Over Memorial Day weekend, six buddies and I embarked on a 24-mile trek from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim to the South Rim via North Kaibab Trail to Bright Angel Trail. The trek took us deep down into the Canyon to the famous Phantom Ranch before we hit the lowest point and crossed over the Colorado River at the bottom of the Canyon. The photo above is of the group at the start of the journey. We started our journey from the North Rim at roughly 5:15am with the sun already up. Luckily the canyon walls kept us in the shade for the first couple hours of the journey.

The trek had its literal ups and downs, but unlike most hikes, the Rim to Rim journey starts with the easy downhill portion. That leaves the toughest most grueling stretch of the journey, the uphill, for the end of the day when you are at your most tired. I’m happy to say all seven of us made it, but it wasn’t always pretty. Blisters, sore muscles, and sunburns were plentiful and a couple out of the group suffered even worse with some cramps and dizziness towards the end. At a snail’s pace compared with our downhill rate of speed, we crawled up the steep canyon walls of the South Rim, mostly in direct sunlight, to finish the journey just an hour or so before sunset.