Grand Canyon Express

Visions of a steak dinner compel our author to finish a grueling one-day Rim-toriver-to-Rim hike along Boucher Trail

text by CHRISTINE MAXA photographs by RICHARD L. DANLEY

"Why do you want to do that?"

My friend Tom Schroer asked me. I'd just told him I planned to hike Boucher Trail down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then hike back up to the South Rim-in a day.

Tom, who has backpacked into the Canyon about 100 times to areas most people have never even heard about, warned me it would be challenging. He added he didn't know of anyone who had done it. He couldn't understand why I'd want to hike one of his favorite trails without spending at least a night in the Canyon.

Preferring the challenge of extreme day hikes into the Canyon the way Tom likes backpacking trips, and fully resting on past laurels, I answered, "Because I can."

Now, a year later, our conversation came back to haunt me as I started my day hike's return leg back up Boucher Trail from the floor of the Grand Canyon. After resting luxuriously for more than an hour at the Colorado River on a warm midOctober afternoon, my muscles were not ready for the almost 11-mile climb out. They burned with lactic acid as I hoisted myself up Boucher's notoriously steep Redwall limestone formation. A far cry from how I felt early this morning. I'd started my hike in at 6:20 A.M. in the day's first light. At the start of Hermit Trail, hoarfrost still velveted the tiny leaves of the blackbrush dotting the Kaibab limestone. Clouds of steam registered my breath as I plunged down the east wall of Hermit Basin into its bowl of blushing Hermit shale. My route entailed hiking a mile and a half on Hermit Trail, a little more than a mile on Dripping Springs Trail, the entire Boucher Trail to the Colorado River, then retracing my steps back to Hermits Rest-a total of almost 22 miles.Having already logged three Rim-to-river-to-Rim hikes in the Canyon, I knew the trek demanded a well-tuned body, iron-willed discipline and a positive mental attitude. What I did not fully realize was that the start of Boucher Trail ended any semblance of a tame hike.

At the turn of the 20th century, French-Canadian Louis Boucher (pronounced “boo-SHAY”) forged his 8-mile namesake trail, half of which dangerously traces Eremita Mesa. The other half screams several thousand feet down the Supai and Redwall formations. A semi-reclusive prospector also known as “the Hermit,” Boucher camped at Dripping Springs, planted an orchard at Boucher Creek, mined copper and escorted tourists into the Canyon.

Boucher's life, centered around his trail, existed in the midst of what many consider to be the South Rim's most beautiful scenery. Additionally, Boucher Trail carries a reputation as the South Rim's most difficult and treacherous.

I had barely started when the trail diminished into a sliver of a path that contoured Eremita Mesa. Several avalanches and trail washouts interrupted the tenuous margin of safety with which the trail flirted as it teetered along the edge of 3,200-foot-deep Hermit Basin. The National Park Service, as well as a good dose of common sense, warn hikers not to hike the trail in icy weather. One misstep could be their last.

Hour by hour, the Grand Canyon's beauty unfolded along the perilous path. Temples and towers named for mythological deities splayed majestically like beveled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Glimpses of the Colorado River showed gentle green meanders and the furious foam of Granite Rapids.

Normally, a day hike on Boucher Trail would end on the mesa, about 6 miles from the trailhead at Hermits Rest, where the trail starts descending the Supai formation. Hikers or runners inexperienced with hill work and long distances should never attempt any trail in the Canyon longer than 5 or 6 miles. But too many inexperienced Canyon trekkers don't know when to quit, and that's when the trouble begins.

“Most inner-Canyon assistance requests come from people who have overextended themselves-they haven't brought enough water or food, or they've chosen to hike in the heat of the day,” explained former Grand Canyon park ranger Patrick Flanagan. Like each one of the Canyon's wilderness rangers, Flanagan spent time on the Rim handling search-and-rescue calls.

“We have assisted people who run marathons and even talk about their athletic prowess wondering why they ran into trouble,” Flanagan continued. “Going Rim-to-Rim, or Rim-to-river-to-Rim, requires a lot of commitment. Once you're in it, you have to get yourself out of it, and the remoteness of the Canyon doesn't allow support systems like aid stations or sag wagons.” Sherry Collins, chief of emergency services at the Grand Canyon, compares such extreme hikes to ultra-marathon events. She said the average Canyon hiker has no idea how much food and electrolyte drinks he or she needs to complete these extreme hikes successfully.

“Sodium's a key ingredient for hiking the Canyon,” Collins said. “People should bring high-sodium foods-and eat them. Eating could make the difference between finishing the hike and being rescued for hyponatremia [low sodium levels in the body caused by sweating and drinking large amounts of water]. Hyponatremia can cause severe neurological problems, including coma.” During the prime summer hiking season, Park Service rangers get about 75 calls each month for medical assistance from the inner Canyon, many from hikers. Many calls, too, are not true medical emergencies, but the hiker merely needs a pep talk: Drink more water, eat more food, rest a bit and finish the hike. Those who must be rescued will pay $2,000 or more for a dangerous helicopter evacuation. So the Park Service takes a dim view of extreme hikes and runs on the Canyon's trails.

At the Supai formation, Boucher Trail, now a mere nuance of a path lost in a jumble of rocks, required me to maneuver with hands and feet. Scrambling down boulders, sliding down ball-bearing stones and climbing across ravines was a challenging, but fun, mode of traveling the trail as it bounced into Travertine Canyon.

At the Redwall formation, the trail skidded down a crevice alongside Whites Butte toward Tonto Trail. I had to double-check

my course often to make sure I was still on the trail, if I could call it that. Tom's words started to nag me at Boucher Rapids as I sat wrapped in the timeless spell of some of the oldest rock walls on earth. I didn't want to leave. Also, the hike down had taken a toll on my body. My leg muscles demanded aspirin, and my knees, particularly after I banged one on a sharp limestone rock, ached from the contorted angles into which the trail forced them. As long as I rested at the Colorado, the river's soothing roar washed my pain and exhaustion into oblivion. My determination to finish the hike further eroded when a group of backpackers at the river urged me to stay. But my words, "Because I can," nudged me back on my way. Rather than eat my words and accept the invitation, I stuffed an energy bar into my mouth and set out again.

But when I started up the Redwall, the hike's hottest and hardest segment, I wondered how far my ambition would get me. The hot afternoon sun greedily sucked me dry as quickly as I could replace lost fluids, and my energy withered. As I paused to try to quench my thirst and ease my fatigue, a rivulet of sweat broke through the film of body salts caked across my forehead and stung my eyes. I wondered how I'd have the strength to hike the remaining 9 miles up. A brief vision of heading back to the river threatened my resolve, but then I quickly changed my focus. I reduced my long-term objective, a practice often used by marathoners: Instead of reaching the Rim, now I just needed to reach the top of the Redwall. It worked, and I plodded methodically up the Redwall and Supai formations in less time than it took to hike down them. I'd started mentally rehearsing my order for a steak dinner during the last two hours of my hike-somewhere along Eremita Mesa, where my stomach tilted with queasiness from too many sugary energy bars. The thought of real food kept me hiking a steady pace as night fell into the Canyon.

I'm normally a cold-weather lightweight, but the crisp night air didn't faze me a bit as I started my final ascent up the Hermit Trail with my jacket off, its arms securely tied at my waist. When I'd stop, though, to take a drink of water and glance at the black velvet sky glistening with constellations, the night wind's penetrating chill reminded me of its power and kept me moving. Closer to the South Rim, my flashlight illuminated the Coconino sandstone meticulously inlaid like cobblestones across the trail, work done by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1913. For this last mile and a quarter, the trail's 1,200-foot ascent to the Rim wrings just about every drop of energy from your Muscles. Hikers often "hit the wall" during this last stretch.

But compared to climbing up Boucher's Supai and Redwall formations, this part couldn't daunt me. Relying on all my experience and my hardened muscles for a second wind, I topped out on the Rim in what seemed like no time. Of course, drinking the can of soda I'd stashed at the Dripping Springs Trail might have helped with my relative ease on the way out. That and a candy bar do the trick every time. AH EDITOR'S NOTE: The Grand Canyon National Park recommends against making this trip in one day, and only the most experienced canyoneers should attempt it.

Christine Maxa of Phoenix writes about hikes for a living. She's looking forward to her next Rim-to-river-to Rim adventure.

Photographer Richard L. Danley of Flagstaff wouldn't dream of hiking this trail in less than three or four nights and absolutely, positively not during the summer.

INFINITY

Intimate details of three vast landscapes— the Sky Islands, the Desert and the Colorado Plateau The tall man peering into the foot-wide creek, studying its ripples and natural hydrodynamics, its stones and struggling water bugs, is David Muench, great landscape photographer and infuriating hiking companion. As always, he is stopping every couple of minutes, staring, contemplating, exulting, forever fiddling with his paleolithic Linhof 4x5 view camera. He doesn't seem to have a destination in mind. Infuriating, at least to those of us who haven't absorbed the archaic art of patience and who haven't yet figured out that the journey itself is the objective. We are hiking along the West Fork of Oak Creek, a tributary canyon 10 miles north of Sedona, a spectacular gash in the Colorado Plateau where salmon-and-black sandstone walls soar luridly above the canyon floor, tugging the eye upward to gape at the spectacle. Muench sees this, of course, but he also discovers more intimate landscapes that most of us would never think to look for.

I recall an observation by David Roberts, one of the country's most ingenious outdoors writers: "Anyone who sees a mountain knows at once what the point of it is: to get to the top. It is not so obvious what to do with a canyon." To Muench, a canyon is perfectly obvious. Squat down and study the textures of rocks. The colors of bigtooth maple leaves on the riparian forest floor. The bizarre basrelief sculpture of a ponderosa pine's bark. The multitude of exquisitely adapted life-forms into which a canyon concentrates and focuses all of its creative energy.

After a few minutes, Muench finds, right at his feet, an intimate waterscape with the potential of becoming art. The West Fork's waters trip over a mosaic of multicolored cobbles, and the ripples in the 6-inchdeep stream cast striations of shadow over the stones. It is art - abstract, illuminating, evocative. The mesmerizing waves, with their patterns of alternating light and dark, trigger a personal memory that seems almost primordial. I am 4 years old, scrambling and surfing the windblown swells of fine white gypsum at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. My parents are setting up a picnic. I attack a dune, then a couple or four more, and suddenly an albino universe has swallowed me and I am lost.

Fifty years later, I can still remember the moment with searing clarity. The dunes marched forever across the landscape, an army of oscillations in dress (Text continued on page 32)