A Big Hike In the Big Ditch

At 5:30 a.m. on an early-April morning, the wind avalanching off the Grand Canyon’s South Rim slices through my thin layers of clothing. With three friends, I am following my headlamp beam in the dark down the South Kaibab Trail, setting out for a very long day that will also end by headlamp light—but not until very late tonight.

We plan to attempt one of the great ultra-dayhikes in the entire U.S. National Park System, going from the South Rim to the Colorado River, across the canyon to the North Rim, and back again. If all goes well, sometime before midnight tonight we will have racked up 44.4 miles with 11,195 feet of up and down—the equivalent of hiking Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States, twice in one day. 

Yes, it’s a little crazy. But for hikers and trail runners who have prepared and trained for such an ambitious undertaking, the out-and-back traverse known as the “r2r2r” is arguably the most amazing single huge day of hiking you can do in North America. We will see the Big Ditch from top to bottom and north to south—and we’ll see it twice, walking across and back, at very different times of day.

[Read Michael Lanza’s full story about dayhiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim, and view a photo gallery and video from that trip, at TheBigOutside.]