About six weeks ago, my friend Rebecca suggested we do a Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim (RTRTR) crossing of the Grand Canyon.
We had hiked Rim to Rim in the canyon a couple of years ago and she wanted to revisit the idea. Rebecca was in great shape, I was training regularly, and the challenge sounded just crazy enough to be interesting. So we put it on the calendar.
The plan was simple. Start at the North Rim at 4:00 AM, run down to the river, cross to the South Rim, climb, turn around, and run back. One day. Done. 48 miles and about 10,000 feet of vertical.
As Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
The canyon punched us in the mouth.
The first part of the trip went exactly according to plan. We started at 4:00 AM under a sky full of stars and made good time running in the cool darkness. The miles clicked by easily. By 8 am we were at Phantom Ranch, and we had a nice soak in the river.
Then things got interesting. The Bright Angel Trail was closed, which I hadn't seen in any of the blogs or reports we had read. That meant taking South Kaibab instead. Unlike Bright Angel, South Kaibab has no water.
Suddenly we found ourselves facing roughly seven miles and nearly 5,000 feet of climbing with only about a liter of water.
That is not a sentence you want to write in a trip report.
We rationed carefully and pushed upward, but by the time we reached the rim, hydration had become a serious concern. We actually "borrowed" some water from a couple of day hikers and that saved us from a more serious issue than just failing to complete our goals. We got to the top seriously dehydrated, in exactly 8 hours, at noon.
To make matters more interesting, the South Kaibab trail exited in a different location, so we had to take a shuttle to the main village area to find anything more than water.
At that point we had choices.
Continue back into the canyon dehydrated during the hottest part of the day.
Quit.
Or come up with a better plan.
We sat, drank sprite, ice and water, and discussed our options. Rebecca's teeth were chattering. It was warm even in the shade.
The more we talked, the more obvious it became that charging back into the canyon in hot temperatures was a poor decision. We found a hotel room, ate a real meal, drank a lot of fluids, and recovered. We had plenty of snacks left but purchased a whole jar of pickles at the store. We tried to find a bottled soda for extra water carrying capacity but everything was in cans. Our brains must not have been working well enough to go look for a gatorade bottle or in the water aisle...jeez.
We took baths in the room with some copper because, well, it helped with the soreness. Carrying a vial of liquid copper was so worth it
The next morning we were back at it.
A taxi dropped us at the South Kaibab trailhead at 3:30 AM, and once again we started descending in darkness.
Unlike the North Kaibab Trail, the South Kaibab mule trail was too technical to run comfortably. In fact, our downhill pace was only about 2.5 miles per hour. We didn't feel like faceplanting in the dark in a pile of smelly mule poop/pee. Ok, and we may have been a little sore and tired.
But then sunrise arrived.
If you've never watched the sun rise inside the Grand Canyon, it's difficult to describe. Layer after layer of rock began glowing in shades of red, orange, and gold. The temperatures were pleasant, and the canyon was so quiet.
Eventually we reached the river and Phantom Ranch once again. By then it was getting warm enough to want to cool off. We soaked in the river and started the long journey back toward the North Rim.
The miles between Phantom Ranch and Cottonwood went surprisingly well. We pushed hard on the gentle uphill grades and made good time to the final reliable water source. The water system on the North Kaibab Trail had been shut off this week. We knew that going in, but we hadn't originally planned on ascending during the middle of the day.
Murphy's Law was apparently serving as our trip coordinator.
We filled every bottle we had and started the final climb, about 5 miles and another 3000 vertical feet to the car.
The problem was simple: it was now the middle of the day. We had never intended to be climbing toward the North Rim in the heat. Yet there we were.
As temperatures climbed, we developed a highly sophisticated fueling strategy.
Every time we found a patch of shade, we stopped and ate a pickle.
One pickle.
Then another.
Then another.
By the end of the climb, we had consumed an entire jar. We weren't actually carrying the glass jar, which i'm sure we would have filled with water, lol. Our ziploc bags of pickles leaked, but the emergency dog poop bag held in pickle juice all day, otherwise we would have smelled like vinegar. Which might have been an improvement!
Sports nutrition companies may not appreciate this, but this time pickles were every bit as valuable as expensive gels, powders, and recovery formulas. As much for the water as for the salt and vinegar.
The final miles felt endless. We monitored water carefully, watched the distance tick downward, and continued moving one shaded break at a time.
Eventually the North Rim appeared. After the trail closures, water shortages, hotel stay, shuttle ride, taxi ride, heat, and endless climbing, we made it back.
Our return trip took 9 hours and 41 minutes.
The original one-day RTRTR plan never happened. This may have been better....sleeping in a bed in the middle was glorious.
The Grand Canyon doesn't care about your plans. It doesn't care how fit you are or how carefully you prepared. Sometimes the best thing you can do is adapt, stay positive, make smart decisions, and keep moving forward.
And maybe carry more pickles than you think you'll need.
p.s. On a side note, we felt like we carried a lot of food with us. We didn't eat all of it. Here's what we had left over afterwards....darn that apple, I forgot it was in my pack or I surely would have eaten it. We did eat about 3000 calories each over the 18 hours, which probably would have been more if we hadn't stopped overnight and had dinner on a plate instead of out of our pack.
We ate varying amounts of:apple, ham and cheese sandwich, bacon, meatsticks/jerky, fruit snacks, skittles, kava, ketones, pickles, fritos, snickers, and nut rolls. Lots of electrolytes, and yet not quite as much water as a really needed.
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| Our leftover food from the trip. |
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| The grand canyon fire in 2025 took down the iconic lodge, but we were happy to see other buildings has survived. Renovation work is underway and the campground is open. |
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| I really wanted a swim in this waterfall, it was so hot |
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| At the finish! |
