An Easy Hike into the Grand Canyon

I've hiked into the Grand Canyon several times since I moved to Arizona in 1988. The last two times were into the canyon proper but actually outside the National Park, on Havasupai Trail which lies within the adjacent Havasupai Indian Reservation. And the first time was down Hermit Trail which does lie in the Park. Those three hikes were memorable for the fact that I also backpacked so that I could camp overnight, thus avoiding an exhausting climb out the same day I descended. They were also quite notable because they happened more than thirty years ago. Last month I finally descended again, albeit on a much shorter and far easier trek.

From the South Rim in Grand Canyon National Park there are four public trails that lead hikers into the canyon. They all eventually reach the Colorado River, a force that started carving the majestic landscape over sixty million years ago. Two of the trails, Hermit and Bright Angel, follow pathways originally tread by Native Americans long before Europeans ever reached the area. The other two are much more modern creations. Grandview dates back to 1893, before the land was protected, when miners needed access from the rim to copper mines on Horseshoe Mesa. And South Kaibab Trail was completed in 1925, six years after the park's founding, to provide a faster way to the River for increasing tourist traffic.

It's actually a little more than six miles from the South Kaibab Trailhead to the Colorado River, shorter than Bright Angel's almost eight miles and Hermit's ten. Grandview doesn't actually reach the River and requires a longer trek on additional lower canyon trails.

While last month I finally took the South Kaibab Trail, don't be mistaken: I did not hike to the Colorado River. After more than three decades, I'm happy to say I am still fit enough to succeed in that endeavor if I really wanted the adventure. However, I was visiting the Park with family and we opted to have more of a relaxing morning walk rather than a hike. In fact, we even started on the Rim Trail at Mather Point, reaching South Kaibab Trailhead via a flat two-mile pathway.

The night before, a family from New Zealand actually recommended our short hike into the Canyon. Our descent to Ooh Aah Point wouldn't even stretch a mile, so the ascent back up was guaranteed to be relatively easy. The Park even recommended this exact outing for families with children.

Witnessing the Grand Canyon leaves most of us speechless. The immense landscape is actually a composite of many canyons and rock features that span a long geological history that reaches as far back as Earth's beginnings. Sunsets and sunrises are especially beautiful, but of course so is a day with cloud-dotted skies that paint moving shadows or one with below-the-rim rainclouds that delineate individual canyons. Hiking into the Canyon allows you to traverse the very cliffsides that fuel this visual splendor.

The most recent geological layer is also the highest, the Kaibab Formation that lines both the South and North Rims. I remember my hike many years ago on Hermit Trail, where I encountered an abundance of brachiopod fossils in the limestone, testament to the seas that existed in a vastly different landscape almost three hundred million years ago.

It's through this environment that the trail to Ooh Ahh Point passed in a series of switchbacks and slopes. At the vista almost a thousand feet below the rim, indeed the canyon spread out in a magnificent panorama. Plateaus and ridges came into sharper focus while the Kaibab Trail continued below, beckoning us to hike a little further to looming formations like O'Neill Butte.

Kaibab comes from the Paiute Indian language and means mountain lying down, which is how those Natives described the Grand Canyon. It's pretty easy to visit the depths of the Canyon on one of its trails, but indeed, hiking back up can take the endurance of a mountain climber. However long you want to take reaching Ooh Aah point, give yourself twice as much time and plenty of water for the return ascent to the Rim. But remember to give yourself even more time to enjoy the views.