Part 1 of this story is here. Sorry for this delayed, final installment on my May 2026 Grand Canyon adventure. I’ll skip the footnote of excuses. If you haven’t already, do read Part 2 as the intro to Part 3 below.
In the midafternoon heat near the bottom of the Red Wall switchbacks, I chose to carry on, freeing myself of my shady nook in the rocks, or should I say warming oven, for the last two miles to Hermit Creek. Knowing this would not be the best time to turn an ankle or a knee, I descended the brightly exposed slope of wide open desert below. As expected, the heat intensified. I’d been in 100-degree, 105-degree, 110-degree heat before and this was definitely feeling like the latter. It was not just hot, but scary hot, head-in-the-oven hot.
It reminded me of a drive once with Kris between Tucson and Phoenix. The car thermometer reached 110, 112, 115, 118 and kept going. At 120 I stopped the car and stepped outside to see what 120 felt like. Ouch. Near the Tonto Trail junction, I don’t think it was quite that, but it was seriously cooking and it forced me to take cover in the shade behind a giant boulder just above the junction. I sat for most of an hour rehydrating before continuing on to camp.
Once I entered the deliciously, if sparsely, shady green zone adjoining the tiny creek, nothing could feel more luxurious than dropping my pack, dunking my head in a pool, drenching my t-shirt and pulling it back on. Glorious. I dunked it again before putting up the tent and cooking an early dinner. I noticed a squirrel messing with my pack next to the tent, then realized I’d left a small pack of cookies in an outside pocket. With a snooty grin, he dared me to chase him off. Which I did, of course, and put the cookies away in the hanging mesh bag.
There was still some time before dark, so I sat down in the 95-degree shade in my spiffy camp chair, and opened up my hardbound, 488-page Fedarko to Chapter 1.
A Walk in the Park, by Keven Fedarko, begins with some preliminaries, including the author’s overnight journey from magazine journalist to a klutzy, greenhorn river rat improbably hired by a whitewater boating company known for running gorgeous, sharply-flared dories on the Colorado River—a great story by itself. So the canyon was in Fedarko’s bones by the time a photographer friend, Pete McBride, suggested they traverse the park on foot, the entire park, including hundreds of miles of steep, rugged, trailless, often impassable backcountry where people die, if not disappear, on a regular basis.
Fedarko admits to being ill-prepared for such an epic adventure. Well into their trek, things got so bad, he wrote, “we quit and went home, resolving never, ever to come back.” Of course, they came back.
In my own book, Boots on Fire, which I finally completed after returning home from the canyon, I explain what happens next in my own little epic:
I had the campsite for two nights, so the next morning I scampered down the scenic gorge of Hermit Creek to view the rapids. A couple of large commercial rafts soon slid through with hardly a splash, even though the waves at Hermit are among the largest in the canyon. Not long after, a half dozen dories approached, beautiful boats that may appear a little tenuous to rookies like me, but which handled the waves with grace. The second one did get a little sideways in some big water.
River historians have speculated that John Wesley Powell’s legendary expedition down the Colorado camped just above this rapid in August 1869. The next day, they portaged and lined their rowboats past the intimidating torrent, a laborious task to be sure. I clambered upriver a little through boulders and brush to get a look at the spacious sandy beach. Someone I passed on the trail had mentioned that a lively group of women river runners were camped here the night before, but they’d already departed, so all but the river was quiet.
I chuckle at the thought of Powell’s manly adventurers rounding a bend in 2026 only to discover a modern world of river runners sitting in cozy camp chairs, sipping boxed wine and mostly doing this stuff for fun and inspiration. Conversely, who among us could have survived Powell’s first recorded descent through the unknown depths of the Grand Canyon? Even three of Powell’s men, not so far below Hermit, were driven from the canyon by the seemingly endless cataracts beneath thousands of feet of ancient, crumbling, forbidding rock walls. Instead, they decided to take their chances and attempt to climb out on their own. They were never seen or heard from again.
When I returned to camp a few hours later, another hiker suggested I check out a small waterfall upstream. I wandered up and got a photo. On the way down, the fun stuff nearly ended when I tried to hop up on a gravelly bank and missed, instantly twisting my right knee. I almost collapsed, grimacing in pain. I seemed to have sprained the thing, and this just my second day with a long way to go. I stood there in mild shock basically unable to move. I managed to dunk my t-shirt and wrap it around my knee which helped a little, but I was a hurt puppy. It was all I could do to hobble back to camp. Damn.
I washed down some ibuprofen and the pain eventually subsided to just below throbbing. So now what? The plan called for rising by 4:00 a.m. for the trek over to my next campsite at Monument Creek. I took a sleep aid and crawled in the tent.
I awoke to the rustling of another party at 2:00 a.m. They were headed up the Hermit Trail and also needed to beat the heat. After laying there awake, I decided to pack up early. I was back on my feet as the other group’s headlamps disappeared over a rise. Limping around in the dark surrounded by a half dozen vacated tent sites gave me the sense that I might be the last one to leave. Once packed, I hobbled up the trail under bright stars and no Moon.
I should have reflected more on what it’s like to hike alone in the starry blackness of a silent desert night. One walks along in a bubble of light from the headlamp, surrounded by a mysterious something that you know is out there but you cannot see. When I doused the light, there was just enough of a glow to make out the path. I tried to let my eyes adjust, but was too worried about stumbling over some obstacle and setting my knee on fire again. And of course, I did not want to step on a rattlesnake. I kept the light on until the earliest hint of dawn reached her sticky blue fingers into the eastern sky above the distant profile of the canyon.
It was just a 3.5-mile walk to Monument Creek, but with many ups and downs. I had no idea if my knee would hold up, but it felt important to keep moving. I’d have a good long day to rest there. I sidestepped on the downhills and paused at every boulder flat enough to sit on.
In three-plus hours I reached the towering obelisk that I remembered so well, and the nearby campsites at Monument Creek. I managed to pitch the tent in a shady place while the rising sun warmed things up in a hurry. Strangely, nobody was there, nor had I seen anyone on the trail. After coffee and breakfast, the extra-tall composting toilet structure offered a perfect place to sit in the shade, which I followed around with my chair and my book as the hours passed.
By late afternoon, still no one had come through and I was a little concerned about the much longer day ahead. My permit had me at Havasupai Gardens the next evening, which was now close to 11 miles away. At the pace I was going, I worried it could take me 11 hours to get there, with no way to avoid the intense heat of midday and no water sources en route. By 4:00 p.m. I decided the safer thing to do was to pack up and head for the campsites at Salt Creek, 3.4 miles up the trail. It would shorten the next day’s hike enough that with another early start, I could maybe get to Havasupai (and water) ahead of any severe heat. I repacked the tent, topped out my water supply at close to five liters, and continued on.
Still limping along, the walk to Salt Creek seemed longer than expected, but the drugs were working and I reached Salt Creek a little before dark. Once again, there was nobody around. That seemed strange given that I’d run into a dozen or so folks at Hermit. Tent up, dinner made, I was in bed by 8:00 p.m. and back on the trail by 3:00 a.m.
On the way to camp the evening before, it was obvious that much of the Salt Creek drainage followed a deep chasm, with the trail sometimes running just above the edge of a drop-off hundreds of feet high. And there was another drop-off not far below the campsites. Now in starlight, I followed the path down to where it crossed the slickrock wash. Knowing there was a cliff downstream, I instinctively headed upstream searching for the cairns that typically lead the way when no tread is apparent. I found no cairns.
A couple of steep openings in the brush looked promising but led nowhere. I wandered farther up the pitch-dark wash then down again before returning to the point I’d first reached the slickrock. Where the hell is the trail? I was already drafting the news bulletin in my head: Grand Canyon hiker walks off cliff in the dark. Squirrel eats his cookies. I walked a few steps downstream, and voila, there was the cairn. An extra squiggle in the trail had created much confusion in the dark. I was finally on my way under a crystalline night sky, alone with my thoughts and my aching knee in the blackened silence of the desert.
After sunrise I passed the first people I’d seen in two days, a group of women who’d left early from Havasupai and were headed to Monument. There were also two guys camped at Horn Creek, so suddenly I wasn’t so lonesome anymore. We chatted and I took a good long break watching the sun light up the cliffs above before moving on. I stumbled into Havasupai a bit after 10:00 a.m.
After tanking up with others at the water faucet, I went looking for a campsite. A woman passed by warning there was a rattlesnake prowling around in the middle of the campground. Oh, great.
I found a site that looked just fine, dropped my pack on the table. Seconds later, a good sized rattler emerged from a shrub next to the table. A squirrel was not happy about the intruder and kicked dirt at the snake with his tiny front paws. The scene cracked me up. The snake moved in closer, almost within arm’s reach, so I picked up my pack and relocated a couple sites down the trail—and saw no more snakes. With the tent up and coffee brewed, I plopped in my chair once again and read the rest of my book, pleased that I’d brought it along.
I had all day again to rest for the next and final day, a seven-mile, 3,000-foot climb back to the rim. This time there would be potable water along the way, and intense heat was no longer a major concern. My pack would be pounds lighter (I’d also eaten most of my food by now), and I only needed to focus on the knee. It was doing better than expected, though I think even in hindsight that the cautious route I took getting here was the correct one. Had I tried to hobble all the way from Monument in one push, there was a not insignificant risk that I’d end up triggering a rescue, or worse. Knocking out those extra miles to Salt Creek may have saved my butt.
By morning, I could hardly stand up before painfully making my way to the outhouse. Coffee proved a suitable distraction while I sat in my little chair, nibbled on granola and stared up at those 3,000 feet of switchbacks to the rim. Suffice it to say, I made it up there, thanks to plenty of breaks and an extra dose or two of ibuprofen. It helped that in camp I’d met two new friends from Italy, a father-son team enjoying their first visit to America. We hiked out of the canyon more or less together, which had me longing for a return to the infinite natural and cultural wonders of Italy. They were off to Bryce Canyon next, and I hit the road for home.
The knee still ached as I began to write this story two weeks later, but home sweet home was the place to be. As it turned out, I would be limping around all summer with a more severe injury than I’d reckoned at the time. The MRI showed tears in both medial and lateral menisci as well as a partially torn PCL (ligament). That plus some old-guy knee arthritis set me up for a disappointing few months of almost no trail time at all. I couldn’t even ride my bike, though I did manage to get around to a few long-neglected projects at home.
I’ll admit that the down time was quite timely though. By the end of June, I’d managed to finish two new books, Boots on Fire, as mentioned above—a memoir of mountain and canyon adventures (and misadventures) across North America over five decades—as well as my brand new travel guide to Washington DC: Ultimate DC: Travel - Walk - Explore. I’d been working on both in tandem for more than six months. But publishing two books in the same month was definitely a first for this homebound word wrangler.
As for the Grand Canyon, I guess I summed things up well enough in Boots on Fire:
I’ll call it a highly successful trip, not quite as footloose and fancy free as I’d envisioned, but the downside was more than offset by the wondrous days, starry nights and the stony embrace of the canyon.
The story gets a happy postscript: Shortly after I returned home, my good friend Mitch called to see how my trip went. I gave him the rundown and mentioned I’d carried Fedarko’s book with me and devoured every page.
“You know he’s coming to Bellingham, right?” he said.
I had no idea. Several weeks later, we went to his talk at Village Books, our local indy book store. Afterwords, I let the author know that I’d picked up his brick of a book at the park and carried it with me in the canyon for five hot days. He chuckled appreciatively and signed it.