Wild Times on the R2R2R Rim to Rim to Rim Grand Canyon Run - Bright Angel Kaibab

it is a chilly morning at the bright angel trailhead we are about 5 45 rained last night and about 45 degrees so that is what the morning has in store for us yesterday carolyn and i had about a 30 mile 50k day down to supine back so it's quite a quite a start to the the journey got a map over here somewhere bright angel trailhead 6800 feet and then down to the phantom ranch indian garden it's not even taking us down to phantom that's saying it's six to nine hours difficult strenuous to cover the 4.5 miles to indian garden well i don't think that's going to be the case all right we ready i'm ready let's start moving oh that feels good actually i feel way better than i thought i would already you know what i mean i was thinking oh i'd be a little creaky i'm feeling okay i know of course we're going downhill yeah there's the coolest part that hole in the canyon so all right so we're leaving it 5 45 7 45 roughly which is just when it's gonna be getting dark we'll be uh predicted exit time but we'll see what happens this seems like the time of day to leave we've got quite a few people already on the trail passing backpacks and whatnot we'll be out quick running through their their picture look how civilized this trail is good lord compared to the trail we were on yesterday which has the mule trains going up and down all day this one is like a groomed ski run and you can actually see now actually because it's rained you can see people's tracks it looks like there's only been one or two people down alright let me be a few more hard to say but there's our trail it's gonna go and wiggle down all that way we'll see if we get rain it says 30 in the morning 60 in the afternoon so we're probably 10 minutes in and we've already taken our layers off so who knows if the cold is really going to be a factor today or not yeah someone up here with his jeans on just taking his layers off too but this is our down morning yeah yeah good view and then back again have a good one i'm not sure the back again part registered that's a nice community of folks here it's just commenting to carolyn how yesterday compared to the havasupai trail we haven't seen a speck of litter out here so good job national parks visitors and people supai people clean up your stuff there's a little bit of horse manure as well on the way down but nothing like we had in supai so i don't anticipate we'll be seeing mule trains going our way maybe coming the other way up later but that'll be it how you feeling this morning carolyn not bad just not bad that will do i'm wearing my bigfoot gators today which i just got betsy made them see oh my god they've already come off the front i got the little bigfoots on them and the ultras because i figure traction is not that big of a deal today like it was with supply these should be fairly forgiving even though ultra's notorious instant wear out soul has almost no tread on them i don't think it's gonna be necessary much today so we've got one set of footprints in front of us now seems like someone who's running at a reasonable pace like a solo runner just kind of doing the self-assessment right now thinking that this particular trail such a nice grade it'll be effort to go up but it's not so bad and it's not i mean you can run it down quite easily i think most of the trails from room to room are like that as opposed to a lot of the runs where we do where there's no way you're running up and down the trail but here it's quite possible i'm also remembering oh yeah probably should have put some band-aids on my nipples and feel them a tiny bit right now because it's cold and if we have a stop or a break i'll dig into my kit and pull out some band-aids at some point maybe i'll do a video of what goes in the pack for a particular run so but in the meantime we are headed just down and down and down so quiet it's just beautiful so i stopped for a second just to show this trail how crazy the line is there's carolyn coming down she is an amazing runner which is nice because certain people you just don't have to worry about on the trail she is one but this is what you're dealing with down down down down the whole way all right now to try this there she goes taking the wiggles which just continue all the way down we pretty much have the canyon to ourselves right now which is kind of awesome so i'm gonna run down and see if i can catch back up good luck on that one on long days catch back up is a bad plan but we'll see hopefully she'll pull up and wait for me so i've got the sticks with me so that when i'm on the uphills i'll be able to use those do a little bit of practice for the bigfoot coming up this year we're just under an hour in and we are here so we've come 4.6 miles and so we're doing about 11 minute miles ish maybe 12. and then this down to colorado river phantom ranch 4.7 miles we're doing good actually this is not bad nice we're astounded at the number of water stations there are so far this is like pretty easy terrain in terms of support although warning danger warnong watch a call do not attempt to hike from the canyon rim to the river and back in one day each year hikers suffer serious illness and death from exhaustion so he yeah that's a third of our trip but i think the weather is cooperating with us actually really nicely so our objective early in the day is just not to ever go into energy deficit just to kind of take it easy even though it's downhill every now and then we're taking a little bit of a leg stretch and walking it out going up the other side it's unlikely we'll be doing much running there's some flat part at the bottom just after phantom ranch that we'll probably end up walking and running on and off but it's about preserving energy for the day especially after yesterday's effort all right so we're going along this section we've got water down in this canyon and it's a beautiful kind of rocky ridge that they are created to follow along the cool thing about this run is even though it's all in the canyon there are all these different micro climates and different types of terrain that are just quite beautiful every corner that you come around there's something else to see and look at planning to be mindful today feeling a slight tightness in one calf the soleus so just paying attention to it but not worrying about it too much just being aware there are interesting things happening there's a beautiful slot canyon that would probably be pretty awesome to descend if we could but i don't think this is the place to do it and we've got i'm just going to head over this edge we have blue sky appearing yeah ta-da looks like it's going to be a perfect day for this temperature's not so bad remember this spot you come around and again you can see the trail for quite some distance and it just ends up down there up those wiggles all the way along here oh nice so morning folks so we just hit sunlight at the colorado river it's at 7 30 so it took us just an hour 45 to get down here but man oh man look at that really nice now we parallel the river a little bit and then after a while there'll be a bridge to cross and then over to phantom ranch and then it is all up so we've descended remember how far the descent was carolyn here so 13k in basically eight miles oh there's our friends up there oh we got rafters too morning thank you beautiful segment here right along the colorado river we'll be marching along next to it hello everyone for a bit of time but just amazing 360 degrees around used in a sandy wash segment again paralleling the colorado and just up ahead is the footbridge which you can see if you look carefully at that those rafters are coming down carolina here's it yesterday we're at the colorado river too at supi and we've been at it again and then we're gonna go up and back down we'll be at the colorado three times in two days i think that'll be enough of that approaching the bridge footbridge across the colorado a bit of a landmark on this run lovely construction so this is where on the way back we figure out whether we want to go up trying to keep eating that would have been a fun fall i didn't know what my foot caught on this is all intention purposes flat compared to what we have been running just pointed at me okay see if i stay on we're gonna do a little everything on tightrope yeah see if we can get across the river this way but i could have made it the whole way for sure so this is the bright angel campground area and if we choose to take the kaibab back this would be close to where we need to chill out it's just canyons where they have water like this dry places with water just amazing unbelievable well we got this detour thing going trail has been closed whatever that means so hopefully that doesn't mean a lot of bonus miles but we will see 16 kilometers in just passing santa ranch here oh we don't want to go that way we want to stay this way we don't want to go where they went have a good one guys so now uphill for we're 16k in which means quick arithmetic 10 about 10 miles in 20 of our mileage done two hours 15 minutes but this mileage is gonna be a little different we should probably stop soon and do the sunscreen thing too but trail look at that boulder lined cactuses to give you high fives she'll say yeah good job in the canyon area leading up to where you start to get out and the incline's not too bad so some of it's runnable ah i'm not making you dizzy by bouncing the camera around like that we're doing a intermittent run walk net uphill but it's not too steep so just looking to keep clicking off the miles maybe we'll do some kilometers too to make the bridge crossing a little bit more interesting we're gonna go on the rail there we go a lot of focus feeling sure and bias a little bit towards the bridge rather than the river i want to talk about pacing for a minute on long days like this it's so important to not go into deficit when you're doing a long day and just to keep the calories coming in liquid coming in even when you don't feel like it just grab something and eat it this intermittent pacing where you run a bit a little bit of an uphill so we'll walk is really nice carolyn's really experienced as well and she hasn't had as much mileage as i have recently she's a little concerned but they're such a solid runner she likes to hang back just a little bit which is kind of nice as well we're on her own pace i can run mine i'm not stopping and waiting for her more or less ever she just catches up i'll slow down on an uphill and then go but for days like today the quality of the experience is what i'm looking for and if i'm training as i am for 200 mile race these back-to-back high mileage days i just had a few in a row in hawaii a couple weeks back and now up and down out of the grand canyon a couple times in the last three days this is what helps you a lot so i've gone the up now it's a little bit of a downhill and i will just keep carrying on forward knowing probably that carolyn's doing the same thing just amping it up behind me a little bit look at this big gopher snake i think he's probably alive and there he goes look at that what a beauty you ready oh yeah i love that so coming along the trail and all of a sudden you see a generator and a giant thing of tools how do you think they got here helicopter like i was going to bring all this crap in helicoptering them in it looks like the helicopter just kind of dropped it on the trail too fuel for the generator tools all kinds of stuff i don't know what they're going to do probably some trail work because this trail is pretty crazy compared to supai where we were yesterday going through a valley so somewhat like this where there's no trail you're just scrambling back and forth across the water and literally over the river and through the cactus patch here is a little different but this looks like man for the helicopter to drop it right there he did not pick an easy place at all probably a hot shot pilot we have thunder and rain drops coming so maybe we'll find a place and pull over over here and grab a bite to eat somewhere if we find some other lizards stuck in the middle of the bridge because it really comes down it'd be nice to stay dry find a little cave like that but maybe more comfortable more overhang we'll see what we can find but it would be a fine time to have some real food huh well it started to rain and we have a little roof here oh look at carolyn get her jacket on even i don't know if i'm going to do the jacket but it does look like it's going to rain hard for a minute or two so we will chill out i'll enjoy some marlin jerky we just had a massive lightning strike actually quite close that was a flash and then brief pause and then thunder that just reverberated through the canyons i don't know if we'll get another one but we will see hard to say if this is just going to go through or whether we're going to be stuck here for a bit i think the real uphill starts we've got about 10 miles to the other rim we're about a quarter of the way through in terms of mileage right now so i got my poles out i broke one of my poles i got these rei poles which are carbon and they're adjustable and quite comfortable a lot of people like the black diamond ones but they're not adjustable they're maybe slightly lighter the nice thing about the black diamond is they collapse into a shorter distance well waiting for lightning that one wasn't as near as the last one so it's a proper thunderstorm at the moment and carolyn and i are just talking about options it's 10 miles to the north rim all uphill and our plan is to do those 10 miles and come back here which would be 20 miles and then back to the other side which would then cap off a day of about 80k or 50 miles but as you can see it is raining hard there's probably flash flooding going on in different places with a rain like this not that should really be a concern of ours so we'll we'll figure out what to do carolyn's worried about perhaps getting cold i have a space blanket a polypropylene i opted not to bring a waterproof jacket which in retrospect might have been a mistake but i've got a windproof jacket not waterproof and carolyn has a waterproof jacket and i've got these sleeves on right now which are pretty handy so lightening up a little bit we will see what happens as we wait this out our little jackrabbit couple from montana i wonder how they're doing yeah carolyn's arm warmers have gone on her legs just not bad i got some goosebumps right now it's getting a little colder so maybe i'll put on another layer as well just to be prudent but we'll wait and see whether this sticks around whether the weather stays or goes so the rain is light up a little bit the sky looks a little brighter we're geared up a bit so looks like we're probably going to continue even if they take us a little longer now if it starts to get heavy and rain again we might find another alcove we're outcropping and pull over again but i think i think it'll go away it's a good question as to whether this will be coming and going during the day if it is then we may just resign ourselves to being wet and carrying on as long as we're moving it's not so bad the temperature isn't it's not bad it's probably low 60s maybe mid 60s so it could be a lot worse well we're moving along the trail is wet carolyn just caught one of her favorite little buddies a little toad or frog just drinking along on the trail but we got thunder lightning over there it's just pouring in the distance back here doesn't look quite so bad oh cute little guy i'm sure he didn't pee on your gloves oh and there he goes they apparently have no fear whatsoever well here comes carolyn and the trail appears to have turned into a stream from this point forward so the rain has changed the complexion of the trail they're probably little places flowing as well that don't normally that coming across little sets of hikers pulling off the trail just to try and stay dry somewhere but i think we've given that up right now so we will be hiking in the stream luckily we're from vancouver where such hiking is pretty normal you don't have giant cacti at the side of the creek so ribbon falls is up here we're just deciding whether to make a detour i think i'd like to i don't know apparel is not as sure but maybe i can talk her into it maybe an extra couple miles but probably worthwhile and you're down here right not gonna be down here again for a long time so looking ahead beautiful but definitely raining kind of grim raining right here but behind us blue sky baby so i think we'll be fine today we're going through this place that's just got the most incredible plant life it's really amazing especially with all this rain i guess we've been having it is green vibrant technicolor green in places i think we're about six miles from the rim all of which will be uphill from here on this has been uphill anyway but more uphill so we've come across something pretty interesting a little more exciting than the last thing we saw on the trail can you hold those actually give me one we've got a dead squirrel and we've got the rattlesnake there that made him dead so he's kind of waiting to see what we're going to do he's not coiled which means he's not if i put the camera at him he might strike let's see if he does no he's being very patient with us so i'm kind of curious as to what's going to happen here whether the snake is going to eat the oh see now he's coiled a little bit he doesn't like me going by him so if i stick this out he might strike at it but maybe not yeah here hold this for a second i mean we're fine i'm not going to worry about him he can only strike roughly his body length which is shorter than this what i might do is just just get the camera over here i'm gonna dash out he's in there head over yeah head over to your kill right there there you go buddy so clearly he bit the squirrel and now the squirrel's dead and he's just waiting to eat him that will be a nice rattlesnake meal super cool you ready are you freaked out i just no i mean i'm okay i'm fine but oh my god that was crazy all right we're gonna head out that's the first time i've ever seen flats we're gonna re-water it's a little weigh station on the trail last time i did ribs room trim this was the beginning of my demise because i drank a whole lot of liquid and ate gels and my stomach just wouldn't settle and going up was not pleasant so our little rattlesnake friend i pushed his kill off the trail so if somebody else is coming along the rattlesnake is not going to be in the middle of the trail it could be a little weird if you're freaked out by it but consider myself very lucky to have seen that wow kel right there he's just waiting to eat so super cool time to take layers off and re-water we have hail coming down thunder lightning and hail at the moment i'm gonna keep running ahead carolyn's back a bit but maybe we'll find shelter again if it really opens up so i found shelter while it's raining and it's raining pretty good you can see up towards the rim up there the trail is now just running stream i think carolyn is just a little ways back so she should be around the corner shortly it's not cold so even though i'm wet right now i'm not i'm not chilly so i'd be inclined to let this pass through and keep on going it's not going to be as fast as we were thinking today with this kind of weather and these delays but it'll still be a great day 10 minutes ago we're huddled under a rock hail thunderstorm and now blue sky above us just a magical place amazing i think we're gonna i think we're gonna be okay getting out of here to the top rim then we got to come back down and go through it all again coming to uh another one of the foot bridges crossing over the creek which is probably a little bit swollen now beautiful we are leaving the water and just heading up right now towards some of the more spectacular uphill trail parts right now a good bunch of erosion happening from the storm you can see it was a stream when the storm was going but going along the rim of this trail which has just been carved directly into the most incredible rock faces it just is above us and it just carries on around all the way over there carolyn and i are just commenting about where uh six hours and just over almost six and a half hours in our fellow canadian rob crower woohoo has the fkt which is the fastest known time for the rim to rim to rim so he would have made it to the top and back all the way back to the parking lot again look at that waterfall i'm sure that isn't normally running but because we've had water today it it is so we're still hearing thunder here and there we have occasional sun it's just sprinkling a little bit right now like i say we'll see how long it takes us to get up to the top the way back what do you think the way back roughly the same time a little more to climb back up yeah but we have such a long downhill so we're running more than we were last time we'll see we are coming into one of the more interesting sections but also talking about maybe having a little snack eat something keep the calories going in but this again is basically built onto a cliff and you can see where we've just come from over there the trail it's also on a bit of an overhang looks like a lot of water was coming down here earlier oh here's the sun again too where are we going we double back this looks like the perfect spot to eat something right here what i'm going to eat is bacon jerky you carry these things sometimes all the way to the end of the trail and back and never touch them but right now it's bacon jerky time delicious bacon jerky i'm gonna power us up the rest of the way what do we got bring your watch over here let's see what it says well 33 kilometers time of day and elevation at six thousand feet what is it at the top eight oh really got two thousand more to go here comes carolyn up one of the sections that's been literally carved out of the canyon and then we head up this way do a bit of a turn and then just keep heading up i think that rim is about how high we need to get to so but the way up there is crazy topography here she comes along the steep cliff section this was just most likely a waterfall a little bit earlier whoever made this trail did an enormous amount of work it is just literally carved into the side of a cliff and no guard rails yeah what's your name i'm john john nice to meet you yeah this is awesome nice to meet you allison it's a pleasure you guys ready oh my god those cold hands oh they just i'm holding your last name oh we met remember that guy that said that his said that his wife i am not an elite runner did you guys did you guys uh take shelter for the foundation oh that's a nice one back a little ways did you guys find shelter though oh good we just were hanging under a rock then again we found it started yeah we ran through the second one i sat there right now you're getting a good window yeah it hasn't been cold so yeah but yeah we just kept going we were so like we started going and start pouring again so we're like yeah just run yeah we just finally took our coats off at the bridge like oh gosh it feels so good yeah but we'll have fun yeah yeah you guys you guys are kicking it man you guys are doing great too how long since you're wait how long are you going to see it's about two and a quarter miles from here two and a quarter and two thousand cents okay it doesn't mess around it does not look like two thousand feet doesn't remember this yeah i thought it looked more difficult yeah don't look up at all that's what i just do you guys get washed in lactic acid 82 yeah yeah well good job folks we'll see you later bye are you guys going back to kaibab or a bright angel i think we might go up kaibab just for the heck of it because i haven't been up there no it's always ours yeah we thought we just but then at that time i don't know how many people are going to be around anyways we'll figure it out have a great year thanks you too see ya we are getting closer and closer to the rim a lot of breath simply because we're at 8 000 feet and going up up up but end is in sight looks like we're gonna be eight hours instead of seven as planned and no surprises with all of the thunder hail and lightning breaks we took but i think not too much past that little ridge right there and we should be good switch back switch back switch back we're at the coconino overlook definitely closer to the rim now i think the horizon the light colored horizon is basically where we came from which is about as a crow flies probably not very far but as we fly about 25 miles ish maybe a tiny bit less to this pot almost there gonna polish this bad boy off in one direction turn around head back well we are getting some pretty good hail again to the top here i prefer it to rain because it doesn't get you wet unless it lodges in the back your neck like some of them are doing right now it's actually collecting we are basically there almost at the top good job carolyn now the top is right here it's cheese sandwich time cheese sandwich and hail doing great high five nice work that's it well we're halfway almost nice thing about going this way too is this rim is it 2000 feet high or eighteen hundred feet higher what's the story eight thousand eight thousand feet but the other rim how tall is that yeah so on the way back we're losing 1500 feet or something which would be easy oh look at this here it is just over eight hours so an hour longer than we were hoping but all is good water place to sit and enjoy a cheese sandwich nice work oh thank you had a nice break cheese sandwich some chocolate freezing our buns off so now a long 15 mile downhill losing 5000 feet so should be quicker to have less water filling which means that we can have water from the fountains you want to know what kind of pressure we've got under this thing here what that is shooting up 20 feet in the air oh my god that is literally the craziest water fountain i've ever seen another one of these cool pass throughs so reading a little bit of the history of the kaibab trail it sounds like a lot of the work was done in the 20s they used to have a cable car that crossed on the bottom then we had to dynamite a bunch of the cliffs as i showed you earlier to make the thing passable and then they kept improving it and then they put in suspension bridges and whatnot but that would have been that would have been an adventure going down there in the 20s good lord going down in your hobnail boots and your judge spurs shelter hail and thunder i think this is a quick one maybe almost through it's not going to stop raining but that's done just having some salt pills some electrolyte pills feeling a little twinge here and there and wanted to stay on top of it so this is our amazingly colored pack just exfoliate unbelievable unreal colors and lots of big puddles today too like this one i've made a deal with carolyn that she will visit ribbon falls if we hike it so i think we have less hill which is good and then maybe a slight diversion the trail itself is quite inviting we're gonna have to cross over the river at one point so it may mean wet feet or back tracking which we don't want to do oh plywood bridge surface this is less traffic beautiful and you should just wander around this way oh i see why they say this is so awesome holy mackerel look at that that is fantastic well worth a diversion coming home a little later in the dark oh my word well yeah big whoop-dee-doo huh behind the falls i don't know how this will be with i don't know if i'll get there yep i can get there what a plate and we've got it to ourselves well worth the diversion making it through and across i guess now we just stay parallel and rejoin the trail the river is definitely higher the creek is definitely higher than it normally would be able to get across dry in most circumstances just not today seems like we've been in this canyon for a long time beautiful running good grade in the shade nice breeze but on and on and on coming up on your right or left thank you thank you your left your right we'll go right right thank you have a good one it'd be a great run by itself with the exception that here you've got to descend thousands of feet to get to it and then ascend thousands of feet to get out of it so it's a little a little different doing it on weary legs what's our kilometers right now 59 59.29 so 50k is 30 miles another 10. so 36 miles 36 miles we probably got another 12. oh 19k i'll buy that 19k yeah as well yeah 11 miles good we just arrived back at phantom ranch coming down off the kaibab trail and we're going to go down past bright angel campground then we have to decide whether we're going to go along this side this is ruins i have no idea what that is but it sounds sort of interesting black suspension bridge in south kaibab trail south kaibab is shorter by a significant amount maybe 1.8 miles or something like that but there's significantly more elevation gain we haven't done it yet six o'clock we've got about two hours of daylight so by the time we hit the edge it's gonna be dark probably for an hour so we'd see we'd see some of it for a while but then we'd be arriving at the top of the part where our car is not so then we'd have to figure out how to get back but the road that i haven't seen is always more appealing than the one i have so that carolyn made me a deal if i give her my warm fleece at the top if it's cold if we were looking for a ride and it takes a while that she'd go so we'll have to make the call when we get down there it's not like i'd be running the right angel no we'd be walking either way so we've decided to do the k-bob trail kaibab trail because neither of us have done it it is shorter we avoid the sandy section next to the river and it's a little bit shorter although another it wasn't insignificant it was like 500 600 feet more elevation yeah and then we're gonna have to figure out how to get back to our car that's just part of the part of the fun we also get to go across this black bridge up here right there which looks pretty rad as well that is a cool bridge it's just straight there's nothing like above it to hold it up that's crazy yeah curved a little wow so by my reckoning from here we've got six miles left at 6 30. i'm assuming we're going to be going up a little bit better than a 30 minute per mile pace so maybe we're going to be getting up to the top at nine nine o'clock so it will have been dark for about an hour by the time we get up there but we'll be able to enjoy the trail in the twilight up until that point so looking forward to it black bridge 440 feet it's just rigid suspension bridge constructed in 1928 wow mackerel room seven a pit house represents the earliest occupation 10 50 a.d this is a thousand years old rooms three and five appear to have been built during the second site occupation wow that is nuts that this has been here for a thousand years that's amazing although if you're gonna pick a place it's not bad thousand years old nothing in the u.s is a thousand years old except for this we're gonna come down to the colorado river and we're at the colorado river again for the third time in two days look at this thing it actually terminates in a hole in the rock and then you can see the trail going straight up next to it not sure exactly what we're getting into here but it could be rather interesting all right going down into low gear caterpillaring up definitely concave except for where the knot holes are i'm just entering the tunnel i might actually need to get a flashlight out oh no i can see some light at the end there we go i love the archway now the upping starts in earnest we were just there the trail just squiggles up and up and up sublime lighting over there as we look around i think we've probably got at least a couple more hours one hour of daylight so we're going to get dark here shortly for the south kaibab pretty steady elevation and gorgeous on the way up pretty exposed though isn't it compared to the other one this would be on a hot day this would be a challenge for sure you can see where our path is headed i have no idea how this will be in low light it's a bit of an experiment about 2500 feet to go one grouse grind probably need the lights shortly estimating an hour 15 from this point which would bring us in about 15 and a half hours not bad way faster back from north to south and from south to north although we did have we holed up for at least an hour and then we had a couple diversions which took time so all right so oh low battery on this too i killed the battery on the video camera so this is just endless steps for mules and since the rain is like muddy puddle smelling like manure muddy puddle smelling like manure manure step log log up up pretty monotonous we're not sure exactly how far we got to go but i'll save this for the end oh yeah where over there we have gotten to the top i like to see your ridge here hug hug hug it out good good work good work yeah now let's take a look around see what there is here so last night we completed our rim to rim to rim i think we were maybe 15 hours and 40 minutes something like that but we had to deal with weather on the way it was actually pretty spectacular we had hailstones we had thunder and lightning wind whip up sometimes it was sunny a lot of times on the on the trail the storm came in quickly and we ended up just taking shelter wherever we could so that cost us a good bit of time and we did we did take a diversion or two we went to ribbon falls which was awesome and on the way back doing the south kaibab which elevation from the colorado river uh tops out a little over 7 200 feet which is compared to the other trail let me grab that map out we'll show them on the map in the little the kaibab was was beautiful but it's really exposed i don't think there are any water stations at all on that route we thought that there might be because on the bright angel it seemed like there was one every 10 minutes of running it was almost ridiculous how many water stations there were so hold that map up to the camera there and you'll see the difference in terrain close yeah you'll see the difference in terrain kaibab is a little steeper and bright angel is perhaps a little bit longer but those are the those are the two different ways the one thing to note is if you are topping out at kaibab there's nothing there but a parking lot nothing and if you end up coming in at 9 30 in the evening like we did it is freezing the gate is actually closed to that area and it's just a spur so you're not going to find a shuttle you're probably not going to find a car you are going to be stuck there and hiking on the road freezing and cursing your life right so that was probably the hardest part for carolyn was just getting cold on the way out but we ended up flagging a car down which gave us a ride back to our car bright angel so thank you so much to the folks who did that no thanks to three other cars who saw us in the road went over the other lane slowed down briefly and then accelerated away quickly thinking oh my gosh we've got two killers on the road i mean really people you got two people who are clearly hikers or runners freezing their butts off on the road just at least pull over if you if you're fully you can't give us a ride pull over roll down your window and say oh okay don't think that we've we're bandits or whatever in the middle of the grand canyon so that was pretty funny but i think we ended up yesterday especially with the bonus mileage a little over 50 miles and probably maybe 12 000 feet of elevation up and down a little more i think so we'll check we'll check carolyn's gps maybe i'll i'll get a track from it and we can post that as well but rim to rim to rim that is a quality trail to do as well weather will significantly impact your trip like it did ours if it's hot in the summer that could also be rather brutal so good trip all around heading back to l.a right now carolyn's flying back up to vancouver and victoria tomorrow carrie and carolyn out

Channel: fulltiltward

Views: 70,219

Keywords: Grand Canyon National Park (Protected Site), Bright Angel Trail (Location), South Kaibab Trail (Location), r2r2r, Rim to Rim, Ultramarathon (Sport), Trail Running, Running (Sport), Phantom Ranch (Accommodation), North Kaibab Trail (Location), Cottonwood Flats, Colorado River (River), Ribbon Fall (Waterfall), Kerry Ward, Ultra, Rattlesnake (Organism Classification), Gopher Snake (Organism Classification)

Id: InCBGbD_L6c

Length: 67min 56sec (4076 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2015