Some days I wish that I’d never been to the Grand Canyon. Other days I wish that I’d started going there decades ago. Yes, it can be a beguiling mistress at times. It’s a place to go to lose oneself, find oneself, get hurt, get healed, and bond. No sooner had we done the R2R last year, than we were planning to do it again. It came to pass however that the unfortunate Dragon Bravo fire had other plans for us. This forest wildfire was started by lightning on or around July 4, 2025. By September 29, the fire was listed as 100% contained after having burned 145,504 acres. The fire damage was not limited to trees, as the north rim historic lodge complex was mostly devastated as well, along with many trail closures. This in effect put an end to our crossing plans for 2026, but as you will see if you read on, not to another adventure we cooked up.
I started researching options and soon came across stuff about the Hermit trail and the Tonto trail. The Hermit trail is a sort of down and up kind of affair, that goes all the way down to the river. It was one of the first trails constructed in the canyon; around 1911. Built by a railroad company for tourists it was named after Louis Boucher, a prospector who had lived in the area at the time. Although he was not really a hermit as some stories suggest. Today it is what the NPS calls a Threshold Trail and is not maintained. The Tonto trail on the other hand transects the canyon below the rim and sort of parallels the river. It is about 145km in total length, and also not really maintained. We would only be traversing a small portion of it.
My plan was to link up the familiar (at least to me) Bright Angel trail with the Tonto and Hermit trails of which we had no experience. The first orders of business: pick a crew, and pick a date. The unfamiliarity and difficulty of the proposed route caused some of my usual mates to shy away from the endeavor. Great guys. Solid. But a bit stuck in their ways, and unwilling to leave their comfort zones. I had to look further afield. Time to call in some of the big guns. Fortunately I know a guy. Several actually. Folks that are fit, adventurous, and have a proven track record doing stuff like this. It wasn’t long before I had three on the hook. The next challenge was juggling everyone’s schedules to pick a date. The last few days in April seemed to fit. Historically the weather should be good at this time, albeit right on the risky edge of being too warm. With the canyon, you never can tell.
Training started in earnest at the end of December. In the overall scheme of things 17 weeks was probably not enough time to prepare properly. I used a mix of ‘gym-based’ muscular endurance work like I have done in the past, and regular trail running. Lots of trail running. Specificity is key. Lots of opportunity for tweaks and niggles for us greybeards, so there was lots of preventative maintenance physical therapy type exercises in the mix to keep any potential injuries in check. I mapped out a weekly mileage plan that was comprised of base, recovery, intensity, and specificity phases. Keeping to the schedule went reasonably well, although it still seemed too compressed and could have benefited from being six to eight weeks longer.
I suppose that I am very spoiled in that I have practically no end to good trail running close by. Not only that, but comparable terrain and weather gave me a training advantage. I kept on thinking about poor Kev, who was doing the majority of his training in the snow, and sub zero temps. For me, the spring was filled with many memorable runs. Some I did with my usual crew, many I did solo. Several runs were special. Yeah… in that hippy dippy zen running kinda way…
One that comes to mind is the day we were running down one of our favourite training trails that also tends to be very popular with day hikers. Trying to follow good trail etiquette we pulled off to one side to let some folks going uphill pass by. They in turn pulled off and waved us on down, one making some comment that we were in a hurry and should go first. I replied to the gentleman that in fact… quite the contrary. And it’s true. We weren’t in a hurry at all, we were just moving fast. The distinction may be lost on some, but it’s very real to me.
Another day really really stuck with me happened near the end of this preparation. I was coming down a steep and technical section of trail and it seemed as if I was almost flowing effortlessly. Individual steps vanished into a smooth continuum. It was (and is) really hard to describe. Blending with gravity in some quantum relativistic way.
Soon enough though, all of the training was done and questioning fitness, the day of departure was upon us. Our group had actually swollen in size to nine, but five of those were going to be doing a shorter and mostly familiar hike. We would travel up together and hang out together, but once we dropped into the canyon we would go our separate ways.
One bit of comedy was found in our accommodations the night prior. Lodging at the Grand Canyon is exorbitant so In the pursuit of cheapness I had secured us a so called ‘family’ room. This meant bunk beds which was fine for four of us but we were squeezing five into this room. So we got a rollaway cot as well. We had to rearrange the furniture to get it to fit and even at that we kept running into the damn thing every time we needed to get to the bathroom or leave the room.
The appointed hour arrived… far too early as usual. After some more comedy trying to get the coffee machine to work, which Renee was able to do after my sad, befuddled attempts. After choking down some meager and mostly unsatisfying grub we shortly found ourselves at the trailhead at about 0410. Cold as fuck as well. The temperature was hovering around 0° C as we headed on down into the darkness and the magical hour on the Bright Angel trail.
We made really good time and were able to pick up the pace considerably once it got light enough to ditch the headlights. I was surprised that we had the trail to ourselves, because even at that early hour I was expecting to see others on their way down. Often times, it’s a bit of a conga line. We did eventually see one sorry looking old backpacker heading up just before we got to Havasupai Gardens, but that was it. It only took us an hour and a half to get there. Still early, but not to early apparently to be smoking weed, as some guys in the campground were. This would be the last chance for potable water until we topped out of the canyon much later in the day. We took a short break to take advantage of this; to fill our flasks and bottles, along with shedding some layers and grabbing some snacks. I left Havasupai Gardens with 3.5 liters of fluid. This was comprised of 2.5 liters of straight water, 500ml of LMNT, and 500ml of C90 Carb drink.
A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything
needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts
for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient,
self-explanatory and complete.
Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the
experience of experiences is being alive.
– Don Juan
We were in high spirts, (Maybe not as high as those dudes back at the campground) because from here on out it was into the unknown. The next 30km or thereabouts would be terrain none of us had been on before. To be fair, Kev had never even been to the canyon before, so it was all totally new ground to him. Once we got through a bit of a jungle leaving Ha’a Gyoh we started moving at a pretty decent clip. We only stopped or slowed down to take pictures, which turned out to be often. Every few minutes the rising sun coupled with new vistas gave us another spectacular treat to take in. We saw no signs of other people until we reached Horn Creek where a couple was camped. There was a trickle of water, but we were still topped up and with the water being radioactive it wouldn’t have helped us in any case. If it were a choice between dehydration and radiation that would have been another matter, but it wasn’t, so with a quick ‘good morning’ to the hikers we just breezed on through. It was somewhere along the next section that we came across a real bonus. A Grand Canyon Rattlesnake! After Franck almost stepping on the critter, we kept our distance and took a few photos. It’s always cool seeing a new species.
The temperature was starting to rise, but not seriously so, and we kept our pace. Gradually now, we started seeing a few backpackers heading towards us. Warning… philosophy ahead: I often get asked why I ‘run’ these trails, as opposed to hiking them. The answer harkens back a bit to the earlier observation I made about not being in a hurry, just moving fast. Now, I can certainly see the appeal of camping out under the stars in such a magnificent setting. Really, I can. These days however, I don’t relish the idea of carrying a heavy pack, loaded down with all of the accoutrements one needs for an overnight or multi day adventure. We saw one group that was taking four days to traverse what was going to take us less than one. Hey, more power to them. For me there is a tangible beauty and joy in moving light and fast. In moving fast, especially when unencumbered, there is ample, if not greater opportunity to enjoy the ambiance and focus on the surroundings. I would go so far to say that to a certain degree speed actually enhances one’s awareness. An awareness concentrator as it were. For me anyway, slowly plodding tends to put my mind into a neutral numbness, or where it wanders off someplace else, far from where I am…
Anyway… let’s get back on the trail. The Tonto trail turned out to be amazing. Wide open vistas. Virtually no traffic. Highly runnable for a very large portion of it. From the very onset of this adventure we had advertised this as ‘not a run’. However, we did have three out of the four of us that were runners. The temptations were just too great to overcome. So at times we ran… Twenty four kilometers in we arrived at Monument Creek. Pretty much dead on schedule as well. This corresponded more or less with the lowest point of the trail. It would be all uphill from this point on. As we had been informed, there was flowing water here. We all took the opportunity to filter and fill our bottles and flasks. It was also a good time to eat and organise our stuff for the next segment of the day. All in all we probably spent about 20 minutes here. We did get a wee bit lost heading out, but that only amounted to 5 minutes or thereabouts before we got back on track.
We were now faced with a little over 13km of distance to cover, along with 1,300m of tough elevation gain. There was nothing really for it but to put one foot in front of the other. Our next milestone would be the intersection of the Tonto and Hermit trails.
We started to get a little bit separated at this point. Each of us tapping into our personal fitness levels. It was still getting warmer, but nothing like it could’ve been. We had looked at the historical weather when we were planning the trip and figured the hottest we could expect would’ve been 28°C. We were delighted when it topped out somewhere south of that. Of course not to say we didn’t try to eke out what shade we could when taking breaks.
By the time we reached the junction we figured that shade was going to be in short supply for the rest of the day. Onwards. The last 8km had an average grade of 14%. Ooof. After trudging up the switchbacks of the Cathedral Stairs we come to a long traverse known as the Supai Traverse. To our surprise the trail hugged the towering canyon walls very closely in spots and did in fact offer us some welcome shade in a few spots. At 4km from the end of the trail we came to the manmade oasis of Santa Maria Springs. A quaint little stone rest house with benches, shade, and more importantly water.
It’s worth repeating here that it’s important to filter or otherwise treat all natural water sources before drinking from them. The exception as earlier mentioned is Horn Creek, which because of radioactivity should not be used as a water source except in the most absolute dire circumstances.
We had another long rest here as we waited for the group to reform. Although there was plenty of cool water here to be had (albeit replete with many tadpoles) none of us needed to top up. I however did take advantage of the situation and soaked both my shirt and hat.
Regrouped, we were now headed for the final push. A steep and tough 412m over 4km. No moving anything resembling fast from this point on. To help ease the grind, we had heard about some fossilized animal footprints along this section of trail, so we were on the lookout for them. Sure enough, we found them.
It didn’t take long before we were getting spread out and separated again, but at least the end was sort of in sight. It was along this section that our two guys on the vanguard had a peculiar encounter. They came up behind a slower moving party who basically didn’t want to let them pass. Kinda weird if you ask me. Eventually they were able to deke past them on the corner of a switchback. Tough sledding for me to be sure. I was definitely starting to feel the day at this point. Even with the scent of the barn, I couldn’t push any faster than I was. We had been doing a pretty decent 4.5-5.0 km per hour for the journey to Monument Creek. From there to Santa Maria I averaged 2.7 km per hour. Now on the final kilometer I was down to 1.6 km per hour. Then… cramping in both legs. Fortunately that was short lived. A bit of stretching, some massaging, and finishing the last of my LMNT seemed to get me jump started again. Finally I crested the rim where Matt and Franck were waiting. Kevin was only a few minutes behind me. All in all I had a moving time of 9:38 with an elapsed time of about 12 hours. We had stopped and rested for a lot longer than I had thought, or expected to. At the end of the day though, we got in and out relatively unscathed, and saw some fantastic new sights, that of course only whetted our appetite for further adventures in the Grand Canyon
Click HERE for the companion video
Coffee: Matador
Grub and Libations: The Lumberyard
Driver and Advisor: Tommy O
Pies: The Pie Box
