Sunday morning after breakfast we headed to the Kaibab trailhead. The trail takes hikers down into the canyon for over seven miles. There is no water along the trail. In places the trail is steep and it is easy to loose your footing in the loose gravel. The early risers in the canyon-visitor crowd ride mules to the bottom. Although we arrived too late to see the mules heading into the canyon, they left obvious calling cards along the trail to let us know that they had passed along the trail.
There were more people on the trail than I had expected. The weather during our visit was warm – in the mid-40’s – and it brought out a flood of local hikers in addition to the tourist crowd. Many of the hikers along the trail were foreigners. We heard conversations in German, Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian and Arabic as we passed other groups along the trail.
We walked down the trail as far as Ooh-Aah Point, a rock promontory that provides as visually scary but safe photo op. We took turns with several other groups taking the obligatory “top of the world” pictures before heading back to the top of the canyon.
Our hike down took 45 minutes, but the trek back to the top took twice as long. The oxygen starved air at 7,000 feet above sea level kept us panting so by the time we arrived back at the summit we were out of water and out of breath.
Click on the photos below to get a sense of our trek into the canyon. The 10th picture shows people along the trail switchbacks as viewed from below.
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- Betty on Kaibab Trail
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- View of Ooh-Aah Point below from Kaibab Trail
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- Getting closer . . .
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- and closer . . .
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- View deeper into the canyon from Ooh-Aah Point
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- Betty at Ooh-Aah Point
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- John at Ooh-Aah Point
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- We descended below the rim of the canyon at Kaibab.
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- The are the last steps to Ooh-Aah Point
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- To get a sense of scale, open this to full size to see the speck of phosphorescent green on the trail above.
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- The guy with the green jacket is in this one, too. It’s like Where’s Waldo at this resolution.
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- Looking up at the rim of the canyon from below. We both lost our balance when we looked up. We quickly learned to come to a full stop before looking up.
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- Betty along the trail
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- The canyon wall from Kaibab
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- Kaibab Trail switchbacks
That view looks incredible… I imagine it’s almost too much to process at once actually being there. Mom, don’t fall!
I like John telling you not to go to far, It’s like your mom telling you to drive safety .
Of course I wanted to make sure she didn’t fall into the canyon. After all, she’s the mother of my children and my partner in life. But most importantly . . . she’s my travel planner and I’m having a wonderful time!