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Welcome to the home of Grand Canyon hiking. The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show helps hikers plan, train for, and better understand hikes below the rim, from short day hikes to Rim-to-Rim, Rim-to-River, Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Trail, South Kaibab Trail, North Kaibab Trail, backpacking trips, heat safety, water planning, shuttle logistics, and more.
Host Brian Speciale shares Grand Canyon stories, trail-tested advice, safety lessons, interviews, and community wisdom from first-timers, seasoned hikers, rangers, Canyon insiders, and everyday people who have learned powerful lessons below the rim.
Whether you are planning Rim-to-Rim, dreaming of Phantom Ranch, preparing for your first Grand Canyon hike, or looking for honest stories of triumph, tragedy, mistakes, and trail-won wisdom, this podcast will help you hike your best hike.
Listeners call the show “an invaluable resource,” “the perfect mix of inspiration, realistic caution, and tips for success,” and “a welcoming place and wealth of information.”
New episodes weekly. Join the conversation in the Hike Club Grand Canyon private Facebook group.
Alright. We are going to try something new. Welcome to Canyon Confessionals, a bonus series from the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show. Real hikers, real mistakes, hard lessons from a place that does not care how good your plan sounded above the rim. These are your confessions.
Brian:These are even gonna be my confessions. You submitted them through our Hike Club Grand Canyon Facebook group, and we appreciate you doing so. I will read the confession and try to add my own 2¢. I can probably relate to most of them because if there's anyone who's made a mistake below the rim of the Grand Canyon, it is me, and I continue to do so. I think by being transparent with you all, my hope is that it helps all of us learn.
Brian:One thing I'm very, very good at is continuing to make mistakes. I've got more than a thousand miles now under my belt below the rim, and I still find that I make mistakes almost every time I strap my rim to rim pack on and and drop in. So it's good to share them with you, and hopefully you can learn something from them, I can learn what not to do again. Today, bad plans, hard lessons, and why you can't wing it in the Grand Canyon. Reminder, this is not official park guidance.
Brian:Always check current NPS conditions, water status, weather, shuttle schedules, closures, all that stuff. You know the drill before you drop in below the rim. Alright. Our very first comment comes from Becky Rumfeldt. The mistakes are underestimating the canyon.
Brian:It demands your respect and you must give it. Be prepared and embrace the challenges. Yes, Becky, that is true. Plan, plan, plan. The blueprint is out there.
Brian:You just have to kind of cobble it together and put in the work to do so, and you will still, trust me, have plenty that you will wish you did differently. But there is a direct correlation between taking this all seriously and having a great experience. Look, I think if you're in our Height Club Grand Canyon Facebook group, if you're listening to the podcasts, if you're on YouTube, if you're doing your research, you are way ahead of the game. When we say taking seriously, I think that's what we mean more than anything else. You get the education, you get the information, and then you make your own decisions on what plan works best for you.
Brian:So take it seriously, and you should have a good experience. Along those lines, Christy Fargasson says, plan, plan, plan. I've hiked below the rim a couple of times, including a rim to rim, and I 100% contribute that success to becoming canyon obsessed before I ever set foot on Grand Canyon trails. You can't wing this one. It's different from any hiking that I've done, and I have hiked a lot.
Brian:And then Christy lists out seven things she thinks you should do. Number one, hey, like this one. Listen to all the Hiker Dude podcasts. Thank you for that, Christy. Number two, stalk the Grand Canyon Facebook groups, but especially, I'm adding this one, the Hike Club Grand Canyon group, because there's no group better than ours.
Brian:Number three, become super familiar with the NPS website. Number four, train. Number five, practice the food and water pieces. Number six, test your gear. Number seven, be flexible and plan for the unexpected.
Brian:And then she says many others. I'm sure there are weaknesses in my planning the Canyon will eventually reveal. I'm gonna give it plenty of chances to anyways. Yes, Christy, that is true. The Canyon will never ever stop revealing your mistakes, and those are some very, very sound pieces of advice.
Brian:Just in January this comes to mind. In January, I hiked down the Tanner Trail and did a rim to river with Doctor. Tom Myers. Now we talk about Doctor. Myers a lot on the show.
Brian:He's been on the show many times before. Kevin Fedarco calls him Mr. Grand Canyon. He's hiked the length of the Grand Canyon with his son Wes. He was more than thirty years a physician at Grand Canyon Clinic.
Brian:This really is Mr. Grand Canyon. You know what Tom and I did? We're supposed to be two experienced Grand Canyon hikers, right? Well, this was a January rim to river down Tanner, which is a sparsely traveled trail, to say the very least.
Brian:And when we got down to the river in Tanner Rapids and turned around to head back out, we realized that we both had forgotten our headlamps. I mean, how do you make a mistake that basic? Right? But both of us had. Tom's were back home charging at his home in Flagstaff.
Brian:Mine at least made it into my car. They were in the console charging as well, but we probably could have gotten away with it by using our phones, but it was not a good situation to be in. The days are short. In January, there was snow on the ground at the higher elevations, and just very smart of us. So I wish we would have had a checklist, that's one thing that you can do is put a checklist together, and so there's no way that you will forget anything, or shouldn't forget anything if you just follow that.
Brian:I have a checklist that I typically follow on the Notes app in my phone that just says Canyon Checklist, and it's for different times of the year and things that I might need. And I do, before I leave the house, typically go through that to hope hopefully not forget anything. I wish I would've done that at the car before we dropped in on Tanner, but you can't over prepare and you can't double check enough, or even if you're with someone, go through a checklist together. That can even help. So again, to Christy's point, plan, plan, plan, and even then, you're probably gonna make mistakes, and the Canyon's gonna let you know when you do.
Brian:Okay. Bella Lamall says, Thinking you can make the shuttle after hiking rim to rim from the South Rim to the North Rim, that's a mistake she made. We saw a lot of people sleeping in the lodge lobby because they missed the shuttle. Yes. And now, Bella, the lodge lobby doesn't even exist.
Brian:It was always kind of a safety net. If you popped out on North Kaibab and you didn't have plans, you hadn't planned it or thought it through properly, that you can make that two mile walk to Grand Canyon Lodge, and hopefully figure something out. Now, there is nothing. You've got nowhere to go. There's no infrastructure up there on the North Rim at all.
Brian:So that makes this even more important, that hiking to a shuttle is a dangerous game. Right? It really is. Because if you've never been in the canyon before, trying to time that out, you know, say you drop in at 04:00 in the morning from South Kaibab, and you gotta catch a shuttle at, I don't know, two, 02:30, something like that, but you've got a hard deadline that you have to hit. I cannot even imagine the stress that you would be under having never hiked the Grand Canyon before.
Brian:Even if you have hiked the canyon before, you don't know what that day's gonna bring. Right? How are you gonna time that out? How do you know how long it's going to take you? Until you've hiked in a canyon, which is a very, very unique style of hiking, there's just no way to tell with any certainty how long it's going to take you.
Brian:So suddenly, you pop out thirty minutes late, that shuttle's gone. Now what do you do? Right? So the words of wisdom here are to always hike to your car or hike to your accommodations. Especially now with the North Rim Lodge, the Grand Canyon Lodge gone, it makes more and more sense to hike from the North Rim to the South Rim, because you end up in Grand Canyon Village if you come up Bright Angel Trail, you're in civilization, or your car's there, and you get in your car and go to your hotel, drive back to Flagstaff, whatever it is.
Brian:So it might make more sense these days to hike from north to south, and if you are hiking from south to north, well, hopefully hopefully, you've figured out a way to park your car at the trailhead, and then shuttle, or be driven back around to the South Rim, and do it that way so you are hiking to your car. But hiking to a shuttle, dangerous ballgame, not something that I would wanna do. I have passed people on North Kaibab countless times, you know, in the middle of the night, people who had started at 04:00 in the morning, and they'd been out there for eighteen hours already. They thought it was gonna take them twelve hours, and they still had a long way to go. So you don't know what's gonna happen.
Brian:Hike to your car. Hike to your accommodations. That is certainly the smartest thing you can do, and maybe maybe the number one thing you should build your entire itinerary around when it comes to hiking rim to rim. Okay. Joe Giles, he says, rim to rim, number one, brought enough food for a five day stay.
Brian:I don't think personally ever solve this one, Joe. I can relate to that. Number two, hauled lots of water instead of stopping at water stops and drinking deeply, thus requiring less water between stops. Number three, thinking I would want a big meal at El Tavar instead of just shower, drinking water out of a glass and a clean bed. Number four, emphasizing perfect weight rather than an ideal level of fitness.
Brian:Those are Joe Giles' mistakes. As for bringing enough food, Joe, yeah, I don't think I'll ever solve this one. I always end up with more food than I wanted to at the end of a hike. I never eat as much as I think I'm gonna eat. When you're exerting yourself out there, I don't think you're ever as hungry as you think you will be, so practice what you want to eat, bring what you think you are going to want to eat.
Brian:You're probably going to overpack no matter what we say, so you've got to kind of just learn that along the way, and we are all different. As for thinking you would want a big meal at El Tavar instead of just a shower, drinking water out of a glass and a clean bed, yeah, man, I can relate to that so, so much. Back in January of, what was it, 2025, when coach Arnie and Buffy Park and myself did a winter rim to rim to rim because there wasn't any snow to speak of on the on the North Rim, and so we just thought it was a once in a lifetime almost opportunity to go north to to do it to do an r three without having to worry about the snow in January. We had a little bit of trouble, let's say, on the way out, on the way up South Kaibab, and it was cold, and we struggled our way out of there. This is coach Arnie and I.
Brian:And when we finished, coach did something very thoughtful. He had called ahead to some friends of his, Angie and JD, and they were waiting for us at the South Kaibab Trailhead, and then they were gonna take us and and cook up some steaks and stuff for us. Okay. Let me just tell you something. This is one of the something that I still feel really bad about, because I know Angie really well.
Brian:She's on Black Mountain all the time. She does some things with my wife. So I know Angie, and Angie, this is the first time I met her, and she saw, without a doubt, the worst side of me possible. If I was gonna make a bad first impression, and I would never try to do that, this was a bad first impression, because she was waiting at the top of South Kaibab at the top of the chimney, and there was nobody around. It was after midnight.
Brian:It was freezing cold. I had been hallucinating. Coach and I were going through it, man. And she's up there cheering, Woo hoo, you guys are there. Come on.
Brian:Yeah, let's go. All chipper and happy and encouraging. And when I say I didn't want to hear it, I did not want to hear it. I don't care who was up there at that time, I was at the end of a horrific basically hiking experience, and I could not fake it. And so I just kinda was just grumbly and mumbly and grouchy, and I really regret that, because that's not how you wanna present yourself, but the Canyon can do that to you.
Brian:It was like twenty two hours in, and it was, oh god, we were so miserable. Anyway, Angie, I apologize for that. I've apologized to you in person, and yes, to Joe's point, you might not feel like eating a big fancy meal and celebrating. You may just want to get in a hot shower and go to bed, which is something that I wanted to do, and often do want to do at the end of intense Grand Canyon hikes. Okay.
Brian:Luciana Zubich says, my mistake was watching too many videos of people who hike South Kaibab to Phantom Ranch to Bright Angel, so Rim to River, and still being surprised how big the mule ruts are on South Kaibab. Yeah, they can be. And also, that kind of depends on the time of the year too, because in the winter and in the spring, when there's lot of moisture on the ground, those things really do get rutted out and full of water and other things, and yeah, they can they can get pretty nasty. It's tough to prepare for them. Very easy to turn an ankle out there on those.
Brian:I remember one time I was doing a rim to river, and on the first switchback down the chimney on South Kaibab, I twisted my ankle bad. And it was one of those things where I just kept hobbling on it for a little bit, you know, keeping going down the chimney, and I was like, know, I should turn around and get out of here because I've had enough sprained ankles to know this one was not good, but nope. I had to tough it out. It hurt the whole way, but I had to I had to still finish. It probably wasn't a good idea, but yeah, be careful with those ruts.
Brian:Try to stay to the side of the trail, especially on South Kaibab and Bright Angel, and stay away from those ruts, but it's kind of a double edged sword because you wanna be looking around, looking at these iconic, incredible views out there. But if you look up too much and keep walking, eventually, you might take a bad step and get yourself in trouble, so you have to really pay attention to what you're doing when you're hiking the Grand Canyon. Okay. The last one, it's more of a long one. Let's see.
Brian:It is from Linda Ortner. She says, I don't know if I would say this is a mistake, but having two nights at Phantom Ranch was a dream come true. Hiking down South Kaibab and pounding my feet for seven plus miles, yet not taking the day of rest as a day of R and R because we wanted to take everything in. So I think she's saying that maybe she should have rested after that pounding down South Kaibab and didn't. So we did the 14 mile round trip to Ribbon Falls, so that's what they did on their off day, so to speak.
Brian:Having to get out of the canyon, but also wanting to take everything in. We did Tonto to Bright Angel. I'm not sure how my body did it. Well, I also did a test hike of approximately four miles round trip on Bright Angel the day before heading to Phantom Ranch. My feet were not happy with me, 50 miles in four days, but I'm no worse for the wear now, and I would probably do the same again.
Brian:She says, This page and the podcast helped me prepare in so many ways, food, hydration, trail conditions, necessary equipment, clothing needed, and most of all, the training tips. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for that, Linda. I'll bet in hindsight there are no regrets, just another reason to get yourself in the best shape you can so you can do all the things when you get into the canyon. Rest is important, is important, of course, but from Phantom, it is manageable to do all that.
Brian:Now I do wanna say something about the four mile round trip they did on Bright Angel the day before. That's probably not something that I would recommend. That's a little too far. I think if you were gonna do a test hike, so to speak, maybe go down South Kaibab, maybe as far as Cedar Ridge, a mile and a half down, and then get yourself back out of there. But, man, I would not wanna put any extra miles on my legs, or do as little as possible in the days before a big hike like that, because you know, you're gonna be excited, you're gonna be hopped up on adrenaline, and you might think that, oh, we'll just, this is so amazing, we'll just go down four miles, and then come back out, and you know, every extra mile on your legs counts, and if you're not used to canyon hiking, you probably aren't aware of how much damage the downhill can do to you.
Brian:All I'm trying to say is you might want to be as fresh as possible before you start on your actual centerpiece showcase hike, the big hike, the hike you came for. So I wouldn't waste too much time going down into the canyon the day before, if you do make it a short one, be intentional about that. I did a hike with Joe Adlock, who everybody knows from our group, he is such an important part of everything that we do, such a Canyon veteran. We did a one day rim to river down New Hance last fall, and New Hance is probably the toughest trail, at least one of the toughest trails on the South Rim. And Joe had never done a one day rim to river before, so this was a big undertaking.
Brian:And he had told me, while we were on the hike that he had done a big hike, like, God, don't know what it was, four to six to eight miles, something like that on Hermit the day before. And I remember saying to him, Joe, man, you know, don't I think if I would've known you were planning to do that, I would've encouraged you strongly not to so that you were fresh for this hike. And I think it caught up to him a little bit, but anyway, I would try to be as fresh as possible for your Grand Canyon adventure. You put in all the work, don't make it any harder on yourself than you have to by doing too much before the hike. Try to stay off your feet, stay up on the rim, just take it all in, enjoy the views, but I wouldn't worry too much about hiking, doing it doing anything that's gonna put any additional stress on your legs.
Brian:So Alright. Well, you know what? That was fun. I I think we should do more of these in the future. Maybe we'll even get audio and video involved, so I'm not sitting here having to read all this, and we can just kind of react to what you guys say.
Brian:So please let me know what you think of this concept. We'll post about it in the Facebook group, and if you could leave us a rating or review on whatever podcast platform you are listening to, that goes a long, long way in helping us helping us get this content in front of the people that need it. Because when I say that we are here to help you hike your best hike, I mean, it's true. It fuels everything that we do on the Grand Canyon Hiker Dude show and in the hiking Grand Can or I'm sorry, the Hike Club Grand Canyon Facebook group and also with our brand Hiking, which produces some of the best hiking backpacks that you could ever imagine. I hope you will go check those out as well.
Brian:Again, this won't be a replacement for our full episodes, but just another way to add value and talk Canyon. So keep those confessions coming. For now, I'm Brian Special. We'll see you next time. Be safe out there.