Okay we are making a trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon at the end of August. I read somewhere that the temperatures at the North Rim during that time is mid 70's during the day and lower 40's at night. Is that accurate? Sure seems a bit cool in August although I wouldn't have a problem if that's the case.
I understand that the deeper you hike into the canyon, the warmer it gets. Also what are some of the best hiking trails there, keep in mind that we are 40 something slightly overweight flat landers from Louisiana so we will be huffing and puffing so nothing too strenuous. How deep should we venture into the canyon?
The price of gas prohibits us from driving and pulling our pop up there so we are actually flying into Las Vegas and we will make the 5 hour drive and stay in a small cabin on the rim. We ran the numbers and with a $188.00 rountrip airline ticket and $125 a night cabin it was cheaper than driving.
Has anyone stayed in one of these cabins?
Any info would be appreciated.
CajunCamper
I wouldn't count on the 70 degree weather during August. We were there several years ago and it was hotter than that. It is up high, so chilly nights are possible. The temperature differences between the rim and the floor of the canyon are vast. We were there one Spring (South Rim) and there was still snow on the ground in the campground, and 100 degree weather at the bottom. If you hike down, be sure to bring lots of water. We ran into a lady who was in some serious trouble due to dehydration.
We will be on the south rim starting Aug. 1st, and down at the bottom on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. So I'll let you know how the temps are running.
The GC has a good website with temps, rainfall, and all sort of other info, including a webcam looking out over the canyon, so take advantage of all that.
We hiked to the bottom last Aug 2nd/3rd from the south rim. The south rim is at 7,000' (north rim is at 8,000' I think) and it was in the mid 80s during the day and high 50's at night. At the bottom it was 110ish and 95 at night......and that's cool for the bottom.
If you both haven't been "training," I would encourage you not to go more than maybe 15min down in from the north side, maybe 30min down at the most. Get up early and start your hike so that you are in and out before about 10am....11am at the latest.
It's a crazy place to hike because it's deceptively steep. You'll walk down in, and in 15min think, "Sheesh, no problem." Then in 5min hiking back out, you'll be ready for the medevac chopper!
A few suggestions:
1) Start doing some sort of walking/hiking now at a strenuous level and in a hilly area and get so you can both do about 5mi going at a good pace, without stopping. Train harder than what you'll do, and you'll have an easier time in the canyon.
2) Buy yourselves 2 "Camelbak" hydration packs. There are all sorts of different versions of them, from just their basic "Dream" pack for women which is 70oz(2 liters/2.1qts) capacity with a very small area for a couple of nutrition bars,....up to something like their "Blow Fish" or "Mule" which carrry 90oz and have exapandable storage areas for more food. The great thing about Camelbaks are that it keeps your hands free for balance, so you don't have to carry anything. Buy the optional mouthpiece covers because the canyon is VERY dusty.
3) Buy a "keg" of "Cytomax" which is a sports drink powder mix that cyclists use. (your local cycling shops carry it, as do ebay sellers) It's fantastic stuff because it's replacing all the salts, sugars, and electrolytes that your body will use up. If you hike into the canyon on water alone, you'll be feeling just hammered in no time. Remember, you're at 8,000' so there's a whole lot less oxygen in the air you're breathing. That translates into muscle fatigue very early and unexpectedly. Combine that with age/weight/physical condition/etc. and you'll find water leaves you on your ..... :yikes: If you know what I mean. Mix the cytomax as recommend and start drinking it before you go into the canyon, and then the entire time you're "in." You'll really have a better experience. Start using it during your "training" if you decide to train, and you'll see how well it works.
3a)No soda(soda pop/soft drinks) or caffinated drinks. All the sugar in soda makes you super thirsty(so you'll drink more soda....right?) and it's terrible for your body. Drinking soda in the Canyon will just destroy you. Same goes for caffine. Caffine is a dieretic....in other words, it strips the fluid out of your body (makes you pee often) and will dehydrate you something terrible. Plus, it constricts your blood vessles, restricting the flow of blood to your muscles and brain. Less blood flow means less oxygen, which means you're ruined. Then as the caffine wears off, you're more tired and you can wind up with a nice headache as the blood vessles relax and blood flow returns through your brain.
4) Get some good hiking shoes/boots and get some time in them so they are broken in. You don't have to go spend $200 on some full zut boots, but get something with a good sole and good ankle support. I personally prefer an above ankle boot in the canyon because the trail is really rough. Over the ankle keeps the dirt and rocks out of your shoes, and provides some great support so you're not twisting your ankle. Over the ankle also allows you to do a special lace up of the boot, so your feet don't ram into the toes during the downhill and jam your toenails and/or cause blisters (real fun to hike back out with).
4a)Forgot to mention socks. Buy the "smart wool" socks for hiking, and buy the silk socks that you put in them as liners. The key ingredients here are "moisture wicking" and having a thin breathable liner against your feet to protect against blisters. Go out of your way to keep your feet happy and if you feel any burning/rubbing at all, pull over, take the boot off, remove the socks and see what's going on. If you are starting to get a rub/hot spot use a product called "mole skin" (available in the drug store), cut yourself off a patch and put it on that area of your foot, toe, whatever. That will protect you from getting a blister. If you find you've let it go too long and have a blister, use a product called "mole foam" and cut a donut shape with the center donut hole big enough to span around the blister. This will keep the blister area from touching anything and getting worse. Don't take the chance of getting a blister! Buy your hiking boots and socks now, and start walking in them to break them in! And like I said, pull over if you feel hot spots.
4b) About the special boot lace up for going downhill. This is where over the ankle hiking boots are best IMO. Get them with speed laces up the sides. Where the laces cross in front of the tongue of the boot, criss-cross them like you do at the top of the boot before you tie your shoe laces in the bow shape. make sense? So get your heel into the back of the boot, and then lace up the top of the boot by criss-crossing every time you go across the tongue. I like to then finish by going around the back of the boot at the very top, and then tying off normally with a bow in the front. What this system does is lock the boot tight, keeping your ankle against the back of the boot, and keeping you from migrating forward in the boot as you load into it going downhill. If you don't use this method, you'll likely pay the price. Some people jamb their toenails so bad that they wind up loosing them!
5) A wide brim hat (not a baseball cap) with a ventilated or mesh head area is great. Keep the sun off, and allow your head to stay cool.
6) A bandana wetted and then tied loosely around your neck will keep you cool because it cools the blood flowing through your coradid arteries in your neck going to your brain. Keep the brain and your head cool and you'll feel 1000% better than if you don't. Once you get a heat soak going.....you're screwed....and you still have to hike out.
7)Consider a "Misty Mate" mister. (check them out on ebay or on the website). Their small one will fit into a hydration pack and holds enough water to mist both of you often, for a couple days in a row.....which is way more than you'll need. But.....man does it feel good to fog yourself in the face and neck.
8)Consider the drypel sports shirts that are white and long sleeve. They are thin, but UV rated. The material is moisture wicking, so you're not all sweaty. They keep you cool by keeping the sun off your skin, and so breathable, you won't know you're wearing it....even in 100*F temps.
9)You won't feel like drinking or eating, but you need to be doing both. So literally keep an eye on your watches and about every 15min drink, and about every 30 min eat something light. If you run yourselves out of salts and sugars (called "bonking") you'll have a miserable time getting out, and you may even require a rescue from the park rangers. This is why the suggestion of the Cytomax. We saved a young girl last year by making her drink about 16oz of it.
10) An additional word about eating. When you eat, your body diverts blood to your stomach lining to digest the food. This robs your muscles of the blood they need (which is carrying their oxygen) and this is a major problem when you're doing something physically demanding. When you starve your muscles for oxygen they get weak fast, and then you're done. What happens in your body in a situation like hiking in the canyon is that if you've eaten something that's going to take some effort to digest, your body has to prioritize its function. Priority #1 is muscle surviving, so instead of digesting food, it will stop digestion and continue feeding the muscles. That means you wind up with a belly full of undigested food......just sitting there, and eventually, you'll probably puke. The key to success is eating small amounts of easily digested food. Fruits (never dried fruits because they suck moisture out of your system and dehydrate you terribly!!), lightly salted snacks, nothing overly sugary and you probably won't want chocolate. Nothing greasy, nothing heavy (cheese, salami, beef jerky, a big pancake and greasy egg breakfast would kill you!). Bananas are great, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches work well, cereal and granola type bars are good. You DO want to eat, but just small amounts, light, and fairly often to keep your calories up so you have something to burn.
How the body works is; in the first 30min of excersion it converts stored sugar into energy to burn. After 30min the body becomes less efficient and begins converting your stored fat into energy (if you want to loose weight, excersize well into this second 30min area!). After about an hour or so, your body starts to break down muscle tissue and convert that into engergy to burn (ever noticed how thin marathon runners are? It's because the body not only leans itself down to be a very efficient running machine, but these folks are always running that mode of converting fat, and converting muscle. So to cut to the chase, fuel yourself so your body has something to burn efficiently, and doesn't have to dip into the fat during your hike.
When you're done training, and done with the hike in the canyon, you're muscles will have a lot of lactic acid built up from converting surgars and fats to energy. This lactic acid is partly responsible for how sore you get. Cytomax will really help with this, and so will Ibuprophen (not acetomenophine). Take some to thin out your blood, increase blood flow through the muscles and carry away the lactic acid as quickly as possible.......you'll feel much better.
So I say: get training, and go down in a ways. Like down in for an hour, and that will be about a 2hr hike back out. Leave at 6am and be out by 9am. The temps will be decent and an hour down will get you waaaay into the canyon. Consider that it probably only takes 4hrs to get down (it took us 4.5hrs last year from the south side and that was including about a 45min stop when my wife had a melt down due to the rising temps at the bottom).
It's an incredible place, so go for it!!!
To give you an idea of how steep it is here are some photos.
This is maybe 5min down "in" on the south rim, on the "South Kaibab Trail."
Here's looking down the trail and the shot below is looking back up at where I had just been :yikes:
(http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x242/austinado16/P1010818.jpg)
That's the top of the canyon at the top of the photo, and you can see the trail is built right into the rock face....
(http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x242/austinado16/P1010820.jpg)
Then after maybe 15-20min, the trail planes out for a while. Still deceptively steep, because in the photo, the trail looks pretty flat, but it's not, and you've just dropped 500' or more in a very short time. You pay dearly for that on the way out. Remember, this is the South Kaibab Trail. You'll be on the North Kaibab Trail, so it's different......but the same. The South Kaibab drops 5,000' feet in 6mi.
(http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x242/austinado16/P1010819.jpg)
WOW Austinado.....Great information.....I appreciate you taking the time to pass along this valuable information to me. I will follow your advice and start training immediately.
Thanks Again
CajunCamper
CajunCamper, I'm going to second all of Austinado's recommendations since I broke several of them and paid the price.
Against the advise of a park ranger I headed down into the canyon after eating a late lunch and the only thing I had were two bottles of water. I walked to the half way point with no problems, spent time looking at the river and taking photographs... then started my walk back up.
Well going done was easy, hiking up was the problem. It was dark when I finally got out, and I was scared since it was during the spring I remembered that there were icy spots along the trail and of course I did not have a flash light. I did not have any cell phone signal so I could not call for help, plus no one knew I was doing the hike.
It was around 8:00 PM when I walked... no crawled out... then I could not find my car. The only thing that saved me was the credit card receipt from lunch which listed the restaurant and a park ranger (fortunately not the same one that warm me against going) helped me located my car.
So again please follow Austinado's recommendations.
Ruide
You're welcome and I hope you find what I wrote useful (rather than me just running my mouth......which is always a fine line).
The Grand Canyon is really dangerous and there are signs plastered everywhere telling people that....even inside the free shuttle busses, and down in on the trails. They have HUGE thermometers telling you how hot it currently is, and warning you not to hike between 10am and 4pm.....and that most of the people rescued look like "this guy" and they have a picture of a young, 20 something white guy, who looks like your average outdoor hiking stud.
But inspite of all that, we saw so many people down in the first levels of the canyon (to about 3 mile house on the Bright Angel Trail.....but none on the South Kaibab Trail) who were hugely unprepared. People in sandles and flip flops!!!!!!!!! People who's under 10 year old kids were in sandles or flip flops!!!! Kids without hats, adults without hats. Kids and adults just frying in the sun in tank tops or shirts off, or sports bras only. People that came down in carrying one 16oz bottle of water, or my favorite, a soda!!(there are water stops on the Bright Angel Trail at 1.5mi in, 3mi in and 4.5mi in) but nothing else with them.
I've mentioned this before, but will say it again. We rescued a girl who'd come down with no food, a 16oz water, and a tank top....no hat, with her boyfriend. She was below the 1.5mi house, sitting on the side of the trial, just warped from the heat and running herself out of salt and sugar and electrolytes. I poured off her water bottle full of Cytomax from my pack and made her drink it. She was good as new in about 5-10min, and then actually beat us out of the canyon.
So yes.......train, have fun, buy some gear, and go take it on the smart and fun way. You'll regret it if you don't!
Just added a bit more to my first post incase you missed it.
We ended a 17 day trip at the North Rim. (South Rim, Bryce, Zion, North Rim). It is about 1000ft. higher elevation than the more popular South Rim, so it did cool down more in the evening. It is highly forested and quite beautiful. Summer storms rolled thru and even hailed on us. We were unable to camp inside the park (full), but stayed just outside it and enjoyed the park by driving in. As for the trails, there are plenty of short and mild hikes, with nice views and scenic lookouts, of course these do not proceed into the canyon. Just talk with a ranger about how strenous of a hike you would like, and they will help out. There is a wonderful lodge and the cabins look rustic, but very comfortable. All of them had rocking chairs on their own patio/porches. Enjoy your trip.