The trips are coming together.
1. Mid-May: with my son. Clear Creek 2 nights, Phantom Canyon one night, and Horn Creek (near Indian Gardens) for the last night. I reserved a campsite on the rim for the night before we start but kept watching the hotel reservation site and managed to score a room at the Bright Angel Inn so cancelled the campsite. A good, warm night's sleep should make the early morning and our longest hiking day go much easier.

I'm really psyched about the graneries and other ruins up Clear Creek. Plan A is to make it to the end of Clear Creek on the first night. They say that it's too far (I had to insist to get the permit) but I'm remembering my R2R a few years ago in Mid May when I was to the top of the North Rim by 1PM and the Clear Creek route is quite a bit shorter than that. We will be carrying more though... If we make it to the end of Clear Creek the first night we'll have the next day to explore ruins and then come part-way back the Clear Creek Trail towards Phantom Ranch to get a head start on the Phantom Canyon climb. In any case, there is a Plan B: we can always stop after the first two miles on the Clear Creek trail and dial back our exploration plans from there. It's nice that the permit doesn't lock us in to specific spots as long as we stay in the AK9 area. We'll see...

In Phantom Canyon I'm looking forward to seeing the overhang camp and maybe finding the Hippy Camp. I've been through Indian Gardens but never made it to the view point north of the campground. I think that the Tonto goes close to there so we may be able to catch sunset there if the Tonto seems OK to hike at night.

I also made reservations at a hotel near Zion for a few nights before we get to Grand Canyon. I was going to try for a Narrows permit but the uncertainty of water levels in mid-May makes planning a little too iffy for my taste and hotels are expensive and filling fast so we'll just have to do day hikes at Zion this trip.

We finish up with a night on the south Las Vegas Strip before our flight home. We'll either be ready for a night on the town with lots of people watching, neon lights, noise, food, and beer or we'll just want to crash on real beds, I'm not sure which.

2. Late June-Early July: with my sister and her son. all-corridor sites: Phantom Canyon, Cottonwood, Phantom Canyon again, and Indian Gardens. It will be hot but we live in Texas and Florida so we're tough. No day requires more than about 7 miles of hiking, the hardest will be the third day but as long as we get an early start we should be OK.


I've been dehydrating and rehydrating various foods and testing them at lunch at work. Our traditional first night dinner is steak cooked directly over a wood fire. Since that won't work in the canyon we're trying to come up with something special that I can cook over an alcohol stove. I'm thinking that fresh squirrel might be good if one "happens" to get caught in my peanut bag hanging system... just kidding rangers.

For the second trip those nights when we'll be staying at Phantom Ranch I might consider their steak or stew dinners but gosh they're proud of them. They may seem like a bargain after three days of rehydrated beans and rice though, I need to figure out how to request a reservation (I guess you have to call?).