Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

There’s always someone more “hard core” than you. That’s my caution about bragging on rugged outdoor accomplishments. If you’ve backpacked into the Grand Canyon, someone has done a longer, harder trip carrying more weight and even throwing in a little packrafting and technical climbing. If you’ve hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim in one day, you can easily find someone who hiked it faster or ran it, went when it was hotter, and trod uphill both ways (in this case that applies to everyone). And then there are the rim-to-rim-to-rimmers. And the 14’ers. And it goes on and on, right up the side of Mount Everest. That said, if such things were easy everyone would do them. It requires discipline, hard work and careful planning to successfully prepare for these endeavors, and it’s not inappropriate to congratulate ourselves when things go well. After two backpacking trips into the Grand Canyon (see Issues 52 and 54), my son, Mark, and I decided to take on a rim-to-rim day hike in the fall of 2022. As with all such experiences, it was a learning process. Here’s some of the knowledge we gained...

@Susan Dragoo details the experience of planning and hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim, take a look at the links below:

More Hard Core: Day Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim

Issue 55 Page 1

[ppine]

R2R is all the rage.  My hiking partner of 40 years did it recently at age 68 I think it was.  I have too many injuries for that kind of stuff, but I still love backpacking at 73.