Day 2 – Roundtrip to the North Rim

Start: Cottonwood Campground

End: Cottonwood Campground via RT to/from North Rim

Total Distance: 13.6mi

Total Elevation Gain: ~4511 ft

We woke with the sun to a calm morning and quiet campsite. Other than hearing one group hike by, the rest of the campground seemed to still be asleep.

Packing up, we hit the trail around 7:30am, similar to yesterday. While there was no particular rush, we had another 14 mile day ahead of us, this time with 7 miles of climbing to reach the north rim.

The trail was gentle as we hiked out and I took in the colors of the canyon walls, the sky, the vegetation. Above us, canyon walls were striped with rusty reds and grayish whites, the red rock barren while the white was dotted with bushes and trees.

Fall in the canyon.

Along the base of the canyon, trees were still bursting with fall colors. While most of the trees above the rim had already put on their show of autumn colors and since shed their leaves, the warmer temperatures at the base of the canyon meant some trees were still popping with their brightest yellows. They stood out among the green leaves like splashes of paint across the landscape.

As we hiked, the brightest of the sun’s rays lit the higher walls of the canyon, the light slowly filtering down the rocks. Our hike upwards also meant the river was taking more plunges through the canyon, creating several waterfalls along its downslope journey. Another waterfall cascaded down the canyon walls surrounded by the bright yellow splashes of trees.

Much of the trail throughout the day hugged the canyon walls, some of the areas with steep drops into the canyon below. These are my favorite types of trails. While the trail went mostly uphill on its journey to the rim, there were also some nice flat(ish) contours along the canyon walls, which make for beautiful scenes of trails hinged along rock walls, with open views of the canyon to the south and the rim wall to the north.

Trails hugging the canyon walls en route to the North Rim.

A little under two hours into our hike, the trail crossed a bridge to the other side of the canyon. The bridge would serve as an unlabeled marker of sorts, as the switchbacks became steeper and the trail more continuously rocky once we crossed.

Throughout the hike, we went by several other hikers and trail runners headed both to and from the north rim. We’d seen one woman on her run earlier in the morning. She now seemed to have collected a runner friend at the north rim and they were very speedily making their way back down into the canyon.

Time to climb.

We also ran into several groups that we had seen yesterday, most of them having camped at Cottonwood and now on their way to the north rim. One of the larger groups we had met had headed out of camp an hour before us (this had been my natural alarm clock), and we’d caught them up a ways before the bridge. They were all carrying obscenely large packs which always makes me wonder what they could possibly have with them. I think most likely a lot of backpackers are using car camping type gear when they head into the woods, making for some very heavy hauls, and consequently, a very slow hike on the long uphill to the rim.

With such a beautiful day, everyone was happy and cordial, exchanging pleasantries when passing other hikers. “You couldn’t find the escalator, either?” a couple of older gentleman joked with us as we made our way up the switchbacks. Ha. Everyone’s a comedian up here.

Is it possible we are getting further from the north rim?

It seems there is a strange phenomenon when hiking toward a high point… that it can both seem like you are very close and yet also seem that there is still a long way to go. We felt this way until about the last mile, at which point we’d completely lost view of the top and knew we must be somewhere just beneath it. Either that or it was an apparition and I’d never see it at all.

As we climbed, there were beautifully colored striations along some of the highest rock faces of the canyon. Vertical stripes of gray, burnt yellow, and sage green. Like a thin striped wallpaper. Or toothpaste.

Almost there…

Somewhere around the last mile, we entered into a forest of pine. The desert plants had been left behind for a more winter-hardy forest.

The sand along the trail at the upper reaches of the canyon also became fine like beach sand, a reminder that this area was once ocean. Fossils of sea life are often found in the higher reaches of the canyon, some of which we saw at the geology museum just a couple days ago.

After the last few long switchbacks, we reached the top. With no infrastructure or facilities on the north rim, we were greeted by little more than a parking lot, an informational board, and a drinking water tap, which was now off for the season.

I walked across the parking lot to use the one facility available: the pit toilets. Thanks NPS.

Halfway done.

The temperature along the north rim was noticeably colder than the hike up, and we didn’t linger. After snapping a quick pic to commemorate our visit, we made our way back down the trail, stopping at a sunny overlook we had seen on the way up to take a break for lunch.

Here we met a couple of hikers that had started their hike from the south rim at 12:30am and were hoping to finish the full R2R2R hike in 24 hours. They professed to be slow hikers, but said that the early morning hours had actually been quite beautiful. We would pass them later in the day on our way back to Cottonwood Campground. Unsure if they succeeded in their time goal.

Lunch time.

Another woman there was running the trail and had started at 4am, now taking a short snack break before she continued back to the south rim. She had run the trail one-way before but this was her first time doing the round trip. She was hiking quite a bit, she said, but felt pretty good. While we’d seen only a couple of runners out yesterday, we’d saw quite a few today. Shawn is keen to give the run a go someday. Me, not so much.

As we made our lunches, two women that we had chatted with briefly on the hike to the rim joined us at the overlook. They were also doing the round trip from Cottonwood Campground to the north rim and back today. Otherwise, they were doing seven mile days, taking two days to reach Cottonwood CG from the south rim, and doing the same on the way back, camping at Bright Angel each time. The pair was a mother-daughter duo. The mother lived on the road with her husband while the daughter now lived in Washington. They had tried to do this hike at the same time last year, but with a blizzard in the forecast they had altered their plans. We talked a bit about other hikes and some of the areas the woman and her husband traveled through in their motorhome.

Back into the canyon we go.

We also talked a bit about the forecasted weather patterns for the coming winter, at which point another hiker from New Hampshire was quick to pipe in with his unsolicited projections. Cool man, thanks.

We wrapped up lunch as the winds picked up a bit, our sunny spot growing much cooler.

Bluebird day.

Descending the trail was almost as much work as going up, our legs sore from the last day and a half of hiking, the trail full of a lot of jolting steps and rock erosion barriers to step over.

Heading back down into the canyon the temperatures eventually warmed again, despite the large bank of clouds that would occasionally obscure the sun. The clouds lent a little something to the blue sky though, some depth. I often find cloudless skies to be quite boring. Clouds add that little bit of interest and intrigue. Like… does that cloud look like a dinosaur? Or… will it turn into a thunderstorm? We shall see.

Back to the bridge.

But, it remained a beautiful day, albeit a bit cooler than yesterday. We passed familiar landmarks from our way up, keeping up a bit quicker clip on the way down.

At one point, Shawn hiked ahead for a bit. As I rounded a corner, I ran into three guys we had seen earlier on the trail. The escalator guys.

“I know where your other pole is,” one of the guys said.

I laughed. Shawn and I were sharing a set of hiking poles, each carrying only one. He was ahead of me at that point and had likely strode right past these gentleman not long ago.

“It’s going to stay about 1000 ft in front of you,” he chuckled. I thanked him for his keen spotting.

Things could be worse.

In fact, I ran into Shawn (and the other pole) not far up the trail where he sat waiting for me. We continued together the rest of the hike back to the campsite, passing by the Manzanita rest stop, and finishing our stroll lower into the canyon back at Cottonwood around 2:15pm.

The glory of today is that we had no camp chores to do. Our tent and sleep stuffs already set up. This meant we had even more time to kill until the one thing that would require any sort of preparation: dinner.

We made a trip down the the river again to soak (read: ice) our feet and rinse the dust off our legs, sitting in the sun for a bit. The only other interesting bit of entertainment for the evening was when a buck and a fawn came partially down a slope opposite our campsite. They eventually disappeared back into the mountains and we were left to watch butterflies flit about.

No bad views.

For dinner I made one of my favorite backpacking meals: mac and cheese with bacon bits. This meal requires a bit more love than some of the other backpacking meals I make, but it’s worth it. Shawn had another dehydrated camping meal, a risotto, though unfortunately the wind blew his open bag onto the ground (before he put water in it), so he lost about half of it. He still had plenty of snacks and such to round out his meal, but it was a bit of a bummer.

After dinner, everything stashed away and one last trip to the pit toilet complete, we were in our tent before dark once again. Once the sun sets, hiker midnight has arrived and it is time to manufacture the ZzzZzzs.