or take a mule ride to the bottom, you will never see this canyon. Pretty cool. The hike was a total of 7 miles from the trailhead to the campground and we took about 5 hours of hiking time. (Not including the lunch break)

Here is our lovely campground. There were only 33 campsites and however many cabins that Phantom Ranch has, so it wasn't very crowded. They even had real restrooms at the bottom with mirrors, which made me happy and ensured that I did not poke out my eye taking out my contacts. :) It was also wonderful to have as much water as we wanted.

According to a boy scout leader that we met on the bus, (we were comforted to know that there was a troop of boy scouts hiking down with us, just in case :) Phantom Ranch has the best lemonade in the world. I didn't actually try it, but Robby and Nick said it was good. If you ever go down there, you can judge for yourselves. :)

After pretty decent sleep, we were up just after sunrise, packed and on our way back out by 8a.

On the way down, we had beautiful weather with blue skies and everything. The next day, it was sprinkling a bit as we were packing up the campsite. We proceeded to hike through rain, freezing rain, hail and snow as we gained elevation. Earlier in the day it was pretty light, but by the time we made it to the region of snow, it was coming down pretty hard. 

The first 4.6 miles from the Bright Angel campground to the Indian Garden campground weren't too bad. There were a set of brutal switchbacks, but we made that part of the hike in about 3 hours. We were already pretty exhausted and sore, and we sat under an overhang to eat lunch because it was still sprinkling. We were encouraged that we were halfway there, but one other hiker pointed out that we still had two-thirds of the elevation to tackle.

The next 1.7 miles was pretty hard with a lot more switchbacks and steeper trails. Once we made it to the 3 Mile Rest House, one hiker who had done the hike over 15 times said that the next 1.5 miles were somewhat difficult, but that the last 1.5 miles would be an easy hike. That was really encouraging, so after some beef jerky and water we were off again.

You can see the  3 Mile Rest House in this picture.

The next 1.5 miles were really hard and we were getting very tired. By this time, the trail was covered in snow. We stopped at the 1.5 Mile Rest House to eat the remainder of the food from our lunch MREs and to recover for the last stretch. It was so cold on this part of the trail that we saw a frozen waterfall. Fortunately as long as we kept moving, we were plenty warm. The problem was that we didn't want to move any more. :)

The hiker was right, the last 1.5 miles was much easier, but we were so tired that it really didn't matter. It was definitely the hardest part of the trail as far as our ability to put one foot in front of the other was concerned. Eventually we could see the end of the trail, but it was still really hard and we took a lot of little rest breaks along the way. Anne had us naming the capitals of states and countries just to keep our mind off it. :)

It was most annoying to have people who walked down a short ways from the top strolling along taking pictures looking very fresh and energetic. We must have looked liked half dead zombies, but we really didn't care at the moment.

The views were still gorgeous and we finally did make it to the top. It took us about 8 hours, not including lunch.

Once we finally made it, we took a celebratory picture and went to find the car. After getting to the car, we discovered that the car keys were not in the backpack. After inquiring with the lost and found and doing a lot of searching, we finally found them in one of the tents. Somehow we missed them when we had packed up that morning. Just one more epic portion of the trip. :) After the reassurance of the found keys, we got hot chocolate and candy bars and squished ourselves into the car to head back to Las Vegas. 

Along the way we ate at In-N-Out Burger! It was so good and that was what we had kept us going during that last 1.5 miles. We managed to peel ourselves out of the car and stagger in. We seriously must have looked like zombies because we were so stiff and sore that we were walking really strangely. After that stop it was straight on to Las Vegas and our rooms at the Luxor.

I will blog about that part of the trip later, but to illustrate the difference between the two parts of the vacation, these are the meals we ate. During the first part of the trip we had Jack In The Box (bacon shakes!), MREs and In-N-Out Burger. During the second part of the trip we ate at The Bellagio Buffet, Beijing Noodle No. 9,  'wichcraft and the B & B Ristorante (by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich).

It was all epic.