On Monday morning we flew to Phoenix and picked up a rental to drive to the Grand Canyon, arriving long after dark. Sam and I went to Mather Point for star photography, but unfortunately, the sky was cloudy. The canyon, which spread before us, was completely black and invisible. We knew it was out there, but couldn’t see it. The moon was absent and the stars so disguised by clouds that even a five-minute exposure on my full-frame camera didn’t show the canyon (except for the tiny lights at the basecamp by the river). I didn’t try for long, assuming we’d get a clear sky another night (boy was I wrong!).
Tuesday morning we tried the breakfast at Yavapai Lodge. It was overpriced prison food and we never ate at the lodge again for the duration of our stay.
We decided to try Hermit’s Rest trail first. We got about a mile and a half down and turned back. The view was okay, but Hermit’s Rest is sort of at the western edge of a single canyon, which obstructs the broader views of what you normally think of as the Grand Canyon. The views probably wouldn’t get better unless we hiked halfway down to the river, a good six miles, so we opted to turn around.
The rest of the day we visited the other stops/viewpoints on the (not running in winter) red route.
We went back to Mather Point for a rather uneventful sunset. The stars were even more hidden than the first night. Worse than Los Angeles.
The second day we started out on the famous Bright Angel trail, which had much better views than Hermit’s.
Here, too, we turned back after about a mile and a half. The rest of the day we went to the remaining stops on the orange route, driving all the way to Desert View.
Finally, we came back for a stunning pink and purple sunset at Yaki Point.
The same clouds that made the sunset so great made the stars impossible to see once again.
On our last day, we hiked Kaibob Trail down to Cedar Ridge.
Afterwards we drove to Desert View for another sunset that sadly turned out as uneventful (i.e. no color) as the one 48 hours before at Mather Point.
We agreed that Kaibob was the best trail of the three we’d tried.
