My wife and I have been doing an overnight once a week over the last month or so. We have been working up in mileage to get ready for a trip to the white mountains next month. We decided to do the West Rim Trail in Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon this week.
We left Tuesday morning and drove 3 hours to the trail head. We purchased a car shuttle from a local rafting outfit for $40 and hiked north to south.
The trail is 30 miles long and we had 14 of it the scheduled for the first day. We got a late start and hit the trail around 1 pm.
The trail starts with a mild ascent to the rim through some young forest covered with ferns. The weather was a pleasant 70 with clear blue skies, a rarity for our trips.
The first overlook came early in the day. The views were nice but few and far between. Most of the rim is private property so the trail spends a lot of time snaking around these areas.
The scenery on this trail varies greatly. We were constantly surprised.
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The view from our campsite at the half way point. We rolled into camp around 7pm.
The second day started out with gray skies. We packed up and headed out around 9 for the last 16 miles. Again it was later then we had planned but sometimes the sleeping bag is hard to leave.
We ran into more ferns on day two. Here is a pic of me sporting my Ion :)
We only had a couple of overlooks, the south portion of the trail spends most of its time in dense woods and away from the rim. We also ran across about a mile that had been burned.
Much of the trail on the second day was through dense patches of ferns, wild rhododendron (laurel), and prickers.
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It started raining about 11 and is still raining 3 days later.
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We saw this near the end:
We made it to the car around 4:00.
We both made it under the 10 lbs mark for base weight. I consider it cheating though because we split the weight of our shelter, a BA Seedhouse SL2.
My base weight was 9.95 lbs and my full skin out weight at the trail head was just 19.35 lbs.
Amy's base weight was 9.5 lbs and her full skin out weight was 18.35 lbs. Amy will NOT let me carry anything for her.
We met 3 other couples on day 2, all traditional hikers who were doing the trip in 3 days. We got some pretty interesting comments about the size of our packs.
