Several months ago, we responded to an invitation for a long weekend at a golf resort in Scottsdale, AZ, and, while contemplating the various things we’d want to do in Arizona, decided to try and add a Grand Canyon visit to the itinerary. Looking first into backcountry permits, we were surprised to find that trips down to the canyon floor were available and also that both hotel space on the South Rim and meals at Phantom Ranch were available as well. So, we found ourselves in a whirlwind of planning the logistics to stay one night at the Kachina in Grand Canyon Village, hike down to Bright Angel campground, spend two nights there with meals provided at Phantom Ranch, followed by a hike out and two more nights on the rim before heading down to Phoenix by way of Sedona – a grand Arizona tour, indeed. Of course, all of this was to take place in advance of the President’s Day weekend in February, meaning that we’d be looking at average temps on the rim of 45/16 and in the canyon of 68/45 or some such – coupled with typical Sedona and Scottsdale weather, we’d essentially be packing for four separate climatic zones and sets of conditions. We drove out of town on February 9th, spent the night in Kingman, AZ, and arrived in Grand Canyon Village early Saturday afternoon – our logistics plan included having the mule packers take our tent, sleeping bags, and associated camping gear down to and back from Phantom Ranch, so our first order of business was to drop off our duffel at the mule barn. That done, we began to explore the Village and surrounding area, seeing several elk (they’re huge!) from the shuttle bus on our way to the market and several deer grazing outside the El Tovar hotel after our dinner there (highly recommended, btw). Early Sunday morning found us catching the 8am hiker’s shuttle at Bright Angel Lodge, which would take us 20 minutes or so east to the South Kaibab trailhead where we’d start our walk down. The South Kaibab Trail was built by the park service in the early days as an alternative route to Ralph Cameron’s privately-built Bright Angel Trail – Cameron charged a toll to use his path, and the NPS built their option to avoid the cost (and, presumably, to drive Cameron out of business – the NPS eventually bought him out anyway). Starting 400′ higher than Bright Angel, the South Kaibab (we had been saying “kaye-babb” for months – it’s actually “kye-babb”, and we stand corrected) Trail drops about 7 miles and over 4,600′ to the Colorado River, crossing it at the eastern of two permanent bridges before running west a short distance and north into Bright Angel Canyon to Phantom Ranch – our campground is located on the west side of Bright Angel Creek, about halfway between the Ranch and the river. The ambient temperature on this chilly morning was about 25 degrees in the Village, but at the windy trailhead it felt like the low teens. Our shuttle bus had about a dozen people aboard, some going to Phantom Ranch but just as many day hiking down-and-up routes of various distances. Literally dropping northward off the canyon rim, the trail winds through the initial cliff bands via several tight switchbacks in what’s known as “The Chimney” – we expected to be unnerved by the exposure here, but the trail was sufficiently wide enough to never feel threatening. Soon, we were descending through a long traverse down to Ooh Aah Point, an aptly-named promontory overlooking Cedar Ridge and offering full canyon views east, north, and west – Jane climbed out to an overhang while Chris stayed back, as watching her on the exposed cliff edge made him more than a little uncomfortable. We continued our descent down the spine of Cedar Ridge, passing a trail maintenance crew near the restroom facilities here (composting pit toilets that emit no foul odors – why can’t Yosemite get these?) before passing to the east of O’Neill Butte and crossing the length of a north-trending nearly-level plateau to its end at Skeleton Point. Here, we got our first views into the river gorge as well as to the Phantom Ranch area – it looked so far away, and we realized we had barely descended a third of our overall elevation change. Below Skeleton Point, we got into the most aggressive sets of switchbacks we’d yet seen – we lost 1,000′ over the next mile as we dropped first east and then north down to the Tonto Platform, an intermediate mesa of sorts that lines both sides of the canyon about a third of the way up between gorge and rim. We reached the junction with the east-west Tonto Trail after another mile and 500′ of descent, finding another outhouse here near the top of the river gorge itself at a point called The Tipoff – from here, it would be another 1,500′ down through three miles of switchbacks to the river. Hiker traffic had dropped off markedly below Skeleton Point, and we encountered just a few other people from here on, most of whom were heading up – it was after noon by this point, and we wondered how many of these folks would make it out before dark. Eventually, the views to the river opened up and we could see our trail’s end – the Black Bridge and its unexpected entrance tunnel was below and we could see west over the water to the mouth of Bright Angel Canyon as well (with the western Silver Bridge behind it). The tunnel was a little creepy – just as it become too dark to really see anything, light from the open north end became visible. Crossing the bridge, we looped around the northern abutment to walk west along the river, passing some foundations of a multi-family pueblo, said to have been active some 1,000 years ago – John Wesley Powell first discovered these ruins on his historic river run through the Canyon in 1869. Entering Bright Angel Canyon, we easily found the campground and had our pick of about two dozen sites – we chose one nestled against the western cliffs, shaded and out of the wind that had picked up again. We walked northward up to Phantom Ranch, collected our duffel, and walked back to our campsite (about a mile round trip) – no sooner than we had set up camp, a ranger came by and said his crew would be cutting down some dead trees the next morning in the site adjacent to ours. Although he said we’d be out of his way, he advised us to move if we’d be bothered by several hours of chainsaw music – yes, said we, that would indeed be bothersome, so we literally picked up our pitched tent and carried it up the trail another hundred yards to the best site now available (we had just beaten the rush with our first site selection). Oh well. After moving, we went back to Phantom Ranch for dinner at 5pm (steak is served at the 5pm seating, stew at 6:30pm – at $50 each, the steak was pricey but really good), followed by a return to our tent and an early bedtime. That was all well and good, as it afforded us at least a little bit of sleep – the wind kicked up at some point after midnight, and our collective rest was not a good one as a result. On to tomorrow…