Sea to Skyline

This was our second attempt at doing Sea to Skyline.  As a refresher, there is a really well known hike above Saratoga, CA called Skyline to the Sea that starts out at the intersection of Highway 9 and Skyline Blvd and ends at Waddell Beach.  This hike is done every year by boy scouts typically over three days.  They sometimes start in Saratoga at Sanborn County Park and go through Castle Rock State Park which adds another climb and another few miles.

We ran into a few problem the first time around and ended up a couple miles short.  You can't claim credit for a hike that ends short, so we decided to do it again.  This time Gary was available, so the three of us took off early to make one last attempt before the weather turns for the winter.

We got an early start, leaving from Waddell Beach at 6:45am.  Given the time of year, we needed headlights for the first 45 minutes of the hike.

Long day short (the hike took just over 10 hours), the weather was perfect, the hike is beautiful, and everyone's body held up.  The trail was a fairly quiet.  We didn't see anyone until we got close to Big Basin State Park where we briefly stopped for some water at about 10:30.  We saw a few people as we left the park and then had the trail almost completely to ourselves.  We worked our way through the warmest area and stopped for lunch.  Our stops were short and infrequent, with the only challenge being Gary needing to take care of his feed so as not to end up with blisters (just recovered from the Grand Canyon).

As we came close to the end of the hike we walked through an area where a wedding was about to take place.  They had lights up in the trees, lights along the trail and the groom getting ready for the big day.  They told us that the guests and wedding rest of the wedding party were going to be shuttled up to a close by parking lot and the wedding was going to take place on only a half hour!

From there it was only about an hour the top.  We got there less than5 minutes before our ride showed up.  We were so happy to have completed the hike that we all ran the last 50 yards up the trail!

BTW, the hike totaled roughly 29 miles and about 6500 feet of elevation gain!

Rim-to-Rim - Closing Thoughts

Here are closing thoughts on the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim (R2R) hike. I has now been a few weeks since we were there and the memories are still fresh.  But it is time to wrap up this set of posts.

One thing that really stick in my mind is that going down is easy, but going up is hard (and mandatory).  Here are some signs that really remind you of this fact.  They are awesome!

In addition to the hike being much more beautiful than I had expected, here are a few things that were also a bit of a surprise.

• You hike along creeks most of the way.  
• These creeks were in fairly small gorges.
• There are a lot of trees.
• You see a good number of people, and far more than expected were running...
• The space down by the Colorado River is not that wide.
• There are lots of places to refill water (note we went up Bright Angel Trail, the sane is NOT true if you take South Kaibab Trail).
• When hiking from North to South, you are mostly in the shade!

So there you have it.  All of the training made this a really fun experience.  Will I do it again?  Not sure.  If I had the opportunity, I would.  But I doubt that I will plan to do it again.  There are too many other places that I still want to go.  Too many other hikes that I am interested in.

That leads me to the evolution of this blog.  Soon I will be changing the name of the blog from "Rim-to-Rim In One Day" to something more generic about hiking or maybe even more broad about outdoor adventures. Getting ready for this hike has already motivated me to do Half Dome, Skyline to the Sea, Sea to Skyline, Mount Diablo and cool parts of the Pacific Crest Trail.  I have hiked with and met a lot of different people.  A special shout out to Gary and Greg who trained and completed the Rim-to-Rim with me.  This whole experience has been great!

There is just so much out there. So many great hikes that I have not taken.  So many cool places to visit along the way.  Stay tuned...

Rim-to-Rim - Before And After

This is the second to last note on the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim (R2R) hike.  It covers a few things from before and after the hike.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon has roughly 500,000 visitors a year to the 5,000,000 that the South Rim receives. There is only one lodging choice - the Grand Canyon Lodge and Cabins.  The accommodations are fairly rustic but well kept. You have to book early, especially if you plan to do a do the R2R early or late in the season when it is cooler at the bottom. We booked 9 months in advance.

The lodge has a nice restaurant. You should make reservations ahead of time as well if you care when you eat. We booked reasonably early so that we could digest before going to bed fairly early. The food was good and the staff were friendly. Our waiter guessed that we were doing the R2R in a day and strongly recommended that we take the Rainbow Falls detour, which we (he was right!).

We decided not to stay on the South Rim - primarily because none of hotels had a hot tub. We instead decided to stay at the Railroad Inn in Williams, AZ. Based on the pictures, I had fairly low expectations. I was wrong. The hotel was nice, not fancy, but clean and with all of the amenities we needed. There was a restaurant, a pub,exercise room (didn't need this:)), pool and spa. We ate in the pub. The food was surprisingly good.  The menu had a decent variety, there were healthy choices and of course there was beer:)

We stayed on Las Vegas the night before and after.  This made the trip fairly easy to the North Rim and back from Williams.  You know what Vegas looks like, so no pictures. On the return, we fit in a show - Cirque du Soleil, The Beatles LOVE.  Great show and a great end to our Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim adventure!

Rim-to-Rim - Hikers Along The Trail

This post is the second of three from the Rim-to-Rim hike.  It is about the hikers we saw or interacted with.

We started the morning at 5:30, in the dark. The lot at the trail-head already Was more than half full.  As we tested out our headlights, we saw another group form at the trail-head. I think there were 3 guys and 1 girl. We said hi and passed them as we started down the trail. We had no idea how many people we would see that day, but early indications were that we were definitely not alone.

As it became light, we passed a few people and came up on a group of maybe 8 Indian men. They

had already spread out. We passed the first few who were snapping pictures at every turn, saying hi and commenting on how beautiful it was. We walked along with others in the group for a while. They were quite a mix, some hiking regularly with their scout troop, while others much less frequently. One commented that they had done Half Dome (which I had done this year) only to find that he had done it 6 years ago:). Based on their comments, they were planning a Rim-to-Rim (R2R) hike. Needless to say that after passing this group, and even with our detour to Rainbow Falls, we never saw them again. I really doubt that they made it. I hope they turned back early or had more in their backpacks than it appeared to camp for the night.

One of the next groups that we came upon were 6-8 teenage girls. They all looked fit with light backpacks and exercise cloths. They were stopped on the side of the trail taking a break. One of them had her shoe and sock off as if she were dealing with a problem. I think she had sketchers tennis shoes on. My first thought was that there is no way they are going to make it. We saw then a couple more times on the trail, passing them again after our detour and seeing them during our stop at Phantom Ranch. We never saw them again, but think they would have made it, although after us so in the dark.

During the first half of the hike we were passed by a number of runners. I would guess 15-20 in all. Early in the day they were going the same direction as we were. Most were running with very lightweight CamelBak packs, just for water and maybe a bit of food. Just before Phantom Ranch we saw runners going the other way. These were the R2R2R folks! We talked to a mom who had run from North Rim to Phantom Ranch with four kids (her two and a friend's two). She was exhausted. I asked her if she was running the rest and she said no, she only hoped she could make it walking. She told me her husband and friend were two of the people we saw running the other way. They left at 2:30am from the South Rim to do their R2R2R. Crazy!

Just after our detour to Rainbow Falls, we ran into another big group going in the opposite direction. I think there were 20 of them. They had to have been in their 70's, from the UK and all pretty fit. We didn't find out where they came from but given how energetic they seemed, our guess is that they could not have started on the South Rim. They likely stayed overnight at Phantom Ranch.

After leaving Phantom Ranch and crossing over the Colorado River, we met up with the only mule train group that we would see. There were 8 of them. I am really glad we met them where we did. The trail was wide enough for us to get out of the way. There are lots of places on the trail where passing would have been really difficult.

As we started the climb up to Indian Garden, we passed two girls while they rested. When we stopped, they passed us. This went on back and forth another toupee times - becoming funny. As we passed, we would say "see you in a bit." As we reached Indian Garden, we passed them for the last time.

Into the last legs of the hike, we saw and talked to quite a few people. Here are two quick highlights.

• We chatted with a ranger as we slowly passed her. She was making sure everyone was ok.
• We laughed with a couple girls about the sign at the 3 mile rest stop - "Down is optional. Up is required."
• As we neared the top we said hi to a couple who had walked down from the top and were sitting in a perfect spot leaning against the rocks and enjoying the spectacular view.

Not only was the hike great, the views amazing, but connecting with other hikers was pretty cool too!

Rim-to-Rim - We Did It - In One Day!

I am breaking this post into 3 or 4 parts - there is just too much for one. I will first cover the hike itself.  Then will talk about the people we ran into, what we did right and wrong and a bit about before and after.

Gary, Greg and I started the hike on the North Kaibab Trail at 5:30 in the morning. After my blog post How long will it take???,  we decided this was a good compromise between having enough time and not getting enough sleep. This turned out to be perfect. The temperature was in the high 50's. I decided against a jacket, wearing only my Nike compression shirt, my SmartWool long sleeve shirt and my running gloves.  We said goodbye to our wives, turned on our headlights and off we went.

The first leg of the hike is amazing. You start out on some switchbacks for a few miles as you work your way down. The first half hour was dark but our headlights were more than sufficient to light the way. Before we knew it, we were turning them off and enjoying the rising sun.

We passed a number of hikers who started before us. More on this later...  We soon came upon the Bright Angel Creek gorge, which we followed all the way to the Colorado River. But I am getting ahead of myself.  The hike along the creek was absolutely beautiful. I must have taken 50 pictures and easily could have taken more. I think I took 20 trying to catch the moon just over the rim. Every turn created another spectacular view.

We took one detour along the way. That was to Ribbon Falls. Our waiter the night before recommended it and he was right - well worth the extra mile. You cross a bridge and have to navigate a tricky trail, but the result is a waterfall that is unusual, hard to explain and beautiful. Water falls from on top of a dome that is covered in moss and from there creates another falls into a pool.

We only stayed long enough for some pictures and for Gary and me to dip our feet in the cool water. Then back the way we came (later to find that there was another way out that would not have required as much doubling back), onto the trail and on our way.

We continued down the trail, past Cottonwood to Phantom Ranch, about 16 miles into the trip.  It is so cool to see lots of people, picnic tables, cabins, bathrooms and a building where you can pre-order food, buy drinks and snacks, or just sit down and eat your lunch.  We had been planning to stop, have lunch and enjoy a cold beer.  And we did JUST THAT!  What a treat!  We kept the stop to  45 minutes - still a long ways to go.  Gary's feet were bothering him, so after eating he did some repairs (moleskin). We hit the bathroom, refilled our water and off we went.

It was not too long before we came to the Colorado River.  We crossed over Silver Bridge.  This was pretty cool.  From here you could see up and down the river.  We didn't see any rafters but did see the Black Bridge, used of you were going up the South Kaibab Trail (rather than the Bright Angel Trail we were taking).  We followed the river for a couple of miles before we headed into another gorge along Pipe Creek.  After another couple of miles we split from Pipe Creek and joined Garden Creek.

It was getting pretty hot.  We later found out that it was over 90 degrees (it had been over 100 degrees the day before). Thank goodness there was a nice breeze!  After a good long climb, we arrived at the next destination - Indian Garden.  This is almost an oasis in the desert.  It is pretty flat with a camp ground and lots of trees on both sides of the river.  We stopped here to rest and have some food before filling up with water and heading back on our way.  Less than 5 miles to go!

The leg up to the 3 mile stop was a bit of a challenge, with some steep areas and a lot of zig zags. Everyone was getting tired and trying to find their pace.  We were doing it, coming out of what just looked impossible!  We stopped to rest at the 3 mile.  As we started up, everyone had a pace that was working and before we knew it, we were arrived at the 1.5 mile stop. We didn't rest for too long before we were back on our way.  We were no longer worried about making it.  The excitement was building and the pace quickening.

They saw us before we saw them.  As we rounded the second to last turn, we spotted our wives waiving and taking pictures.  One more turn and we were there.  More pictures, high fives and lots of chatter about the hike.  Our energy was back.  We headed to the car for a beer and some snacks. I surprised Gary and Greg with shirts that I had made up just for this occasion.

My Strava says we hiked 28.4 miles with an elevation gain of 8,626 feet.  We left at 5:30 and arrived at 5:45,  That means we were on the trail for 12:15.  What a great accomplishment!

A big thanks to Greg and Gary for wanting to do something like this.  For training.  For putting up with me as I chatted most of the way (and most of the time on our practice hikes).  And for for putting the work in to complete this!