“Why am I doing this?” definitely crossed my mind. It crossed my mind, let’s say, only about every other step on the way up the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. A mere 15 hours after we started! I never set out to break any records. I succeed at that. But I (we) finished! And that was the only outcome that mattered.
In retrospect, I am glad I took this hike on and got it off of my “bucket list”. It is something I have wanted to do and I also wanted to do it before I was “too old” to take it on. And I have to be honest, I will likely NOT do it again (99.99% chance of that)!
It wasn’t anything I didn’t expect, nor was it something that I at didn’t, at least attempt to, train for. There were a lot of things “I knew” before embarking on the nearly 27 miles of hiking for day (this included a detour to Ribbon Falls).
I knew there’d be blisters, chaffing in some strange places, a sore knee and a couple of days of shaking of the stiffness every time I stood up. It didn’t surprise!
I knew that the hike would painstakingly descend 4380 feet to the Colorado River (the downhill is rough on the knees)…
I knew, even more painstakingly so, the hike would ascend 5850 feet to the North Rim (uphill is rough on the spirit and EVERYTHING else)…
I knew it would be cool when we started out on the Bright Angel Trail (35 degrees)…
I knew it would be fairly hot in during the the afternoon (~95 degrees) as we hiked along the North Kaibab Trail…
And I knew that it would cool off nicely as the sun started to go down (and hopefully not too dark)…
But I have to say (or is it admit?) that I knew it was going to quite the challenging day! I was pretty “gassed” toward the end. I mean, who hikes twenty-some miles and then purposely gets on a Stairmaster for six more miles (Quite a few do, actually – we must of saw a few hundred that day)?
I knew there would be a lot of amazing sights on the hike. And I’ll let the pictures just tell (some) of the story. Full disclosure: there are a lot more taken during the first half of the hike – the last half turned into a focus on just getting it done (or the damn thing over with!).
Most importantly, I was able to share the day with some friends and my especially my brother. I knew it will be something we will share the rest of our lives.
This is called “The After”
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