GRAND CANYON / LAS VEGAS
by John Evicci

Over the 2006 Christmas/New Year's break, Mark & I took a trip to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. We flew into Vegas, stayed a night there, took a bus & shuttle to the Grand Canyon via Flagstaff, spent a night on the rim, rode mules down to the bottom of the canyon, spent two nights at the bottom at Phantom Ranch, took the mules back up, spent another night (New Year's Eve) on the rim, then the bus & shuttle back to Las Vegas where we spent our final night of the trip before heading back home.

Thumbnails with white borders around them are links to pages with multiple pictures.
All pictures by me unless otherwise noted.

PART ONE:  OUT AND DOWN

This trip was a whirlwind.

We were supposed to leave Boston at 20:00 on the 27th, but due to stronger-than-expected headwinds, and capacity passenger booking, our takeoff was delayed while they tried to bribe people off the flight with some kind of deal on future flights & accomodations for the night in Boston. It didn't work, however, so we were forced to stop and refuel in Denver. The flight was long and unpleasant to say the least. We arrived in Las Vegas feeling totally drained and shitty. We were supposed to arrive at 23:00 but all this hullabaloo ended up making us an hour-and-a-half late. This was not good for us as we had to be at the Greyhound station at 6:00 the following morning to get a bus to Flagstaff. So, by the time we get to our hotel and check in it's like 2:00 and we only have like 3 hours before we have to get up and get ourselves to the bus station. Conveniently, the coffee machine at the bus station is not functional and there isn't enough time to procure coffee elsewhere. Needless to say we were basically zombified the whole 5½ hours to Flagstaff, despite a stop in Kingman where we were finally able to obtain some of the coveted brew.

We were a bit shocked when we got off the bus in Flagstaff to find it snowing. Being from Massachusetts, I never expected my first sight of snow for the season would be in Arizona (we're having a freakishly-mild winter this year...so far, anyway). From Flagstaff we were to take another shuttle to the Grand Canyon. Our layover was over two hours, however, so we got a good lunch before hoofing it over to the Amtrak station where we departed for the Grand Canyon. From there it's another 2-hour drive.

By the time we got to the canyon it was dark. Our room for the night (in the Powell Lodge of the Bright Angel complex) was pretty much right on the rim of the canyon. We went to see what we could, and, although we couldn't see hardly anything, we definitely got a sense of the vast abyss stretched out before us. Awed, even with our severely-mitigated first glimpse of the canyon, we went back, showered, and crashed for the night. We had to be up early again the next morning to be ready for the mule ride.

We got up early, got a little food in us, and hoofed it to the corral. Soon the mules were brought and we were given an orientation speech and told/warned about everything we needed to know. A damn good idea as probably none of us had ever done anything remotely like this before. At this point the sky started to clear, almost as if on cue. We were to have wonderfully clear skies for the rest of our time there. I feel truly fortunate for that as we had heard that the previous couple of days were snowy and cloudy. We all got assigned mules based on some reasoning of these experienced handlers. For some reason I was apparently deemed best to be given the most unresponsive, sluggish, stubborn (even as far as mules go) one of the lot. Her name was P.K. I never did ask what it stood for, but I heard the guide say "Psycho Killer" in passing.

So, we are soon on our way, down the Bright Angel Trail, leaving the south rim toward the bottom of the canyon. I'm second from last with Mark in front of me. We were warned that the mules oftentimes prefer to walk on the outside edges of the trail. There's a practical reason for this. Sometimes these trails are so narrow that if they didn't favor the outside edge, your leg would be ground against the jagged, merciless, sheer wall of rock on the inside of the trail. A few times I thought that would indeed happen when, for some reason, P.K. seemed to forget the protocol and walked disturbingly close to said jagged, merciless, sheer walls of rock. Luckily my leg never did get gouged or lacerated, but a few times my toe snagged on an errant projection.

OK, so they walk on the outside edge of the trail. We were assured that these animals are built and trained for this, have flawless track records, a bulldozer wouldn't be able to get them over those cliff edges, etc, etc. How much do you think that lessened my pulse rate as we set off down that narrow, serpentine trail with just a few inches of dirt and rock between their hooves and I-can't-even-guess how far of a near-vertical drop? Oh yeah, and it was snowy and icy. Yeah, you guessed it...not much.

It was scary enough just walking along the trail, but then, shortly into our descent, our guide, Bill, had us "park". We all stopped and, as instructed, turned our mules perpendicular to the trail to face the canyon. That way they know exactly where the edge is, and, as previously asserted, a bulldozer couldn't get them over it. So we're parked there, but there's not anything close to a "parking lot". We're straddling a typically-narrow section of trail and the front of our mules are right on the edge. We are staring the fucking abyss right in the face. As unnerving as riding down these trails were, this was worse. All our lives were completely and utterly in the laps of these animals. Animals. Think about that. You better believe I was!

So, Bill parked us there to check our strapping, I suppose in case things had settled differently during all the movement. Having done that we were back on track in no time, which was to some degree a relief. The scenery was, of course, breathtaking, unbelievable, indescribable, and it stayed that way pretty much without break for the next 4 days. I attempted, as is my wont, to take photos of nearly every sight that presented itself to me, such was the non-stop incredible beauty of everything. However, my photographic aspirations were curtailed by my, as aforementioned, uncooperative mule.

The thing they stressed the most is that you maintain a very tight formation, for various reasons. Not more than 5 feet between your mule and the one in front of you, and the way you tell your mule to close that gap is to whip him or her with your riding crop, which they assured us would not hurt the animal. Well, I noticed quickly that my mule tended to lag behind, letting too much space grow between her and the mule in front of her. I did as instructed and whipped her with increasing forcefulness only to find it had little or no effect. She also, particularly on the way back, was fond of stopping and grabbing a bite to eat. It seemed she somehow knew when I was trying to take a picture because, I swear, at least half the times I raised my camera and nearly had a great shot perfectly framed, she would stop and start eating. It got damn frustrating after while. So, of all the hundreds of photos I did take, there were still many other great scenes lost to this behaviour of P.K.'s.

Not long after the break at Indian Gardens, Bill realized that I just wasn't going to be able to get this mule to walk in lockstep and brought me up behind him and tethered P.K. to his mule, in effect towing me. This ended up being a stroke of fortune as I didn't really have to "drive" at all anymore and was free to pretty much take all the pictures I wanted. The timing was good as it was just before we entered a particularly dramatic portion of the trail called the "Devil's Backbone". I hope the pictures convey how intense this was. [I know now that they most definitely do not!] After riding for like 3 hours I was getting pretty relaxed. This section of the trail made me very uneasy again, but the scenery was just unfuckingbelievable. I steeled myself as best I could and tried to capture as much as possible with my camera.

After that, and the adjacent section, called the "Devil's Corkscrew", the terrain gradually levelled off to a non-insane character and suddenly we saw the almighty Colorado River...the centerpiece of the canyon. It was impressive. It was big, it was mighty, and we followed it's sinuous path upstream, riding high on the sheer wall that defined it's southern side. We came to a bridge not too far up which we accessed via a short tunnel through solid rock. Emerging on the northern side of the river, we followed it back downstream the short distance to Bright Angel Creek, which we then followed north the short distance to Phantom Ranch, which is where we were to stay for the next two nights.