Grand Canyon hike, day 1

December 28, 2020

December 10, 2020

This is the 5th time I've hiked in the Grand Canyon. All of my hikes have either been in late December or early January. This is the first time it was above freezing at the trailhead and the first time I didn't have to wear micro spikes. I had never seen the South Kaibab trailhead not covered in ice. It was cloudy and threatening rain, but off I went at about 8:30 in the morning after catching the first hiker shuttle from the Backcountry Office.

Photographic note: all images were taken with a Nikon D3300 DSLR with a 10-24 lens. The D3300 is a DX camera so the 1.5x crop factor applies, making this lens the 35mm equivalent of a 15-36. On all my previous trips my widest lens was a 28mm equivalent and I deliberately brought this wider lens to see if having the superwide perspective helped to better represent how I perceived the canyon visually. Most of the photos were taken at the 10mm setting for that reason. I'll share my thoughts on how I feel about that choice later...

Looking down the South Kaibab trailhead. This top section of the trail is called The Chimney because of its steep descent down an almost vertical section of the canyon wall.

The view at Ooh Aah Point was partially obscured by clouds.

The sky would remain somewhat overcast all day but the fog was beginning to clear by the time I was approaching Cedar Ridge.

On the way to O'Neil Butte.

The stretch between O'Neil Butte and Skeleton Point is probably the only significant stretch of relatively flat trail until the river. It's a nice change of pace after the relentless downhill.

The view from Skeleton Point, looking over toward Plateau Point (off the Bright Angel trail from Indian Gardens) and down to the river. The patch of green you see is Bright Angel Creek and Phantom Ranch. You can only see these views if you walk around the point to the left of the Skeleton Point sign and I was surprised how many people were just going to walk on by until I told them the river was visible if they just walked off the trail a few feet. I didn't know this the first time I was here either.

Once you start heading down onto the Tonto Plateau from Skeleton Point you get a glimpse of just how far you have left to go. This was the point during our first hike where I really started asking myself "OMG, what have you gotten us into?"

Past the Tipoff you begin leaving the Tonto on your way into the inner canyon. You finally catch a glimpse of the river crossing at the Black Bridge, but it takes a lot longer to get there (at least it did for me) than you first expect.