Epic Hikes of the World ( PDFDrive )

© Sandeep Thomas | Getty
cloud fills the Grand Canyon as seen from Yaki Point
Taught by two long-haired graduate students, this course’s big appeal was that
its weekly classroom sessions would be complemented by a semester-ending
Thanksgiving trek under the full moon into the depths of America’s greatest natural
wonder. I signed up on the spot. Two months later, on a chilly late-autumn evening,
I found myself driving through the night from the San Francisco Bay Area to the
canyon’s South Rim, serenaded by the Grateful Dead in a car full of like-minded
renegades.
We arrived just as dawn was sending red shoots through the steely November
sky, illuminating a couple of inches of snow on the canyon rim and the endless folds
of the chasm beyond. Starting from the New Hance trailhead, we were to chart a
precipitous 7-mile (11km) course down to the Colorado River via the Red Canyon
ravine, returning via the more gradual Tonto and Grandview Trails. Our instructors
had chosen this route – one of dozens that descend into the canyon – because of
its varied geological interest and its relative efficiency in reaching the bottom. The
pitfalls of this approach soon became apparent: this entire first day would be
down, down, relentlessly down from rim to river. (For several weeks afterwards, the
toll on my knees was palpable; as even climbing a simple staircase back home
became excruciatingly painful.) Once you get below the rim, the world changes.
Sheltered from the harsher conditions of the high-altitude Colorado Plateau, the
trail soon exited the snow and we entered a world of layered desert landscapes,
where the intricacies of Kaibab limestone, Coconino sandstone and Bright Angel