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| Backpack | 26.00 Miles |
7,000 AEG |
| | Backpack | 26.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 7,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Day 1: Hermit trail down to Hermit Rapids
Day 2: Exploring Hermit Creek, and a little dayhiking on the Tonto over to Monument Creek
Day 3: Back up
Being a Grand Canyon rookie, I had intended to begin with a corridor trail. But the Bright Angel campsites were booked about 3 minutes after they started taking reservations, so we settled for Hermit Rapids, and thus the Hermit Trail. The challenge of an "unmaintained" threshold trail was enticing anyway, and I knew the campsite would be lovely. We certainly weren't disappointed on either account.
First of all, the trail: It was a challenge, but it wasn't anything worse than strenuous. "Unmaintained", in this case, seems to mean rocky and occasionally narrow, nothing more menacing than that. Earlier logs, as well as my GC trail map, described some rockslides that necessitated route finding. One more recent log noted some maintenance (by whom, I wonder?), and I can definitely confirm that. The trail was always evident, and no scrambling was necessary. Only in a couple places did we even have to climb over large rocks that had fallen on the path. Exposure was minimal as well. I suppose one should still take the Park Service's warnings seriously and approach this trail with a little trepidation, but I didn't find anything truly dangerous.
Strangely, the stretch that took the longest was the "easy" segment between Hermit Camp and Hermit Rapids. Though it's listed at 1.3 miles, and though there's no elevation change other than the drop into the creek bed, in four passes we couldn't make do anything faster than 45 minutes. There's a lot of winding around and over the creek, and there's some route finding to be done, so I suppose that accounts for it. Definitely a beautiful stretch, though, and quite different--as a riparian sanctuary--from everything else we found in the canyon. Anyone in the area that has a couple of hours should explore it, tracing the creek down to the river and to . . .
The Hermit Rapids campsite: Hard to imagine anything better in the Canyon, for setting, solitude, or comfort. We had the beach to ourselves and the roar of the rapids to lull us to sleep. And despite multiple warnings about greedy animal scavengers, we never had to defend our food from critters. After reading about the zipper-opening ravens, we were careful to pack all food deep within our packs, and we had no problems. We didn't even see any critters in our two days here.
We used our middle day to hike over to Monument Creek, but since we couldn't spy any water flowing there, we decided to turn around to avoid becoming trailhead posterboys. ("Think you're in great shape? Even these fit young men weren't tough enough for the Canyon. The measly two liter hydration bladders lasted only a few hours, leaving them to die of dehydration, etc. etc.") We still had some time to explore the remains of the old Hermit Camp resort. Fascinating.
We made good time on our exodus: river to rim in 4:37. The more predictable, measured pace of climbing actually made our trip out faster than our trip in by a full hour.
It probably doesn't require saying, but I'll say it anyway. The Canyon is stunning beyond words, and I, at least, had to spend a few days in it even to begin to appreciate it. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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Santa Maria Spring |
Dripping |
Dripping |
| | | Just a trickle from the pipe, but the trough was full . . . and cold! | | _____________________
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