Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim run, May 18, 2011
It was truly an amazing adventure running the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim (R2R2R). I had the pleasure to run the Grand Canyon with Carolyn Goluza. Below is my account of the trip and what I saw and felt on the canyon run.
Leading up to the run
About 6 weeks before the run Carolyn asked me if I would be interested in running the R2R2R with her, a bucket list run for her. I was excited to join her on the run, but nervous due to the fact that I had been training for road and trail races that were substantially shorter than the 78km R2R2R run. I’m always up for an adventure, so I jumped at the chance. We agreed that we’d take our time to take in the beauty of the Grand Canyon.
So the plan was set, we booked our flights to Las Vegas and started to read as many reports on running the R2R2R so we could plan our trip. It seemed the best times to run the Grand Canyon was in May or Oct/Nov…the summer is too hot! We decided on May…plenty of water along the route and it shouldn’t be too hot then. I checked the weather forecast leading up to our trip and the day (May 18th) we planned our run looked good…clear skies, cool at the rims and high 20’s Celsius at the canyon bottom. My only concern was it was going to be too hot at the bottom of the canyon. I packed accordingly for the weather; only at the last minute did I decide to throw in some warmer clothes. As I was travelling to the Vancouver airport to meet Carolyn, she texted me saying that the weather had changed. The forecast was now for a cold front moving in the day we planned the run. We were going to be greeted with rain, wind, snow at higher levels and possible thunder and lightning…crap! I didn’t pack for this weather…I hope I had enough warm clothes!
The trip to Las Vegas went great…a short flight and no line ups at check in or customs. I wish they were all like that! We stayed in Vegas for the night and the next morning we headed off to the Grand Canyon, a 5 hour drive away. On route we took in the Hoover Dam and the new Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. It was great to see these structures, but I was amazed how low the water level was in Lake Mead, almost at critical storage levels. We finally made our destination, Williams, Arizona, a 45 min. drive from the Grand Canyon south rim where we were going to start our run the next day. We settled in at our motel and went looking for a decent place to eat. We were told by a local of a restaurant around the corner that had good food. Yeah right! What a disappointment, the main course at best was average and the dessert was terrible! Lemon meringue pie that must have been a least a week old, chewy with a watery crust…blah! We headed back to the motel and got ready for our run the next morning. I recently purchased the Salomon S-Lab hydration pack and Carolyn was using her Nathan hydration pack. We managed to cram all our gels, shot blocks, fruit bars and electrolyte tablets into our packs for our estimated 12-13hr run along with water in our bladders…geez, our packs were heavy!
The Run
The alarm went off at 4am…surprisingly I felt pretty rested. We loaded up the car with our gear and headed to Grand Canyon Park. On entering the park we paid a $25 day use park entrance fee and drove to the Bright Angel trail head (elev. 6860 ft). We arrive at the trail head at 5:45am… I looked across the expanse of the Grand Canyon and thought, ‘how breathtaking, but crap that’s a long way across!’ It was just above freezing with 50km winds…we were dressed with all the warm clothes we had, but we were still freezing standing at the south rim. We quickly took photos at the Bright Angel sign and descended into the canyon to start our run.
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| Freezing at the start of the run |
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| Top of Bright Angel trail |
Once we had dropped a few hundred meters below the rim and out of the wind we started to heat up with all the extra clothes we had on, so we had to stop to take some layers off. I was glad that we had started our run with enough light that we didn’t need to use our headlamps. The first part of the trail down the south rim has many switch backs with ‘steps’ logs or rocks that cross the trail to prevent erosion and ruts from the mules which made it hard to get a rhythm. With my history of tripping on trail runs, I took this part of the trail easy so I wouldn’t trip or twist an ankle and I wanted to keep my legs as fresh as possible for the long run. As we ran down the trail we came across a fair amount of mule crap…we thought we would come across them any minute because we could smell them all the way down, but we never did see them.
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| Looking over the Grand Canyon from south rim |
We were met with curious looks from a number of groups backpacking up the south rim…most of them friendly and we exchanged good mornings, but a few seemed to annoyed that we were running the trail and made it difficult to get around them. We soon arrived at Indian Gardens (halfway down the south rim) where we took a small break to take in some nutrient and a bathroom pit-stop.
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| Looking back up to south rim from Indian Gardens |
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| Carolyn looking down onto 'Devil's Corkscrew' |
Once leaving Indian Gardens we hit another steep section of the trail (Devil’s Corkscrew) that switched back down to the bottom of the canyon, we arrived at the Colorado River in about 45 min. where we ran along the river trail to the bridge crossing the river….we arrived at 7:45am. The first 4500 ft descent to the bridge (elev. 2400 ft), 14km in length took 2 hours. Because we weren’t pushing the pace, both Carolyn and I were both feeling good so far. The temperature was warmer now…around 18 Celsius, comfortable but still windy.
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| Bright Angel Bridge over Colorado River |
Shortly after crossing the river we came to Phantom Ranch, a nice retreat at the bottom of the canyon where you can stay in little cabins.
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| Phantom Ranch |
The next 11+ km cut through a deep canyon known as “The Box”, which winds its way alongside Bright Angel Creek as it gently ascends 2000 ft to Cottonwood Campground.
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| Running 'The Box' (North Kaibab trail) |
Most of this section was run able, but we didn’t push it too hard because we knew there was going to be a sizeable climb (4000+ ft.) once we hit the Pump House a few km past Cottonwood.
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| Waterfall along North Kaibab trail |
As we were running along this section of the trail we could see the weather was real nasty up at the north rim, we caught glimpses of snow at the top. After we left Cottonwood campsite the weather turned on us, the winds picked and it started to rain and it was getting cold. We had to stop and layer up again…it wasn’t long after we layered up and started running again that we got hot, so we stopped again to take layers off. It was really hard to regulate our temperatures in this weather. Eventually we came to the Pump House and this is where the trail got steeper.
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| Heading into some nasty weather |
We continued up this section of the trail at a good clip, power hiking the steep sections. We soon came to Roaring Springs…it was cool to see the springs coming right out of the rocks. I looked up from here to see how far we still had to go…a long ways, but I was still feeling good and so was Carolyn.
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| Roaring Springs |
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| North Rim with snow |
After passing Roaring Springs we entered Roaring Springs Canyon, it was amazing how they were able to carve a trail out of the vertical walls of this canyon! The canyon was amazing…red vertical walls with green vegetation, what a contrast. I just wanted to look around and take in the view, but didn’t want to take my eyes off the trail…it’s a long ways down.
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| North Kaibab trail in Roaring Springs Canyon |
We ran into two guys coming down the trail, they said they turned around about 5 km from the top…they got so cold they couldn’t continue. I was thinking as we got closer to the top, we’d have to keep moving so we didn’t get cold like them and I was hoping I had enough cloths. We kept up a good pace running where we could, but mostly power hiking the steep trail. Soon we came to Supai Tunnel and knew we were about 3 km from the top. After leaving the tunnel we came across a section of the trail that had thick gooey mud, it was so thick I thought my shoes were going to get sucked off. I was not happy at this point…it was taking extra energy that I didn’t want to use to get through it.
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| Thick mud on trail past Supai Tunnel |
Thankfully the mud only lasted about 1 km or so and shortly after we got through it, we reached the north rim at 12:30pm. The north rim (elev. 8250ft) ascent, ~6500 ft, ~25km in length took 4.75 hours…our total time to cross the Grand Canyon was 6.75 hrs. It took us longer to cross than we thought because of nutrient stops, having to put clothing layers on and take them off and taking photos of all the incredible scenery.
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| Sitting at North Rim in the snow |
It was about -5 C and snowing so we didn’t stay long (luckily it wasn’t windy), just long enough to take a few photos and take in some nutrient. At this point I felt pretty good, but was thinking, ‘now I have to turn around do this all over again!’ This crossing was going to be harder physically and mentally. We left the north rim at 12:45pm and started down the North Kaibab trail…my knees started to complain, they didn’t like the downhill running after that long climb up to the north rim. I had to take it easy at this point until my leg got used to the descent. We then had to run through all that gooey mud again…I had to be careful that I didn’t end up on my ass, it was so slippery. We started to see glimpses of the sun as we ran down…Roaring Spring Canyon looked amazing.
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| Roaring Springs Canyon |
Through the canyon section, I made sure my foot placement was very exact…I didn’t want to trip in this section with all the big drop-offs.
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| Running down Roaring Springs Canyon |
We continued our descent down the north rim at a steady pace and made sure to take our nutrient along with electrolyte tablets so we had a steady amount of energy and no cramping. The weather turned nasty on us again and a strong head wind picked up, which made it tough for running. As the descent down the north rim continued my quads and calves were starting to take a beating (not used to running steep downhill for km after km), by the time we reached Cottonwood campsite the legs felt like they had been tenderized with a stick. As we ran through the campsite, a ranger asked how far we had run. We told her that we were on the second leg of the R2R2R run…she said ‘looking great, keep it up’ or something to that effect. Nice to get some encouragement from the rangers considering I heard they don’t like R2R2R runners.
My quads were not happy running the gentle descent from Cottonwood campsite through the ‘Box Canyon’ to Phantom Ranch…this section of the run seemed the longest to me. I was looking forward to the climb up the south rim so I could give my quads a break. Every time we stopped for nutrient, it was hard to start running again until my legs loosen up. I was getting really annoyed with all those rock dams that were placed across the trail…it hurt to lift my legs over them. I finally asked Carolyn if she had an ibuprofen I could take. Thankfully she did and after about 15 min. it kicked in enough to take the edge off the pain, that running wasn’t so bad.
We reached the suspension bridge at 4:15pm…it took us 3.5 hrs to descent down the north rim, not bad considering how my legs felt.
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| Looking at the climb back up South Rim |
We crossed the bridge and took a short break to take in some nutrient…we didn’t break for long because the wind and rain picked up again and we got really cold. The section along the river seemed hard, this is the section were the trail has some sandy sections…it didn’t seem so bad on the way out, but with tired legs it sucked. It wasn’t long before we turned away from the river and started our climb. I was determined to keep the pace strong on the climb up the south rim, so as we started our climb up to Indian Gardens I ran a much as I could…Carolyn was right behind me cursing me. J We passed a number of day hikers that we had passed on our way out in the morning. They commented how ‘fresh’ we looked…if only they knew. There was one group that actually wanted to take our picture to show their friends the ‘crazy’ people that run the R2R2R. We made good time to Indian Gardens where we took a break to re-fuel, load up our water and have another bathroom pit-stop. My legs were definitely feeling the run by now and it took awhile for them to loosen up after the break. We passed by a group of people at the campsite, one being the ranger we saw on the way down in the morning…she commented that we didn’t look as energetic as this morning when she saw us on the way down the south rim. I wonder why?
We still had over 7 km and 3000 ft to climb to the top of the south rim. Our pace was steady but it was getting slower now that the trail was steeper. The last hour or so seemed like a long slog; we were both tired and wanted it to be over. The logs and rocks that we stepped over on the way down in the morning became really annoying…it hurt to lift the legs over them (I don’t remember there being so many of them). I had the energy to push the pace a bit, but my stomach wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I felt nauseous when I tried to go faster, so I had to be content with the steady push to the top.
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| Grand Canyon in the sun near the end of the run |
I was so happy when we reached the top! The weather condition was the same as when we left in the morning, windy and cold, so we stuck around long enough to take photos of us finishing and then slowly shuffled/walked back to the car. I was so cold by the time I got back to the car; I had trouble holding onto the key to unlock the car. Thankfully we had dry warm cloths to change into. We completed the run at 7:15pm. It took us 6.5 hrs to cross the Grand Canyon a second time. The total time to run the 78km R2R2R (running the Bright Angel and North Kaibab trails) was 13 hrs 15 min…total running time was 11 hrs 45 min (1 hr 30 min of stops/breaks).
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| Finished! (just over 13 hrs) |
I wasn’t looking forward to the 1 hour drive back to Williams after being on my feet for over 13 hrs…I was tired and hungry and I knew my legs would be totally seized up when I got out of the car. We stopped at the first town just outside the park and went to ‘McDonald’s’ drive thru where we order burgers and fries…I never eat at fast food places, but did the food ever taste good after surviving all day without solid food. As we approached Williams we were hit by a snow storm! The car we rented only had summer tires on it, so it was a bit sketchy for the last part of the drive. That night I had one of the best sleeps I’ve ever had. The next couple days were tough to get around…my quads and calves were pretty beat up. I had a hard time walking down stairs, ramps, even stepping over curbs. Thankfully by the third day my legs were recovering and I was able to walk without a limp.
As I reflect on the adventure, it was great to experience it with such a positive and fun person…thanks Carolyn!
Things that worked or I would do differently next time:
· Gels, Sharkies, Shotblocks or fruit bars ever 30 min to keep the energy going worked great (thanks to Carolyn for being on top of it the whole way). I could only tolerate fruit bars for the last couple of hours.
· I took two S-Tabs (electrolyte tabs) every hour. This seemed to work well in the weather conditions we had. Probably would need to increase the amount taken if the weather was any warmer.
· I couldn’t tolerate Lara Bars, nuts, protein bars or anything solid.
· Taking in a mixture of Gatorade and Carbo-Pro worked well.
· If I ever do the run again, I would increase my training substantially, especially training the eccentric loading on the muscles.
· Fly into Flagstaff or Phoenix next time…the 5 hour drive back to Las Vegas was long.
· Merino wool running top worked well…no chaffing.
· No blisters wearing Salomon XT Wings 2 shoes with Sole socks. I will wear ½ to 1 size bigger shoes next time…feet swelled so much, toes were hitting front of shoes (loosing 3 toenails).
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| My battered feet |
