Rudow & Atwood Complete Grand Canyon Rim Traverse

http://blog.hyperlitemountaingear.com/rich-rudow-grand-canyon-thru-hike link does generate income

It’s a free blog post from February on HMG’s site. Easily navigated to on your own.

Glad to see more trekking following in the path of Colin Fletcher from 1977, as described in his book “The Man Who Walked Through Time”.

Great book!

Won’t be clicking on the supplied link, and no Facebook for me either.

To me Colin Fletchers book about his, the first, traverse of the Grand Canyon NP “The Man Who Walked Through Time” is probably the best book about backpacking ever written. Rivaled by his other book “The Thousand Mile Summer”. So it is indeed interesting to read about latter day treks in the great canyon.

I hope Rich comes out with a more complete account of his trip.  Would make for interesting reading.

Even allowing for the vast differences in information/technology, Fletcher’s hike pales in comparison to the Rudow/Atwood route.  Fletcher defining the Grand Canyon as what was at the time the national park sort of made sense, but hiking Havasupai to Nankoweep is slightly more than 1/4 of the whole canyon, and on trail (albeit rough trail) for all but the first quarter.  Reading “The Man who Walked through Time” gives one the sense that Fletcher was a punter with great determination who did just enough prep to get through.  Rudow’s hike is an expert putting years of experience to work and still just barely getting by.  They could have floated over to the south side and walked the whole Tonto, which would have made things A LOT easier.  Maybe contrived to stick to a full north side route, but inarguably admirable style.  I have no idea how HMG counts the number of GC thru hikes, but I’d argue that Fletcher should absolutely not count towards that number.

And yes, the Avantlink is bad style.

“I hope Rich comes out with a more complete account of his trip.  Would make for interesting reading.”

+1 many times over!

Though I’m not tempted to compare Fletcher’s hike with this.  IMO, any reading of The Man Who walked Through Time would make it obvious that his purpose for his trip was very different from that of Rudlow&Atwood.

Comparing this feat to others as done in the first few paragraphs of the article?   Seems rather arbitrary, if now down right silly.

Don’t forget about Fletcher’s book, The River. About the 1700mile trip from the Colorado River’s source to the sea.