Grand Canyon!

Hello! My first posting!

Here's my first hand account of the great Grand Canyon!! Before I go more into what happened, some background info, the Canyon has been formed by the forces of the Colorado River and wind erosion. It has a North Rim and a South Rim. The South Rim where we went is more accessible and frequented. There are easy, relatively flat Rim Trails around the canyon and also the more difficult trails that go down into the Canyon. One can also go rafting in the Colorado river, which is booked 2 years in advance for commercial rafting and 15 years in advance if you want to take your own raft!!! The Canyon is a 4 hour drive from Phoenix, one of the nearest big airports.

I flew out of San Jose Friday night and reached Phoenix (in Arizona) at around 9:40pm. Arun (who had reached before and rented a car) picked me up at the airport. We then went to get (supposedly) 2 of his friends who were also coming with us. Turned out that it was Arthi and one of her Austin friends, Sajosh!!! I was sooo surprised. They had hidden it from us...as a surprise. We thought Arthi was not coming, so it was great to see her again! The four of us then drove to Flagstaff (which is 2.5 hours from Phoenix and 1.5 hours from the Canyon) and stayed there at a motel for the night. We left early next morning for the Canyon. We reached 9ish. Vaishno and Aniket (who had reached Phoenix earlier on Friday) were already at the campsite. They had rented a Mustang and every third word Vaishno said was 'Mustang'! :) I was pretty excited about the Mazda6 we had rented too! We decided to leave all the stuff in the car and start hiking right away.
The Grand Canyon is a breath-taking phenomenon of nature! It is soo huge and absolutely marvelous!! So on Saturday we took on the Bright Angel trail that goes down 9 miles to the river. It is not recommended to go down to the river and back in one day. We did about a 4-mile hike down and back. There are warning signs everywhere, telling you to take enough water and food during the hike. The Canyon gets hot during the day (30C +). There are rest stations at 1.5 and 3-mile points with water and restrooms. Going down is easy, with awesome views all around you! Climbing back up is quite another story...the climb is steep, and you are hot, thirsty and dusty! Vaishno and Arthi did not come down beyond the 3-mile point, but the boys and I went down a little further. We all made it fine to the top at about 5pm. Our shoes, socks and pants had changed colour to the orange-red of the Grand Canyon mud!. Feeling hot and dirty, but satisfied, we went to the campsite and pitched our tent. There are quite nice facilities at this campsite in terms of bathrooms, drinking water etc. We barbecued in the night for dinner (Hari and Shruti joined us at the camp that night). We then crashed for the night, 4 of us girls in our sleeping bags in one tent, just enough space...but was fun!:)

We were up the next day morning by 5am, hoping to leave for the hike at 6:30am. And we did leave, not too late at around 7am. There are free shuttle buses running to different locations in the Canyon, so we parked the cars at the Market Plaza (where there are shops and stuff) and took the shuttle to the head of the South Kaibab trail. In between bus rides, dear Aniket realized that in his excitement, he had left his backpack in the car. He went back to get it, as a result of which we reached the trailhead only at 9:30am. This South Kaibab trail is tougher than Bright Angel because it is steeper and has no water or shade anywhere on the trail. Which means we had to carry lots of water and food. We started off and went down to the 1.5-mile stop eventlessly. There, Vaishno decided to head back up, and not continue down with us. We also met a ranger there who told us that 3 people had been rescued from the 3-mile stop that morning where they had been found lying face down.... one of who may be a fatality. That scared me a little bit, but we were sure that we'd be fine since we had enough water and food on us. We continued down to the 3-mile point, called Skeleton Point, where you get a first glimpse of the Colorado River. It is an amazing feeling to catch sight of the green river amidst all that red Canyon!! We sat there for a bit to catch our breaths before the trek back up...when we met 2 people coming up. They were coming back from the river. This inspired Aniket to go down to the river, so he and Arun (the 2 fittest people in our group) continued down to the river. We were a little worried to let them go, after all those warnings, but we were also quite sure that they would make it back up fine. We started back up from that point. It is very hot and we had to conserve the water, because that was all the water we would get until the top (no water on the trail!). I made it up in pretty good time of 2 hours; Arthi and her friend came up an hour later. Vaishno was waiting for us at the top and we left there at around 4pm to look around. Aniket and Arun would take much longer to climb back from the river and we had decided to meet them at the campsite. We took the bus to check out some more viewpoints, each one more amazing than the next. We went to the Plaza to buy some groceries and souvenirs. While we were there, Arun and Aniket showed up, they had made it back up in an amazing time of 5 hours! So at the end of the day they had done a 15 mile hike (more than half of it uphill) in about 8 hours. We heard amazing narrations from them about the river trek, and went back to the campsite.

Monday morning, Vaishno and Aniket headed back for Phoenix because they had an afternoon flight. We took a shower (yes, the campsite actually had nice shower facilities), hiked on the much easier, flat Rim Trail and then started driving back to Phoenix. At Phoenix, Arthi and Sajosh had someone to meet whom they knew via a friend at Austin so we dropped them off at her house. We then looked around Phoenix a bit, there's a Lake Tempe there, then had French crepe for dinner and a HUGE ice cream! :) Phoenix is really hot, close to 40C! It was great. My flight was at 9:25, so we dropped the rental car off and I left for San Jose. I didn't want to come back at all...after all that fun! So at the end of the trip, we had a total of around 14 miles in 2 days, half of it climbing up the steep walls of the Canyon...felt good, but now, I am left thinking, what if I had gone all the way down to the river too...hmm...I know I will, sometime...soon.

Now it's soo hard to get back to work, after all that excitement. It was a really memorable weekend...the awesome Grand Canyon visited with some of the nicest people I know; Aniket's wisecracks, Vaishno's irresistible mannerisms and expressions, Arun's meticulousness and sincerity, Arthi's cool attitude! (I don't know Sajosh well enough!) And everyone's enthu!! These guys have taken loads of awesome pictures; I will find a way to put them up soon.