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5 Day Backpacking Trip into the Grand Canyon

This topic has 14 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 4 months ago by Eric Blumensaadt.

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Jun 23, 2021 at 1:02 pm #3719713

Manfred
BPL Member

@orienteering

Companion forum thread to: 5 Day Backpacking Trip into the Grand Canyon

Have you ever been standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon and wondered what it is like down there? Over 20 years ago I did, when my parents visited d

Jun 23, 2021 at 5:19 pm #3719803

Elliott Wolin
BPL Member

@ewolin
Locale: Hampton Roads, Virginia

Very nice trip. But I hope pictures really can be interspersed with text…it doesn’t work to have a whole bunch of small pictures at the bottom.

Jun 23, 2021 at 5:29 pm #3719805

H W
BPL Member

@olddude

Good job. Pics reminded me of my BP several years ago with my sons. Started at Hermit and camped first night at the river. What a roar but slept like a baby. Total of 3 nights, and came up Bright Angels Trail in the morning thinking only of breakfast at El Tovar. We went in April during school spring break and even so early it was very hot on the Tonto trail during the day. Nights were good. Can’t image hiking this in July. I enjoyed it because of the company but no need to duplicate.

Jun 23, 2021 at 5:56 pm #3719816

Logan K
BPL Member

@logan
Locale: Florida

Beautiful! Covid changed my plans of going there too – hopefully one day I’ll get to be more than a day hiker!

Logan

Jun 23, 2021 at 5:57 pm #3719817

Manfred
BPL Member

@orienteering

Elliott,

you can click on the first small picture to get a larger version of it and then scroll through all the pictures one by one. Not ideal, but better than the small pictures. Best would be to have the pictures embedded in the text as it used to be.

Jun 24, 2021 at 7:33 am #3719865

Kevin Babione
BPL Member

@kbabione
Locale: Pennsylvania

Manfred – the photos are amazing! What camera did you use? Clicking once on a photo does expand it and then you can use the right and left arrows to navigate through them. I ended up with two windows on my monitor with your post in one and your photos in the other…I enjoy your trip reports too much to do it any other way.

Jun 24, 2021 at 9:47 am #3719872

Manfred
BPL Member

@orienteering

Kevin,

Thanks for the compliments :) I just wish BPL would enable the ‘Insert Image” button again. It can be used in these replies, but not in the original report.

For the photos I used my iPhone 12 Pro. Since I got it, I stopped carrying my Sony camera on backpacking trips.

Jun 24, 2021 at 4:17 pm #3719965

Kevin Babione
BPL Member

@kbabione
Locale: Pennsylvania

Sadly, since my wife got the iPhone 12 Pro my Sony RX100 M5 has not come out of its case. I have an older RX100 M2 with a broken flash that I take backpacking (I have an iPhone 7), but when I upgrade I probably won’t bother with a “real” camera. Your photos are breathtaking! My last trip to the canyon was in 2004…Probably time for another trip.

Jun 24, 2021 at 4:49 pm #3719967

Manfred
BPL Member

@orienteering

Kevin,

I’m actually surprised how good the photos still look after resizing them to 10% in Microsoft Photos to get them under the 1 MB upload restriction that BPL uses. I was afraid the photos would lose way more detail, but was positively surprised by the results.

Jun 24, 2021 at 5:58 pm #3719978

Elliott Wolin
BPL Member

@ewolin
Locale: Hampton Roads, Virginia

Not sure how the author gets good pictures, but my strategy is to take a zillion of them and pray! ;-)

It’s hard for me to believe a cell phone with a tiny lens can beat a real camera. I understand they have been getting better and better, but there are some fundamental physics limits based on lens diameter.

I used to never take a cell phone hiking, only my RX100 M1, but now we use some birding apps so we’ve started taking a cell phone with us (EBird, Merlin, Audubon Guide). So maybe in the interest of UL I might leave my RX100 behind, but probably not.

Jun 24, 2021 at 10:43 pm #3720011

Manfred
BPL Member

@orienteering

Elliott,

our strategies are similar :) Especially with several kids in the picture I take at least 5 photos to make sure I have one were everyone has their eyes open – at that is sometimes not enough.

I’m not by any means a ‘photographer’ and I don’t attempt to take any prize-worthy photos. I’m just an observer and memory-taker who journals trips with his camera. For that I’m looking for ‘good enough’ not ‘perfect’. Until now my smartphones were not ‘good enough’ and I carried a Sony TX30 (for its 5x optical zoom, its USB chargeability and its waterproofness). With my iPhone 12 Pro the level of ‘good enough’ has been reached and I dropped 4.4 oz from my pack :)

Jun 25, 2021 at 9:47 am #3720040

Casey Bowden
BPL Member

@clbowden
Locale: Berkeley Hills

Manfred,

This is great. Going to have to get out the map and see the areas you went to other than South Kaibab and Bright Angel.

Concur that images within the body of the text is important and should be restored. If that is not possible can captions be added to the photos if they need to stay in the slide show format?

Jun 25, 2021 at 9:58 am #3720044

BlackHatGuy
Spectator

@sleeping
Locale: The Cascades

“Especially with several kids in the picture I take at least 5 photos to make sure I have one were everyone has their eyes open – at that is sometimes not enough.”

Something that has worked for me in the past: tell everyone to blink on the count of three, then do one of two things:

–take the picture at the count of two, as everyone waits to blink their eyes should all be open

–take the picture just after the count of three when everyone blinks, their eyes should all be open

Rotate between the two so they don’t get used to one or the other;

Jun 27, 2021 at 7:57 pm #3720270

Steve Thompson
BPL Member

@stevet
Locale: Southwest

Manfred, thanks for sharing and great pics. Brings back some great memories (I haven’t been to GC since leaving AZ for NY in 2013). If the photos are iPhone, looks like the intelligent HDR works. GC can be difficult to capture with all the shadows.

Jul 16, 2021 at 12:54 pm #3722109

Eric Blumensaadt
BPL Member

@danepacker
Locale: Mojave Desert

Great shots. Thanks for the report.

Four years ago when I was 74 my then 71 year old friend Len and I took a shuttle to the North Rim and did the standard 4 day trip down and back up to the South Rim. I called it our “Geezeer Hike”. and yes, on that last day every 20 minutes or so I rested for 5 minutes but those were usually “photo rests” at a good vista.

It was my 2nd Grand Canyon backpack, the first at age 65 when I was younger and more spry Both times I just felt privileged to see all the spectacular sights. I knew contemporaries of mine who, due to bad knees or other disability of aging, could never hope to do those hikes and I felt lucky.

I guess the old ’60s slogan “Keep on trucking’ ” still holds true.
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