The National Park Service website describes the North Kaibab Trail as "The least visited but most difficult of the three maintained trails of the Grand Canyon." From our campsite in the campground it is just under a mile walk to the Kaibab trailhead. A relatively flat hike all the way to the trailhead but once you set foot on the Kaibab Trail there is no mistake that the trail is steep.
The above image is a cross-section of the canyon wall where it intersects the North Kaibab Trail. There is no exaggeration of the steepness of the canyon wall, the trail is just one switch-back after another. While it is only one mile straight down to the river, the trail winds you back and forth across the face of the cliff for fourteen miles to get you down to the Colorado. Visitors are strongly advised not to attempt a hike to the bottom and back in one day. Of course many do not heed this warning and that is what keeps our search and rescue/EMS people gainfully employed and on overtime most days. My hike in is going to be about as short as it can get. I will make my way down to the first named overlook, the Coconino, and then start back. In the above image that is barely down to the second layer of rock, the brown layer just below the grey one at the very top.
***Fun fact***
The top layer, the white one, is called the Kaibab formation and it is a limestone. Geologists tell us that it used to have several thousand feet of sandstone layers above it at one time but they were soft and eroded away. The Kaibab limestone, being a hard formation is the reason that the Grand Canyon looks the way it does today. The hard limestone has protected the softer layers beneath, slowing erosion and giving us the steep canyon walls instead of a sloping alluvial plain.
All total it will be about a mile to the trailhead and a mile into the canyon and then back for a total of just under four miles. For people with healthy knees this short of a trip is not hardly worth getting out of bed for. But for me it will be a test of how well all the walking I have been doing in the campground is benefitting me, or not.
The trail from the campground is a combination of walking on the Transept and Bridle trails to the Kaibab trailhead. For the most part you are cutting through dense ponderosa pine, but just before getting to the trailhead the Bridle trail pops out of the forest and parallels the main road coming into the North Rim.
There is a parking lot adjacent to the main road that holds about 50 cars but every day there are way more than 50 vehicles parked for access to the Kaibab Trail. People are crazy, they will park 30-foot long 1-800-rent-me RVs alongside the road, hanging one set of wheels off the edge of a cliff rather than use the parking lot at the campground and walk a thousand yards. Some of them get so twisted up parking on the uneven shoulder that they can't even open their cabin doors. You see people climbing over the front passenger and driver seats to get in and out of the cab doors.
However, those "in the know" know to get to the trailhead before 7:30 in the morning. Not because of parking but because that puts you on the trail before the mules head out for the day. And believe me, you want to be in front of the mules, not behind them. I don't know what they feed those things but they leave the stinkingest mess on the trail you have ever experienced. And this is not coming from a city boy, I have mucked stalls and corals and these mules leave a far more unpleasant "deposit" than anything I have shoveled before.
The trailhead is marked with several information/bulletin boards, lots of warnings about its steepness, ruggedness and long distances between water sources. Thousands pay attention and prepare, ultimately having the hike of a lifetime. Every year a dozen or two do not and go home zipped up in a black bag. You would think that with such a reputation the trailhead would be this big deal but it is quite the opposite, just an unceremonious, rough-shod gap in the trees that goes down.
Technically, the Kaibab Trail is not in the Grand Canyon, it is in a side canyon known as Roaring Springs Canyon. It is home to the Roaring Springs which is the sole water source for both the north and south rims, providing water for 5.5 million people a year. It's a big spring. The spring is down about 3,000 feet vertically and almost 5 miles of switchbacks. It is a pretty cool sight to see but I won't be going that far today.
It is a little after 7:00am and I am entering the trail. It is cool in the shade and warm when on a section of switchback that is exposed to the sun, even this early in the day. No sign of the mules so it looks like I am ahead of the game.
In this top section of the trail the trees are pretty thick and getting photographs of great vistas are hard to come by. But you do get little peeks of Roaring Springs Canyon here and there.
Dropping down and moving across the face of the cliff the vegetation begins to thin out and better views present themselves.
Even when the view begins to open up your line of sight is still limited to just Roaring Springs Canyon. However, way off in the distance is the South Rim and you can just make out Humphries Peak near Flagstaff.
At this point I am about 500 feet below the rim and have negotiated about a half mile of switchbacks.
Then, in what seems no time at all I see the maker for my objective, Coconino Overlook.
Wow, that seemed awfully easy. I was not wearing a watch but my perception of time was that I had been walking about ten minutes. It had to be longer than that, I don't do ten minute miles walking plus I had stopped several times to do photography. Oh well.
Below are a number of shots from the overlook. It is pretty but we have been to other and there are more spectacular places down the trail.
Now I am scratching my head. It was a breeze walking to this point and I know that just another mile down the trail is Supai Tunnel, a much more photogenic place. But that mile of trail was pure switchbacks of another 600 feet of vertical drop. I was tempted but I kept looking back at that trail I had just descended and thought better of it. I should stick with my plan to test how it goes in BOTH directions before adding on a doubling of distance.
Good thinking. I had no more started back up the trail and was surprised at how labored my breathing was. Unlike the coast down the trail, I was working now. Knees felt great but the lungs were complaining.
One thing about the strategy to get on the trail before the mules is that it works perfect if you keep moving down the trail. If you just goes down a ways and then head back up, then walking in the mule's wake is unavoidable.
The above pics are my first of three mule encounters on my walk out. Each time there were seven mules and as best I could tell they all seemed to use the same section of trail to do their business. But that section was long enough that you couldn't hold your breath and squint you eyes long enough to get past it without burning your nose hairs and making your eyes look like you were coming down off a three day drunk.
Regardless, it was a great test-hike and I have a much better appreciation for how easy it is to over-reach ones ability. Next trip; Supai Tunnel.
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