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Welcome to THE home of Grand Canyon hiking. If it happens below the rim—from short day hikes to Rim2Rims and beyond—you'll learn all the tips and tricks to have your safest and most memorable Grand Canyon experience.
Host Brian Speciale brings you stories of triumph, tragedy, and trail-won wisdom—told by first-timers, seasoned vets, and Canyon insiders alike.
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This is the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show presented by Hiken. Hiking plus kinship. That's Hiken. Together, we roam. Here's your host, my hubby, and cofounder of Hiken, Brian Special.
Brian:Well, we can finally say with near certainty that after being sold out for almost a year, our new day packs should be in stock in November. That will include our 22 liter one size rim to rim pack with our signature front strap pockets and insulated hydration compartment to keep things cold. And a new pack is coming as well. This is the one you all been waiting for, the 22 liter Canyon Elite, which will feature the same things that make the rim to rim pack what it is, but we've added a hip belt. So many of you asked for it, we're delivering.
Brian:It'll come in two sizes, so you can dial in the perfect fit. The Rim to Rim Pack and the Canyon Elite coming in November. More details soon, including when we will start taking preorders. As always, just gotta say, Zena and I are so grateful for your support. You are the reason we do what we do, from this show to our Facebook group, to hiking.club, and of course, the Grand Canyon Shade Tracker.
Brian:It is all made available to you so you can have your best possible hiking experience. Well, our Facebook group is a huge part of what we do here. Obviously, it's a place for questions and opinions and trip reports, and above all, for those taking on a bucket list adventure that can have so many confusing and intimidating details, as well as the extreme physical challenge. What's fun is seeing the willingness of many of our more experienced folks to help out everyone else. Sometimes it can be hard to ask questions.
Brian:We get it. But when you're continually seeing the judgment free answers, it can make a difference, and it's what makes the hiking Grand Canyon Facebook community truly unique to many of the other groups out there. We also get to know one another in there, and today, a conversation with an ultra experienced canyon crazy known to some in the group as Facebook Joe. Joe Adlock is 61 and retired from the air quality consulting business. He's a father of two and a grandfather of five who spends much of his time in Loveland, Colorado dreaming about and planning his next Grand Canyon adventure.
Brian:Most recently was a long rim to rim to rim backpacking trip with another hiker from our group, Caleb Metzger, who you heard in episode 82 of this show. That hike ended just days before the Grand Canyon Lodge burned down. I'd planned to do a south to north to south r three of my own during that time and meet up with Caleb and Joe at Cottonwood before continuing on for an overnight at the lodge. Well, I ended up bailing on that plan because I did not want to mess with the heat. But little did I know that was my last chance to stay at the lodge.
Brian:This is the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude show powered by hiking. Hiking plus kinship, that's hiking. Together, we roam. You know, you guys pop out on July 1. You finished that adventure that you were on.
Brian:And it's only, you know, less than two weeks later, Grand Canyon Lodge is gone and the North Rim is being decimated. Just what was your reaction to all that when when you heard about it, when you saw what was happening, and especially that morning, July 12, when we woke up and found found out that the lodge was gone?
Joe:It was devastating. I couldn't believe it. The the North Rim is so the infrastructure is so much smaller than on the South Rim. The fire took everything. Even though some buildings survived, it essentially wiped out the infrastructure until it can be rebuilt.
Joe:I'm I'm very, very glad that I got to see it one last time. I've been at the North Rim Lodge twice in recent years, meaning since, like, the nineteen eighties. But I hadn't been on the North Kaibab Trail north of Ribbon Falls since the early eighties, since I started college, actually. So if I if I hadn't gone with Caleb, I wouldn't have seen it the way it is, the way, you know, I had remembered it, and the way we all remember it. So one, I'm very thankful I was there.
Joe:Two, I'm very glad that no one lost their life during the fire specifically. It's tragic to hear that just this week, one of the firefighters did die and and and working on the blaze. It could have been so much worse. In talking to some of the other people in the group, it sounds like the initial evacuation happened not because of Dragon Bravo, but because of the White Sage fire. And had that not happened, they might have really been you know, all all of those visitors might have been just caught on that peninsula when the Dragon Bravo erupted.
Joe:And, I mean, as bad as it was, it could have been worse. I'm glad it wasn't worse, but it's still devastating.
Brian:It was such a surreal day when we find I'll never forget hearing the superintendent say on that on that phone call with with residents and employees that, you know, we've lost the lodge. That is just gonna be in my memory forever. And all we're left to do now really, Joe, now that the the flames are out and cleanup efforts are underway and analysis, soil analysis, burn scar, You know, we're learning a lot about wildfires and the aftermath going through this, but we're just left to speculate what it means for the future of hiking on the North Rim because we know North Kaibab burned from the trailhead all the way down to the north side of Supai Tunnel. Yeah. That's 1.7 miles.
Brian:That's a long way down, and there's a lot of fear now about how stable that area will be. Flash floods, the spring runoff. We're just kinda left to speculate here. Have you done any of that just to to yourself, just making, you know, almost an educated guess? What do you think is gonna be the the future of North Kaibab?
Joe:Yeah. I have I've had no background with which to speak authoritatively. However Mhmm. I've been on enough trails in Grand Canyon that are in really bad disrepair, things that haven't been maintained in, you know, a hundred years, like the the New Hance Trail. It will be I think it will be possible to hike down it.
Joe:It just isn't going to be the superhighway that we know it to be. I mean, it's it it it was wide. It was nice and flat. It was it was very challenging, but it was a very well constructed trail. And I'm sure that that top mile and a half is not going to be like that for some time unless they put a lot of effort into making it that way.
Joe:And, you know, what happens with the cliffside that's been burned and is is it, you know, has no vegetation to hold it up, I can only speculate that that's gonna be really bad with, you know, some torrential rains. You're gonna get flooding on the trail. You're gonna get mud on the trail. You may lose the trail in places. So in terms of a route down into the canyon, it probably doesn't go away.
Joe:But when will it be a nice clean trail like we know and love? I don't know. That could be quite a while.
Brian:Yeah. We could be talking we could be talking years because it's not it's not gonna be as simple as just rebuilding a trail. All the the support work they're gonna have to do and the the the mitigation measures they're gonna have to take to prevent to to protect against, you know, those those landslides, the rains, the the floods. I mean, I you know, I like your optimism. It's even more optimistic than than than I can be just by seeing the pictures and everything and knowing that terrain, especially, you know, even the area that did not burn, it stopped at Supai Tunnel, but that area from Supai Tunnel down to Redwall Bridge is the most troublesome part of the entire North Kaibab Trail for the park service because it is just every year.
Brian:There's washouts there. There's landslides there. Just the nature of the terrain in a normal year. Now you've got everything crashing down from above, like you said, with no vegetation to stop it, burned out. I just I just look at it, and I just wonder how the trail is gonna survive in in any semblance of a trail after at least the spring runoff or the first big monsoon.
Brian:I I don't know. I don't know. It's just speculation. There's just nothing but concern right now. Then there's concern with what's gonna happen even farther down, the parts that that didn't burn even below Redwall Bridge and past Cottonwood and Bright Angel Canyon because there's the fear now of flash floods coming from the burn scarred areas, not just not not anywhere near North Kaibab Trail, but from, you know, up up above, up on the rim coming down the side drainages.
Brian:And what's gonna stop a huge flash flood between that that that comes roaring through the box. Right?
Joe:Right. And there's no escape from the box once you're in it. I mean Right. You can't climb the walls, not not fast enough to No. Avoid raging river.
Brian:There are very few spots in the box where you would be able to scamp to to higher ground. Very few. And it's a four and a half mile stretch. So Yeah. You've gotta wonder the liability issues, the park service of letting people letting people in there, or do they do they close it down during, you know, the monsoony days in the in the summertime, and they keep it closed in the spring?
Brian:I don't know. I'm sure these are the questions they're asking themselves behind closed doors right now. It would be great to know, but until then, all we're left with is is speculation. But, yeah, unprecedented times for the Grand Canyon. I mean, Joe, I mean, I was just up there in July in the midst of all this because I wanted to see what the fire looked like from across the the rim.
Brian:And and all I could do for a hike was go down Bright Angel to have a soup by gardens. That's that's it. That's the only thing that's available. South Kaibab was closed at that time. Everything was closed.
Brian:Tonto was closed. That was your only option. When in the history of the national park has that happened? I mean, it's just unprecedented times, I can't wait until they're over. But enough with that.
Brian:Let's talk about you, Joe. Let's talk about this obsession. Let's talk about these incredible photos that you take and these incredible hikes that you go on, and start by telling me how in the heck you get so obsessed with the Grand Canyon and and going below the rim. How'd that how'd this all start for you?
Joe:Well, it started in Chicago. That's where I was born, in a suburb of Chicago. My dad used to sit at the kitchen table, have his after dinner cigarette, and say, you know, someday, Joe, when you're a little older and I stop smoking, I'm gonna take you to Grand Canyon. I didn't know what that meant. I was like eight.
Brian:Why did he pick Grand Canyon? Why why was that the thing that he would make you aspire?
Joe:His brother had taken him there when he was 17 on a road trip from Chicago to LA. They stopped. They hiked to the bottom down South Kaibab and then up Bright Angel as a day hike in the August. And you had one of those hard, you know, hard metal canteens. They had a loaf of bread and some honey.
Joe:That's all they had. And they started down. By the time they got to Phantom, it was just absolutely miserably hot. So they waited hours. Then they came up Bright Angel, and then one of them stepped on a nail at Bright Angel.
Joe:And, you know, that set them back a few more hours while they kinda waited. And eventually, they came out, and it was about a twenty four hour rim to river trip for them.
Brian:Wow.
Joe:And when he got out, he said, if I ever see a hole in the ground again, it'll be too soon. But then he went back a couple times with a different brother when he got older, with his younger brother, and then he went backpacking once there before he took me. So he had some experience with it. You know, he talked to me about it, and I I had no idea what he was describing because I lived in Chicago. I was a little kid.
Joe:I had never seen it, or or I hadn't I didn't even know what the West looked like. Well, then when I was almost 10, he moved the family. He worked for Motorola. He moved from Chicago to Phoenix, and he spent the rest of his career there. But that next summer, I was 10, and he and a buddy of his from work, and then me and and this buddy's kid, we hiked down to the bottom, down South Kaibab, spent a couple nights at the bottom, then hiked up, spent a day at or or a night at Indian Gardens, what what it was called back then.
Brian:And then What year would this have been?
Joe:This was 1974. Okay. June '74. And wow. You know, it for a kid from Chicago, this was just surreal.
Joe:I mean, everything about it was great. And being a 10 year old kid, I had a backpack, but it probably had six pounds in it, if that. So I was just prancing down the trail. I was prancing up the trail. I had no problem as a little kid.
Joe:You know, he carried everything, so he he struggled a bit, and he wasn't in great shape at the time. But it was just super exciting. I mean, the river. You get to cross the river. You he took me up to Phantom Creek because he had I don't know if he had been there or he had heard of it, but we hiked up to Phantom Creek, which is a mile up into the box.
Joe:We crossed Bright Angel Creek and and went up Phantom a ways, and, oh, there were these little waterfalls and everything. It was just it was like it was like an amusement park without rides. You know? It was just very exciting and everything. And so when we got out, you know, I thought, well, yeah, I'll do that again.
Joe:And my dad was obsessed with the West. And now that he lived in in Phoenix, he joined a caving club. He you know, with other people, he learned a lot more about backpacking and hiking and how do you deal with the desert and the heat and, you know, when is it best to go hiking in the in in in Southern Arizona, that kind of thing. He got to be a very competent backpacker and, you know, pulled me along with him, and we probably either day hiked or backpacked the canyon two to four times a year when I was growing up. And so it was just instilled in me as a little kid that is part of life.
Joe:This is what you do for fun. Grand Canyon was always kinda that special place. That was the the gem that we kept returning to, because you can never see it all. There's so much of it. You know?
Joe:Even if all you do is the corridor, you can still do that 15 times, and every trip is different. The lighting, the weather, your approach to it, what's going on in your mind, you know, and you see new things every time. I mean, I've probably hiked that sort of traditional South Kaibab upright angel 15 to 20 times at this point in my life, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity, always.
Brian:When's the last time you hiked it with your dad?
Joe:Well, the last time we hiked it was with my grand or my my grand my children in 2,005. They were 11 and 13 at the time. He was 65, 67, something like that. He was very excited to do it with his grandkids. But in 2019, he and his two brothers who had the the brother that had originally taken him there in '57 and then the younger brother who had he had had taken, the three of them rode mules to the bottom.
Brian:Really?
Joe:And I said, well, jeez. I can't miss out on this. So they worked it so I could sleep in their cabin, and I hiked down. I didn't really have a desire to ride mules. Frankly, that kinda brightens me a little.
Joe:I'd rather be on a cliff with my own hands and feet than having a mule hold me, but but, yeah, I hiked down. I met him. We spent two nights down there. My dad, he had he had cancer at the time, had had a lot of chemo. So he he couldn't hike a lot, but he was healthy enough to to go down on the mules and and to go up.
Joe:Didn't think it was very comfortable, but, you know, he was also 80 at the time. So that that was a really special time because both he and my two uncles, I have a lot of history in the canyon with with all three of them, and it was just fun to get all of us together, kick back at Phantom. I mean, I I actually brought a bunch of fun things down. Like, they're big beer drinkers, so I brought two six packs of local Colorado beer that they would not have had before. Two of them were big scotch drinkers, so I brought a small bottle of scotch.
Joe:I brought a bag of chips and some salsa and some other snacks. I mean, I I actually had, like, a 57 pound pack going down because I had so much junk. But I figure, when am I gonna have this opportunity again? And, you know, that actually, that was it. That was the last hurrah for him and one of my uncles.
Joe:That was the last time they were able to do it. But, oh my gosh, it was fantastic. No place I love more than Grand Canyon. So I have a trip coming up in October. Caleb is gonna join us, which is really fun.
Joe:I got to meet a bunch of his friends and his son, which was hysterical. I got to meet them and spend six days with them doing rim to rim to rim. Now he's gonna join my group, which is, you know, a bunch of different people. So he's now the guy that doesn't know anybody, and they called me Facebook Joe because no one knew me. I was just this guy from Facebook.
Joe:Because that is actually less than a month away, and and this is kinda weird. I'm a little strange. I get really amped up over that. Okay? And now that I'm retired, there's no restraint.
Joe:You know? When I was working, oh, eight to ten hours a day, I was thinking about work and blah blah blah. I don't have that restraint anymore. So as it gets closer and closer to our October trip, you're probably gonna see me posting more and more in your group just because I need an outlet for my excitement. I mean
Brian:It's beautiful.
Joe:It's it's one of the people in my group a couple of years ago there's a group of us friends and and old coworkers, who have been doing off corridor trails since 2016. Every year, we we pick a new trail or a new loop and do it. And a couple of years ago, one of the people dubbed me 14 year old Joe because while I'm an old guy, and I act like it when I hike uphill, certainly, as soon as I get to camp, drop my pack, doesn't matter how dead I am. I just sort of pop to life, and I'm running around with my cell phone taking pictures of everything. You know, vast scenes, close ups of plants or bugs, you know, whatever.
Joe:I just I really enjoy it. It's just the best part of life.
Brian:Well, and it shows in the incredible photos that that you take where most people might just chill out for a while. You get busy with the camera, and I'm glad you do because, yeah, if anybody hasn't checked out Joe's photos, man, they are something they are something to see. So what is it? Is it the off corridor trails that you prefer more? Is it the corridor trails?
Brian:Is a is it a mixture of both? What's your preference?
Zeena:Shade can save your life. That's why we invested in the Grand Canyon Shade Tracker, a completely free tool that lets you see when and where you'll have shade on your hike no matter the trail, no matter the day, no matter the time. Plan your hike around maximizing your time in the shade and stay safe from the brutal canyon sun. The Grand Canyon Shade Tracker is brought to you free of charge by Hike in Grand Canyon, and you can find it at gcshadetracker.com. That's gcshadetracker.com.
Zeena:Go on. Hunt that shade and have a happier hike.
Joe:My dad veered a little off corridor. We did Grand View a couple times just down to Horseshoe Mesa, and we did Hermit once. Those were his off corridor hikes. I just thought those were great. I loved them.
Joe:I especially loved walking along the Tonto. When we went down to Hermit, we walked along the Tonto. It it was a, like, a four day backpack trip. One of the days, we hiked out to Boucher, which is only four and a half miles of Tonto, and it's similar to the Tonto between South Kaibab and Bright Angel, except that it's farther west. The canyon has a similar look and feel there.
Joe:You're not talking about way different geology or different layers or anything. But for me, it was the first time I really kind of looked at walking along the Tonfield, and I thought, this is amazing, the views you get, and you're going in and out of these canyons to get to your destination. And while my dad looked at it as, oh my god. We gotta go in and out of this canyon, and, you know, I can see where I wanna go on the other side of this canyon, but we gotta go a mile that way first and then back. He didn't like it.
Joe:And so, you know, we kinda went back to the corridor. But then in 2016, I kinda got reinvigorated to do this again. I had I hadn't done a lot of it in a while because I lived in Colorado. I had smaller small children for a while, and, you know, life gets in the way of of fun sometimes. Once I started going with my work colleagues and then added a few friends, we just decided, you know, let's just do something different every time rather than go to the same thing.
Joe:So we just started you know, we we did Hermit, then we did Newhance, and and we kinda branched out from there. It it wasn't really so much we were looking for a different challenge. We just wanted to see something new. I mean, if if you look at a map of Grand Canyon, you know, it's this big, let's say, and the corridor is just right there. It's really small compared to the entire thing.
Joe:And if you read something like The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher or A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarco, you know, you're following them on a a transverse trip through the canyon, not across it, but parallel to the river. And you hear them talk about these things, and you kinda wonder, wow. That sounds kinda cool. I I would like to see that. Or, you know, that thing he's talking about sounds like something I've seen, but but it's in a different place.
Joe:You know? You you just kinda wonder what what do these other areas look like? And so that's what we did. We just picked a new trail each time. And in fact, this year, when we go to Thunder River Deer Creek, this will be kind of the last of the major trails in the canyon that we will have hiked.
Joe:You know? There's still a few that we haven't that that are named trails. Like, there's South Canyon on the North Rim, but kind of in the Marble Canyon area. Haven't done that yet. You know?
Joe:So there's still, I mean, a ton that we haven't seen. We've still only seen a very small fraction. It's just been fun to expand our horizons and see new things.
Brian:What do you think the biggest difference is between hiking on the corridor trails and hiking off corridor?
Joe:The first thing that came to mind was people. You don't see that many people. We did the Royal Arch Loop a number of years ago, and for six days, we saw no one except the two paramedics that came because we had an accident in the group and had to have a helicopter rescue of one of our members. But other than the paramedics, we saw no one for six days. That was pretty incredible.
Brian:What what happened on the helicopter rescue?
Joe:Well, one of our members you know, we we had actually just gone through a pretty tricky climb down off of a dry waterfall, and we were almost down into the creek bed. And the the slope was really steep, and it was just covered with these little tiny pieces of gravel that were like billiard balls. And she just took a a slip on that while one of her feet was kind of wedged by a rock. I I didn't see it happen, but somehow she flipped, and it it snapped both of the bones in her leg. Oh.
Joe:And, yeah, it it was pretty horrible. And she was actually she and her husband were both used to be search and rescue in Arizona or in Colorado way back in the day. They hadn't done it for a while. So, you know, they kind of knew how to take care of themselves, and we had we had someone else on the trip who had just finished a wilderness first aid course. And while we all have some level of first aid, she was just excellent.
Joe:She just took care of everything. And and this this lady actually walked about a quarter mile down the creek, which we kept trying to tell her, we really think you need to go out, because we didn't know that he had broken anything. We didn't know what had happened happened for sure. But, you know, she she gave it a valiant attempt, made it about a quarter mile, and then decided, yeah. I there's just no way I can finish this hike because we still had four days ahead of us.
Joe:This was on day two of a six day trip. So
Brian:How'd you end up getting ahold of the authorities? Did have a Garmin? Did you have a Satphone?
Joe:Yeah. We had a we had a Garmin. We actually we didn't use the SOS because we wanted to we weren't sure how that worked, and you had a really interesting episode with one of the rangers, I don't know, earlier this year.
Brian:At least I had a
Joe:kind of blamed that. That was that was amazing to hear, because I really didn't know how it worked. In the future, I would just hit SOS and take prompts from there. We weren't sure how it worked, so we actually contacted a couple of our wives and asked them to contact someone at park service. Because the way the Garmin works is is you can essentially text with it.
Joe:You can't speak to someone. So we needed someone with a cell phone that we could communicate to. That's kinda what we thought we needed to do. And it it actually worked out really well. Probably probably took two hours for the helicopter to get there, and it whisked her off.
Joe:And, you know, she ended up in Flagstaff for the duration of our hike until her husband got out. Unfortunately, they weren't sure of the nature of the injuries, so they had a lot of extra equipment, so they didn't have room for her husband. And that was kinda rough on him because he now had four days to continue on a backpack trip knowing his wife is in the hospital. And, you know, we gave him free use of the Garmin to talk to her every day, and they had a lot of texts back and forth. And she did really well.
Joe:In fact, surprisingly, she didn't want any pain meds. She just enjoyed the helicopter ride out. And, you know, today, she's great. She's back hiking, backpacking, doing well. But, yeah, it was a scary situation.
Brian:I think this is a great point about the the difference between hiking on the corridor and hiking on hiking off corridor. I think this is this is an important thing to talk about a little bit because the thing about the corridor trails, if you were considering hiking, let's say, rim to rim this year, you're not gonna be able to do that. You're looking for an alternative, so you're like, oh, maybe I'll go off corridor. Well, I don't think you should consider that unless you have, number one, if you have a lot of Grand Canyon experience. Number two, you're hiking with someone who knows what they're doing and has been off corridor before.
Brian:You were obviously with a group of very experienced people that were prepared and knew what they were doing, but you mentioned, you know, the most attractive thing of being off corridor, people. There's no people. Right? Well, if you're out there by yourself or if there's two of you out there and you've forgotten something, you don't have first aid training, You didn't bring a communication device, which I'm sure happens every single day, and you get in a situation like that, it could go from becoming from being just a broken bone to being something that's gonna threaten people's lives because how's anyone gonna know you're out there? Right?
Brian:So being with people that that have experience, incredibly important out there. So off corridor, you know, your margin for error is far, far less. If you're on the corridor trails, okay. Now you can hike by yourself. Right?
Brian:Because people are never going to be too far away. Help is never gonna be too far away. You're not gonna be out there alone unless you get lost, which is very hard to do on the corridor trails. So that's why we say that if it's your first time in the canyon, stick to the corridor. If you're gonna go off corridor, go with someone who knows what they're doing, or go with a group that is going to be as prepared as as your group was.
Brian:Isn't that how you would look at something like this?
Joe:You know, I I generally agree with what you said. I think a lot of people that hike rim to rim or rim to river and back, not all, but a lot of them are not necessarily hikers all the time. You know, that isn't sort of one of their hobbies, let's say. You know? But it's a bucket list item, like you've said a million times.
Joe:People wanna do that. You know? You know? Okay. I'm I haven't done a lot of hiking, but I can spend a couple of months, get my legs ready.
Joe:I can go down to the river and back, or I can go across the canyon. Those people definitely, if you don't have general hiking experience, some route finding, almost just kind of common sense that you only get from experience Yeah. Then, yeah, you you should not be going off corridor unless you wanna take a a a short day hike down Grand View. You can go about a mile to a real pretty saddle. It's not difficult.
Joe:There's enough people that do that. You know, you're gonna be fine. Same with Hermit. You can go a couple miles to a spring. There's a little rest house there.
Joe:It's really pretty. A lot of people do that as a day hike. It's not overly taxing. But but you're right. If if if if this is something you don't do a lot, you don't have a lot of experience, you really you wish you shouldn't be going.
Joe:But there there are people, let's say people that hike a lot in the Pacific Northwest or people that hike a lot on the Appalachian Trail that are are just good hikers, strong hikers. They know how to kinda deal with things thrown at them. They may not know the specifics about hiking in the desert. And but as long as they do a little bit of research and are careful, you know, avoid August, July, probably June. If if they have a good hiking background, I think that they can do these things.
Joe:I mean, I didn't have I didn't really have a solid background in off corridor just because I had done a couple of trips with my dad way back in the eighties and seventies when my buddy and I decided we were gonna do this. We we actually we're at the the South Rim for a conference, an air quality conference with the park in 2015, and and Mark and I and a couple other people who were there decided, well, you know, we'd been there before. You know, we we knew Grand Canyon, but neither of us had been there recently. So we just took one afternoon, we just took a day hike down to 3 Mile House and came out. And and as we were coming up, Mark looked at me, and he said, you know, we should come back and backpack in the in the spring.
Joe:So that's what we did. That was really the start of kind of my rekindling of the obsession. I still was very obsessed with it, but hadn't done it in a while because I lived out of state and blah blah blah. But we decided you know, both of us had done the corridor trails, and we said, well, you know, we have a lot of camping experience, backpacking experience in general. We can do the Hermit.
Joe:No big deal. So we did. We actually hiked down Hermit across Tonto and up Bright Angel. And our experience on the Tonto that time was there were a couple places that were a little nerve racking. You know, you you have a 500 foot drop off the Tapeats down into a canyon, and there's not a lot between you and the edge of the cliff.
Joe:There's certainly no big trees like in movies that you can grab onto and save yourself. There's little tiny bushes and cactus with spines, so you don't wanna fall. You don't wanna you don't wanna have an issue, and it kinda gave us a queasy feeling. But year after year, as we started doing other trails, that got to be like, that's nothing. That's just that's just part of it.
Joe:We've done worse than that now. So part of it is just acclimating yourself to that exposure or route finding. I mean, I will say route finding, you really should have route finding experience, but I will also say that we've rarely had to use it much. There there are definitely times on almost every trip off corridor where we lose the trail for some reason. Usually, we pick it up again within sixty seconds or a couple minutes.
Joe:Occasionally, like this this year, I hiked the Gems, which is out in in in the the kind of west of the of the village. It's a long stretch of tanto. It's about 30 miles. I went with a guy who is in your group. Just he and I did it.
Joe:He had done it once before years ago. I had never done it. That stretch of the tanto in places just it would just disappear. You'd be walking along, and everywhere you looked, every space between little bushes looked like it could be the trail. Now, again, at first, that was a little disconcerting, like, oh, jeez.
Joe:What what do we do here? But it didn't take that long before you kind of got the the feel of, okay, what does the trail actually look like, and how do you distinguish it? And there were a couple places along there where we lost it for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and my Garmin was actually pretty helpful. In one case, we had veered hundreds of feet off, and it it pulled us back. And once we got back to it, we said, oh, yeah.
Joe:Here it is. But that Tano Trail is nothing like the Tano Trail between South Kaibab and Bright Angel. Between South Kaibab and Bright Angel, that's almost corridor like. Even though it's narrower and so forth, I mean, you almost can't lose it, except maybe at one of the drainages if you, you know, aren't kinda looking up and down and and and so forth.
Brian:Yeah. Boy, when you start saying route finding, that's that starts to make me just kinda sweat a little bit and get nervous. So that's something that definitely freaks me out a little bit. But, you know, Tonto, I think, is gonna be a big part on the corridor of people who are coming up with alternatives to their rim to rims. I mean, I know you feel as badly as I do for so many people that because of the fire have lost the ability to do their bucket list hike, their rim to rim hike that they were getting ready to do here in September and October.
Brian:We're bummed for everyone, but you probably share the same thought that I do, which is, hey, still come to the canyon. Right? There are so many incredible things that you can do on the South Rim on the corridor trails and cobble together something that's very similar to the distance and elevation change of a of a rim to rim. So let's talk about that.
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Brian:If you had a choice of a substitute for a rim to rim that someone had planned, what would you encourage them to do on the on the corridor trails?
Joe:So are we talking a one day rim to rim?
Brian:Yeah. Let's say one day rim to rim. Let's assume they're not gonna be able to camp. And we have so many things that we have to worry about right now with closures and everything like that. So so let's let's drill down even a little bit farther than that.
Brian:Let's say what what would you do until November when things start to hopefully open back up again? So what would be the substitute rim to rim for now?
Joe:Yeah. If if it were me and I hadn't been at the canyon ever before, or maybe had been there a couple of times, looked over the rim. If I didn't have a lot of experience, absolutely, I would go down South Kaibab across Tonto and up Bright Angel. You get to see virtually the best of those trails. I mean, you know, the the views on South Kaibab, when you kinda pop out of that that little canyon about a mile in, and all of a sudden, you've got views, you know, 180 degrees, it's it's phenomenal.
Joe:You cannot imagine that until you're there. I mean, hiking down the the red and white switchbacks, I loved that as a kid. You you look down on them, and you think, my god. I'm I'm gonna walk down that? And then you're walking down, and all of a sudden, the trail just turns color from red to white just, like, suddenly.
Joe:I mean, it's just so cool. And then you pop around the that whole red wall formation. You get down to the tanto. And, honestly, even from the the tanto down at tip-off, you're looking across at the North Rim. You're getting a different view than you get from the the rim if you were at, say, Yaqui Point.
Joe:You're seeing all the same things, but from, what, two, three thousand feet lower. Probably 3,000 feet lower. So you're just seeing it differently. All of a sudden, all those buttes you were looking down on in the canyon, you're now looking up at them, like Zoroaster and and and all the others. And the Tonto is really so different than either of the Rim To River trails So different.
Joe:Relatively easy. You know, it's some up and down with the hills. You go through Burrow Springs, which is kinda just marshy, But you cross the other one. That's really interesting because it's it's just sort of different. And then some of the views after you've crossed Pipe Creek and are coming around to Havasupai Gardens are just spectacular looking north because you see kind of that that rolling top of the Tono Plateau and and and those crevices, the canyons between them, it's just it's remarkable.
Joe:And then, I mean, Havasupai Gardens, that's just that's like a shangri la. You've got the the big trees, the shade. That's just a great place. You got water. You just right out of the spigot, you don't have to filter it and spend half an hour filling up your water supply.
Joe:It's wonderful. And then I know going up the bright angel isn't your favorite thing to do, but I love the bright angel. Probably a lot of it is nostalgia. I mean, the first time my dad took me up, there's actually a spot between the River Rest House and the Devil's Corkscrew that I always stop at and think of him because we stopped there back in 1974, hotter than blazes. You know, I'm still the kid running around.
Joe:He was dying of of heat and carrying everything. We stopped in in a little tiny nook of shade, and, we took our packs off. And he asked me to go wet his hat in the creek, which was like thirty seconds to walk down, but he didn't have the energy. He didn't wanna waste the energy. So I ran down, wet his hat in the creek, brought it back to him.
Joe:And, you know, that memory has stuck with me. There's probably five things I actually remember about that trip, and that one is just there because every time I come up, Bright Angel, I pass that spot, and I just I smile. You know? It's that's it. And I love the switch back to the top.
Joe:I know a lot of people don't. I am much slower now than I was when I was 20 doing those, but, you know, it's I still love them.
Brian:Hard to take as we slow down as we get older, isn't it, Joe?
Joe:You know, it is, but whenever I'm finishing a trip, you know, whatever trail you do, the last mile and a half is just god awful. It just is. It's every single trail is steep. Sure. Technically, some are steeper than others.
Joe:None of them are flat at the top. So every time I'm coming out, I'm thinking, what are we gonna do next year? And there's usually one of the people in my group that I'm hiking with, because I'm always one of the last ones, it's usually Mark and I, because he's a little bit older than I am. And we just say, well, you know, next year, maybe we do the Escalante route. Maybe we do Nankaweap off the North Rim.
Joe:We just start talking about it, and suddenly, you don't feel the pain. You don't feel that your lungs are kinda hurting. You know? You don't need as many rest stops. You're you're it gets the adrenaline going, and you just you feel a little better, and you're planning for next year, which is kind of exciting.
Brian:You've got this figured out, man. I'm right. I'm gonna I'm gonna take some notes here. You know, usually when I get near the top of Bright Angel, I start trying to feed off the energy of the people that are going down, the tourists. You You hear a lot of different languages.
Brian:And Yeah. That's so cool. Start smelling the cologne and perfume, so you know you're getting closer to the rim. But I like I like your plan better. Start thinking about the next one and planning the the next one.
Brian:So that hike that we're talking about goes South Kaibab four and a half miles down to the tip-off on South Kaibab. Then you cut across Tonto for another about four and a half miles to Havasupai Gardens, and then you turn up and go uphill from Havasupai Gardens to the rim. So the cool part about that is it's four and a half mile chunks. Four and a half miles down South Caiaphas to Tonto, four and a half miles across Tonto to Bright Angel, and then four and a half miles from Havasupai Gardens to the top. So it's easy to break it up and and think of it that way.
Brian:You lose about 3,200 feet of elevation on the way down to to the Tonto Junction at the tip-off, which is four and a half miles, and then it's just rolling terrain, as Joe mentioned, to Havasupai Gardens, and then you've got about a 3,000 foot climb up Bright Angel to the top. So that hike is no joke. If you think that that's some consolation prize in terms of the physical difficulty of it, you got another thing coming because you're still gonna get the same canyon experience of going downhill for so long, getting your legs beat up. Going across tanto is not the easiest thing in the world because you're putting more miles on tired legs already, So you're already gonna be pretty tired by the time you get to that junction and decide to turn up and head for the uphill for the the first time you're gonna be climbing is after nine miles of hiking. So very difficult hike, very rewarding hike.
Brian:I love that hike too, Joe. You talk about being out on Tonto. Well, first of all, the South Kaibab views. You know, I'm on record plenty of times of saying they're the best views I've ever seen anywhere in the world. Then you get on Tonto, and there's that totally different experience that I feel like you get on Tonto where everything is kind of off in the distance around you.
Brian:It's very open, it feels like. And it feels like the canyon walls in all directions are way off in the distance, and it feels like you're just this little pebble standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon all by yourself, and you don't get that sense on any of the other corridor trails. Do you get that sense too out there? Yeah.
Joe:That that is a good way to put it. On the on the trails, you always kinda have a sense that's where I'm going. I'm I'm going up there, or I'm going down there. You you kind of know. When you're on the tanto, because it goes in and out of those those side canyons, you're not exactly sure where you're going.
Joe:You're just kind of wandering. And and in a way, it's it it almost feels more adventurous. You know? It's fewer people, certainly Yeah. Than than, say, the top of Bright Angel.
Joe:You know? Even today, you can probably hike that section of tanto and not see anybody, if you're lucky.
Brian:And just the overwhelming silence out there. If you are able to just stop and not move and just listen, it's like the silence out there is almost deafening. Yeah. That tantal loop is is definitely one to consider. If you have a hike that's an alternative to rim to rim, that is a a very good one.
Brian:Number one would have to be rim to river, but we're not gonna be able to do rim to river until at least at least November 1. They say November 1 they're gonna reopen Phantom Ranch, and they're gonna reopen Bright Angel Campground, and they're gonna reopen South Kaibab from tip-off to the river, which has been closed since since July. But that does also say on that notification that they give you that that is very tentative. So we don't know if that Rims River is even gonna be an option for the rest of this year. So the safest thing to consider is is is mixing Tonto in.
Brian:And, Joe, I've heard this one. This one kinda blew me away because I don't know if anyone I've never heard of anyone doing this hike, but by necessity, for those that wanna get to the river, I'm hearing of a lot of people who are talking about going down South Kaibab and then across Tonto, like you and I have talked about. But then instead of turning up and going upright angel to the rim and being done after 13.6 miles, they're talking about turning right at Tonto when they get to Havasupai Gardens, and going all the way down to the river, which is 3.2 miles and another 1,500 feet or so of elevation. Now having done that hike, the one that I just described, but having done the hike many, many times going down South Kaibab and across Tonto, I think it would take an awful lot of mental fortitude to get to Havasupai Gardens, and then say, hey, we're gonna turn down and go 3.2 more miles down to the river, and then have to go all the way back up to where we started from, and then continue on to the to the rim. That's a lot to to bite off, but when you add that all up, it's right around 20 miles, and so you're almost at rim to rim distance, which is 21 miles if you go between North Kaibab and South Kaibab.
Brian:So that really could be just about a full rim to rim experience. Have you ever heard anybody doing that?
Joe:No. I mean, we've never had a situation where that was the only way to get to the river. I mean, you could just go down Bright Angel and come up Bright Angel, but why do that when you can do a loop? I I always would prefer a loop because you see new stuff the whole way. So I can see where people would still wanna go down South Kaibab for those views, come up Bright Angel.
Joe:And if they've got the energy and the training, go down and hit the river. I don't do rim to rims in a day or certainly rim to rim to rims in a day. I don't even do rim to river. I've never done a rim to river in a day just because I'm I'm just not that kind of a day hiker. But if you've prepared for a rim to rim, you should be able to do it.
Joe:It's it's similar distance and similar elevation. And I love that section, devil's corkscrew and down the canyon. I think that's really pretty, and it's so different than coming down the cliffs off Tipaw where, I mean, it's just so different being in that Canyon.
Brian:Yeah. I think the thing that just to keep in mind, everyone out there, if you are considering doing that, that is a major, major undertaking. I mean, you're gonna be right at 20 miles. I think it's 19.9 officially, but then if you go all the way past River Rest House and down to Pipe Creek to the to the beach down there, you're you're gonna be over 20 miles. You're gonna get close to that 21 mile full rim to rim distance.
Brian:So just know what you're getting yourself into. And if you're gonna be thinking about doing something like this in September, early October when it could still be hot, you've gotta keep all those things in mind as well because South Kaibab and Tonto are completely exposed. There's really nowhere to hide out there. You're gonna have no water between the South Kaibab Trailhead and Havasupai Gardens. Oh, and by the way, when you get to Havasupai Gardens, you're probably gonna have to double back a little bit to go up to the spigot and get water unless you wanna filter in one of the creeks farther below.
Brian:So that's gonna add mileage as well. I'm just telling you, you're gonna you're gonna be tired when you get done with the first two thirds of that hike. So turning down and going to the river, yes, you can do it. If you've trained for rim to rim, hey. Go for it.
Brian:Take it on. Let us know how it is because, again, I've never heard of anybody doing this hike before. Definitely doable, but you've gotta make heat mitigation your number one priority. You gotta make sure that you manage your water properly. It's gonna be a it's gonna be a long day.
Brian:It's gonna be a long day. Check the shade tracker, you know, all that good stuff. Make sure you're as prepared as possible. But, yeah, to your point, if you have trained for rim to rim, that's as close to rim to rim as you're gonna get. You know, going down Bright Angel, doing a round trip on Bright Angel, I'm gonna say no to that one.
Brian:What do you think?
Joe:It's it's It's okay. If that's the only thing I had to do, but if I had a choice, I think I think I would still rather go down South Kaibab across Tano and up Bright Angel than down Bright Angel to the river and back. Just because you see more you you cover more territory, see more different things.
Brian:Yeah. There is a lot more to see on a loop. And going down Bright Angel and Upright Angel, I just feel like you're leaving a lot you're leaving a lot on the If you were gonna do a round trip and stay on one of the trails, I would do it on South Kaibab as long as it's not an overly hot day. You can go down to Cedar Ridge a mile and a half down and a mile and a half back up and see the best of the views. Because between Uwa Point, which is nine tenths of a mile down, and Cedar Ridge, which is a mile and a half down South Kaibab, those to me are the best views that I've seen ever anywhere in the canyon.
Brian:They are world class, unbelievable. If you wanna go a little bit farther than that, you can go down to Skeleton Point. That's a six mile round trip. Three miles down the South Kaibab Trailhead, that's the first chance that you're gonna get to see the Colorado River. So that's cool.
Brian:That's a good hike. Venturing a little bit farther than that, another mile and a half down is tip-off where Tonto is. Then you're gonna have to deal with the red and white switchbacks that Joe talked about on your way back up. That's an extremely challenging day. That's about nine miles round trip.
Brian:But, if you're training for rim to rim distances, rim to river distances, very, very doable. All this to say, there are a lot of options. If you if you wanna stay up on the rim trail and, you know, that's 13 miles long, you can stay up on the rim trail and and and have a great canyon experience as well. But there is just so much to do, and you Joe surely agree with me when we say, still come to the canyon. It's still gonna be an unforgettable experience.
Joe:Absolutely. In fact, I was there last November. I was driving down to Phoenix for a wedding, and I planned it so I would have one day, one full day at the canyon. And I got there, and I thought, well, what am I gonna do with one day? Because I'm not a rim to rimmer.
Joe:I'm not a rim to riverer. So I I just thought, well, I'll do something. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing this. I just did a sample of each of the trails. I started at Tanner, and I did about the first mile of each of the trails, Tanner, New Hance, Grand View, South Kaibab, Bright Angel, and Hermit.
Joe:What a great idea. One of them, like Hermit, I went a bit further, and South Kaibab, I went a bit further than a mile. But it was it was kind of fun. Even though I had hiked them all before, it was really cool to see the differences. Because if you're out by Tanner, out by Desert View, the canyon looks fundamentally different.
Joe:It's much wider. There's a lot of red down there that you don't see in the inner gorge. You see a lot of river just winding through the bottom of the canyon. And then as as I progressed westward, that that bottom of the canyon narrows down, and once you hit once you go past New Hans, you've got the the Inner Gorge, which is the just that real narrow channel that the river is in. And it was really fun to just see to to sort of, in my head, compare all of those six trails by looking at all of them in one day.
Joe:And, you know, it was I did about eight miles that day, so it wasn't a ton, but it was a bit of driving between them. But it was it was it was kinda relaxing because you do a mile or two on a trail, and you're not that tired. And then you go on to the next one. You have a little snack while you're driving. But it was just really cool to be able to kind of, in real time, compare, like, wow.
Joe:This trail really is. I've always thought this was a rough trail, but dang it. Compared to the rest of them, yeah, this thing's horrible. You know? You just seeing them all at once, you you just get that a different perspective.
Brian:Of all the things that you've said so far, Joe, this is the one I'm stealing from you, man. This is this is a great idea. I love it.
Joe:It's a lot of fun.
Brian:I love
Joe:I could do it again. Yeah. I would do it again.
Brian:And I bet by the end of the day, you were still plenty woohp, weren't you?
Joe:Yeah. Well, I finished I mean, it was November, so the sun set early. I actually I I actually did South Kaibab, but then because the shuttle, you know, the timing of the shuttle, I went out to do Hermit before Bright Angel because I had to be able to come back by shuttle. I didn't wanna walk the rim trail at night. And so when I finally finished Bright Angel, it was fully dark.
Joe:I mean, fully dark. And I basically I basically went down you know how there's the big arc through the tunnel, and then there's another big arc that kinda goes back? I went about a mile down the trail to kind of a little viewpoint, and it was heavily twilight at that point. So it it was a long day. I started in Cameroon that morning.
Brian:Again, I am writing this down because, you know, me being the corridor rat that I am, I'm being forced off the corridor now just like we all are. So ideas like this are just gold, man. That sounds like that just sounds like a fun day to give you a little bit of a, you know, a sampler's platter of just kind of everything in the in the canyon. I I would be remiss if I did not ask, Joe. What does your wife think all this?
Joe:She's been down a few times with me, you know, long, long time ago. She's been on two river trips with me. I don't think she gets too nervous when I'm gone because she knows I've been doing it for a long time. I did my first real solo trip in the canyon earlier this year because everyone in my group, we had a a permit for six. Everybody dropped out.
Joe:So I just thought, well, I'm going anyway. And that was a little strange. I I realized I was competent enough to do it, but I didn't like not having anyone to talk to. In fact, I I met JD on the way. He and his wife were coming in to Clear Creek the day I was coming out.
Brian:JD Yingling from our group?
Joe:Yeah. Yeah. And and we we each knew we were both gonna be there and possibly overlap. We met on the trail, and we talked for fifteen, twenty minutes. And it was like the highlight of my day because I saw another person.
Joe:You know? It was like, oh, human communication. That was
Brian:really cool.
Joe:But I don't know that she likes me to do solo so much, but I always have my Garmin. Even when I hike locally, it's just it's in my backpack. I'm old enough. You know? I'm I'm still very healthy, but the older you get, things can happen, and you're you're just not as strong or sometimes as bright as you were when you were younger.
Joe:So it's good to have that as just a backup. I can reach her. I can reach help. It's it's just become part of my gear.
Brian:Joe, this has been fun, man. So grateful that you took the time to to come on and and talk to us. Have obviously, you know, been aware of you for a long time in our group, and I hope you'll remain in there helping people with their with their adventures. It's fun. It's very fulfilling.
Brian:I know you feel the same way I do. It's very fulfilling to to help people have their best possible Grand Canyon experience. So I hope you keep doing that, and thank you for sharing all your experiences today. And I'm sure that we will hike together someday, and I'm I'm even more sure that we will we'll talk again soon. So thank you so much.
Joe:Thank you. Thank you, Brian.
Brian:That was Joe Adlock. And, hey, if you're in our group and you think there's a question Joe can answer for you, just tag him in there, and I'm certain that you will get a response. That is how our group rolls. The Grand Canyon hiker dude show slash hiking Grand Canyon Facebook group. Get in there.
Brian:Get involved in the conversation. We'd love to have you. Well, much of Joe's Canyon success comes from hatching a plan and sticking to it, that just so happens to be what's on coach Arnie's mind in this week's training tip.
Arnie:We are hot and heavy into the fall canyon season. So many of you are out there just experiencing this wonderful adventure in the Grand Canyon. So I want to give you a little bit of wisdom here. Stick to your plan. Trust your training.
Arnie:All of you have been going through this for months and months, sometimes years, to get ready for this experience. Now is not the time to make drastic changes in your training, in your nutrition, in your shoes. I mean, I'm talking to all kind of people about, hey. I'm gonna start using poles, I'm gonna start doing this, or I'm gonna try these new shoes, or maybe I should do these electrolytes. And I'm thinking to myself, no.
Arnie:Unless you have time, now is not the time to make major changes. Little changes, of course, but not major changes if you don't have more than a couple weeks. You've gotta trust your training. Everybody will start to panic right now a little bit. And don't let that undo all the good work you've done.
Arnie:Look back. Look back at all the wonderful things you've done in your training, all the things you've learned about yourself and what your body can do, about your mind and what it can do. Don't fall for the trick of somebody else has a better plan than you. Somebody else has better nutrition than you. Somebody else has this and that better than you.
Arnie:Don't fall for it. It's a myth. You know what's best for you right now. Stick to the plan. No major changes.
Arnie:And let's get through this, and then you're gonna learn from it. Whatever you learn, we can change. We can make changes to that, and you can be better. Alright, guys. This is coach Arnie.
Arnie:I love you. If you get this before your adventure, I hope it helps. And if it's after your adventure, let's start planning your next one. Love you, guys.
Brian:Coach Arnie. Arnie Fonseca junior, our Kenyan coach and exercise physiologist. His contact information is in the show notes and trust me when I tell you, he wants to hear from you. So even if you wanna give him a phone call, he's one of those old school dudes that'll actually answer the phone or call you back. Both kind of lost arts these days in the era of social media and and texting.
Brian:But, yep, Arnie's old school. Alright. That's it for now. My name is Brian Special encouraging you as always to go hike the canyon. Take that first step.
Brian:Embrace the journey. And when you get there, whether it's for time goals or taking your time, just hike your own hike and savor every step in the magnificent Grand Canyon. We'll see you next time on the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show powered by Hikin'. Hiking plus kinship, that's Hikin'. Join the movement in our Hikin' Grand Canyon Facebook group and at hikin'.club.
Brian:That's hikin.club.