Phantom Ranch

scored a reservation for next september. so pumped and ready to go.

 

not that anybody cares, but if you get the chance, go. Amazing to see the canyon from the bottom.

 

Agreed, that was one of the best hikes i've ever done. You get a whole different perspective of the river
when you are at it's bank. What raw power. Didn't like getting up the next morning and hiking
back up though. My knees were screaming.

 

We spent two nights at bottom to give ourselves a little more recovery time. After we got out, my legs were pretty much back to normal the next day, although at the bottom, my thighs were killing. The woman was complaining about her calves for a week. I am totally ready to do it again, she said have fun.

 

Yea, wish we could have stayed longer, but we only had the one night. One of the best night
sleeps i've ever had btw...with the river noise. Going down tweaked both my knees, going up def. got my thighs...
my GF did really well, though she did mention that she thought about hitching a ride on a burro on the way
back up...haha.

We ran into an older Gentleman, maybe in his 70/80's that jogged from the South Rim to the North Rim
and back every day he said...he was super fit and looked great and wow what an inspiration.

Good luck on your stay and post some pix if you can...

 

defiantly one of the coolest vacations we've taken. I also enjoyed the planning process from researching the needs (water/food/temp/supplies) to our weekly training hikes to be enjoyable.

Also seemed to be a lot of dumb people on the trails. On Bright angel trail in the switchbacks between the river and indian garden there was a couple carrying their dog up. It was 90 in the shade and there was little shade to be found. So dumb. I was amazed at how many people we saw headed down to the 3 mile rest stop with only a bottle of water. And how many poeple just hung around the edge without taking a step into the canyon.

I just wish we would have planned to stay at the rim an extra day before heading up to Utah. We didn't get the chance to visit anything beyond bright angel lodge since we arrived around 8pm the night before we hiked down and left the canyon after we hiked up. Oh well. Next time.

 

Hey, thanks for the pix...brings back some really fond memories.
Glad you enjoyed it. When we were last there, (many years ago btw), there were not that
many people there thankfully, so the stupidity factor was probably minimized.

Amazing how the weather can change from one minute to the next there.
We had hot dry up top, got further down and had a bit of snow/sleet/rain,
then at the river it was sticky and humid. Hard to dress for...we were constantly
taking stuff off and then putting it back on.

Reminded me that when we went i had broken my wrist a couple weeks before
and while we were going down the trail, i slipped and instinctively reached out to support myself
and landed really hard on the wrist...thought i re-broke it, but luckily not.

Saw my first Tarantula there too.