Veteran hikers tend to shun the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon. It is wide and relatively well-groomed, there is water available at specified points during the hottest parts of the year, and it is absolutely overrun by tourists, mules, day trippers, and a handful of serious hikers. That bright May weekend I had chosen the B.A. for my six-year-old son's first backpacking trip into the Canyon, and so I joined the teeming masses along with Robbie's two friends, Nate and Elizabeth, and their parents, Chis and Annie .
Robbie was a Canyon veteran, having been hauled in and out of that massive hole from the time he was 2 weeks old until he was three when he began to stay home with Grandma. I do not mind a 50-pound pack if it sits still. When it is jumping up and down, leaning to the right for a good view, and demanding "Are we there?", I mind.
Now he descended on his own booted feet, swaggering under his very own backpack. For these small mercies I did not mind hiking with the hoi poloi. Not much, anyway.
The trail was somewhat overwhelmed due to a closure of the South Kaibab, the other main south rim route. A ranger in the know had informed me that the wet spring had loosened a large boulder on the Kaibab to the point where a geologist had advised the Park Service to remove the rock manually lest it remove itself taking a few mule trains along with it. Even at our Robbie-pace of one mile per hour we kept passing people on the way down, which did not augur well for their subsequent trip out.
I amused myself by adding to my catalogue of footwear seen on the Bright Angel Trail. Running shoes, basketball shoes, snow boots (in May?), Teva sandals, Burkenstock sandals with plastic bags tied around the feet, bedroom slippers, a gentleman with one sock and one tennis shoe (on different feet), a woman with black suede dress boots boasting fringe and a fashionable one inch spike heel...
"Are we there?" demanded the scion of the house.
I explained that in another half mile we would be at a cunning stone house with running water where he could disport himself for a suitable length of time.
"I'm bored!" was the reasonable reply. I countered by imitating a mule carrying an over-endowed tourist with a huge SLR camera. "Click, Whirrr. Man, get that camera out of my ear! You just took that picture at the last switchback; aren't you keeping track? Are you sure you made the 200 pound weight limit? Click, Whirr." Giggling, Robbie skipped up to greet his buddies at the three mile resthouse.
My father-in-law has commented that the people hiking in the Grand Canyon seem much happier on the way down. As we sat overlooking the steep switchbacks we saw many miserable persons indeed trying to climb back out of the chasm. Most were dayhikers, inspired by a spur-of-the-moment notion of hiking all the way to the Colorado River. Since this little bit of whimsy involves a 14 to 24 mile day with a 4800 foot climb in and out, many were now regretting it.
When they get tired they get lazy. A young man cut off the trail and straight up to the resthouse right below me.
"Sir," I said calmly, "Cutting switchbacks causes trail erosion." No response. "Our tax money has to pay to repair these trails." Nothing. "Only wimps cut switchbacks--real hikers walk the whole trail!" He smiled beautifully and explained, "No sprecken ze English". He proceeded into the resthouse. Miraculously he immediately gained enough knowledge of ze English to put the moves on a young lady in short shorts. After admonishing a pair of boy scouts, a troop of high school students, and another German to stop cutting the &^%$& switchback I decided darkly that the next person I caught would accidentally slip off the edge.
One half mile from the campsite Robbie again developed a case of the boreds. I reminded him of the Little Engine that Could. "I think I can, I think I can."
He countered, "My feet are going to fall off, my feet are going to fall off."
We duly arrived at the campsite. Robbie removed his boots and dashed off to splash in Garden Creek. Most of the patrons of the developed campground at Indian Gardens were collapsed onto their picnic tables. One rousted himself long enough to tell the kids to please stop running up and down the trail--it was making him tired to watch them. Annie and I left the kids in the hands of their daddies and day-hiked to Plateau Point and back.
After dinner, the kids set up their own tent and retired therein clutching teddy bears and stuffed rabbits. At Midnight a wailing cry filled the Canyon: "I want my MOM!" and Robbie stumbled over to my sleeping pad. By 3 AM all the kids were with their respective parents.
Hiking back out, Robbie hitched a ride on the bottom bar of my pack in exchange for a gripe-free ascent. He walked along placidly, imitating mules and chatting with lizards. We steadily began to pass people. The Bright Angel is considered one of the easier trails in and out of the Canyon, but one still has to climb that almost vertical mile. Earlier in the year I had come out of the Canyon in 4 feet of unbroken snow on a trail abandoned in 1898. Compared to that, climbing four and a half miles of B.A. with most of Robbie's gear inside my pack and Robbie himself hanging on the back was a cakewalk. We passed Nate and Chris. We passed Annie. We passed the gentleman who had told the kids to stop running around the campsite. We passed college kids, high school kids, a troop of Girl Scouts, and a gaggle of Germans. We passed Daddy, who had Annie's pack on his back and Elizabeth hanging heavily onto his bottom bar.
We reached the top and sat down to wait for the rest. Robbie gleefully dined out on the fact that he had beat Daddy out. I don't like to encourage competition among hikers, but anything that gets him to the top is legal. I told Robbie that in the bottom of the Canyon there were little cabins. If he wanted, we could hike there next, and he could sleep in his very own bunk bed and not carry a pack.
"Not carry a pack?" This was considered. "Will there be mules?"
"Oh, yes. We'll hike in and out with the mule trains."
"Okay!" He dimpled delightfully. "Click, Whir!"
Robbie, six years old at the time and bored with admonishing tourists for feeding the ground squirrels, wondered why the tram to Bear Canyon was so much less crowded than the tram to Sabino.
"Because you have to walk once you get to Bear Canyon," I explained. "Not that many people want to walk."
The man in the front row turned around. "Thank goodness for that!"
The tram whisked us along a paved road, closed for many years to reduce over-use of the area. We covered four miles in a mere 10 minutes and were deposited at the trailhead in Bear Canyon.
The tram driver admonished us that we did have to walk to get to Seven Falls, that we had to cross the creek and there were no bridges, that it was hot, difficult, and nasty to walk into the Catalinas. We agreed that this was so, we did not lay any blame for these facts on her, and she admonished us not to miss the last tram "Or you walk that extra four miles yourself,". She, the tram, and our last link with civilization vanished down the road.
We stood aside to let the thundering hoards (a dozen or so) pass and settled down to a Robbie-pace. The day promised to be hot, but walking alongside running water makes the air cooler, or at least it seems so. Cactus were in bloom, and the stream crossings, far from the knee-high boot-soaks I was expecting were accomplished atop a series of human-made "stepping stones" about two feet square and high above the level of the creek.
We wondered if the tram driver had warned us about the crossings because of the tourist types who complained about a lack of suspension bridges and escalators, or if the water level were sometimes high enough that the stepping stones were useless. The latter was confirmed by a friend who had hiked there during the spring run-off.
Robbie complained of the heat, and I told him to soak his head, figuratively speaking. "Get your hat wet, and the cold water will make you feel cooler."
Pleased with the notion, he dashed down to the creek at every opportunity to swish his hat around in the water. When he used his hat to polish a large rock, he picked up a number of leech-appearing animals. I assured him (and daddy) that these were harmless larvae: they had attached themselves to my personal self while I was swimming in desert creeks. Robbie was unconvinced, and I had to pick them out and deposit them back into the stream. Icky or not, he didn't want them injured.
The last half mile, as usual, was the hardest. I don't know how Robbie knows that we are almost there, but that final 2,000 feet seems to be his limit. I pointed to the falls, promised halcyon pools and subsequent soaking of hot feet if he could just keep walking for another fifteen minutes.
When he finally spotted the water himself, he skipped along happily. Brad decided to continue along the trail. Robbie and I proceeded to the falls and Brad took off to check out the the unknown at his normal pace.
It had taken us one hour and twenty minutes to travel 2 1/4 miles--not bad for someone four feet high. Robbie soaked. His feet, then his legs, then when the zoogleal film got him, most of his body. Behind us some teenagers shrieked as they disported in the water, filling the canyon with their shrill protests.
Brad and Robbie had raided my hiking food the night before, so Robbie and I split most of our remaining food: one chocolate chip cookie and a nectarine. We waited for Brad and ate most of a bunch of grapes. Robbie tried to sneak the remaining cookie and nectarine, but I admonished him that they belonged to daddy. I found half a pretzel on a rock and gave it to him, assuring myself that the UV light from the sun that sterilized it. I promised to tell him if I found any edible plants.
Brad still didn't come. Hiking with Robbie, we would have to leave by a quarter till the hour to catch a tram. I decided that if he didn't show up by 11:45, we would start back and leave him a note (and the cookie) at the trail junction.
At 11:40 I saw him running down the switch backs and we climbed up to meet him. I told Robbie we would have to walk just a little faster on the way out to be sure we caught the tram. He agreed to hold my hand and be hurried.
We met more and more people coming in. They wore tennis shoes, water shoes, sandals, and carried coolers full of beer and boom boxes. One couple with a baby dragged a stroller. I wondered why the tram driver hadn't explained that the stroller wouldn't work, and thanked the canyon spirits we had made it out before the music arrived.
Robbie complained, but we made it back in time for the tram. He amused himself playing with a water bug living in the pond under the water faucet by the trailhead until the tram drove up.
I could now tell people I had seen Seven Falls. The falls were pretty, I didn't think it was wilderness, and I didn't enjoy the type of people who seemed to hike therein. Next time I would climb the extra half mile or so to get out of the crowds and find my own swimming hole, less boom boxes and beer. If I want to hear rap music and squealing young women, I can do that without having to walk 2 1/4 miles in the heat.
May 31, 1992: Seven Falls
I had been informed that Seven Falls in the Catalina Mountains was a sublime wilderness treat, not to be missed, and "I'm surprised that you haven't been there, since you're such a fabulous hiker and all." Subsequently we caught a tram at 9 AM Sunday morning to explore these wonders for ourselves.