Tanner Trail to Tanner Rapids, Grand Canyon 50 Miler Hike, 2000

Troop 285's 50 Miler expedition for 2000 took place in the Grand Canyon. This page covers the first day of the hike, down the Tanner Trail from the South Rim to the Colorado River and a campground adjacent to Tanner Rapids.

Hiking in the Grand Canyon, we've been told, isn't just a hike - it's an adventure! There's really only three things to be concerned about, they say: the weather, the terrain, and "where's the next water?" All three turned out be not just concerns, but major principles that governed when, where and how we hiked and camped, especially since we were hiking during the first week of June, when the Canyon was experiencing record heat for that time of year, with canyon (in-shade) temperatures in excess of 115 Fahrenheit (45 Celsius). Troop 285 sent two crews into the canyon on this trip, since we were limited to a maximum group size of 11. Here's a saga of the first day of the hike, as experienced by the second crew, which started on May 29, 2000.

Crew # 2

Our crew was made up of four older Boy Scouts (ages 15-17), and three Scouters, ages about 40 to 60. In our group photo before starting out, there's (from the left, front row) Dan R., and Dr. Nigrey. The second row: Mr. Coles, Mrs. R., Andrew C., Derrick M., and Jerry S.

Significant pre-hike training put us into what we thought was pretty good shape. We'd been hiking up and down steep mountain trails over a period of six weeks, reaching the ability to make an 8 mile hike with a gain and then loss of about 4000 vertical feet, in a time period of about six hours. We had done this conditioning work in the Sandia Mountains, outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, at altitudes of 6,000 to 10,000 feet (1800 to 3000 m). The workouts were good strength and endurance preparation, we found, but the heat conditioning didn't even come close to the heat burden we faced on THIS hike.

The Trail

The Tanner Trail has been a standard way to get into and out of the southeast corner of the Grand Canyon since before history. Horse thieves used the trail extensively in the late 1800's to drive horses from Arizona to Utah and back (remember the John Wayne movie "The Cowboys"?). It drops from about 7300 feet at Lipan Point, to 2700 feet at the River, over a distance of 9 miles. We ranked this trail to be appropriate to the intermediate hiker, as long as they are not disturbed by exposure (that is, trails exposed to steep dropoffs) and a little loose gravel at a few points. The trail was in excellent shape when we traversed it; even Asinine Hill at the Red Wall was fairly clear of loose stuff.

The Weather

We'd been getting reports of how hot is was below the rim - even on the rim we had seen 85 F days before we departed. So, given that the lower canyon runs 25 degrees hotter than the rim, we expected it to be hot. We forced an early start (we thought), asking our support crew to get breakfast ready at Mather Campgrounds by 4:15 AM, then driving us out to Lipan Point to get a 5:40 AM kickoff.

(Thanks to Mr. Harbaugh and Mr. Mackel, shown taking our photo as we contemplated the long day before us.) Well, we got at least the temperatures we expected. Although the rim at kickoff was only 55 degrees F, we quickly got warmer as we descended and the sun came over the rim. By about 7:30 AM we were consistently in the sun, and estimating temperatures of about 85 degrees. By 11 AM, as we pushed down Asinine Hill at the Red Wall, we thought it was about 95, and by the time we made the final push down the Dox toward the river from 2 to 3 PM, we're sure it was over 110 degrees. And never a cloud in sight to help cut the sunshine!

Trail Report and Timing

5:40 AM: Lipan Point

(all times Mountain Standard Time, as Arizona does not switch to Daylight Savings Time in the summer, to allow sunset to be an hour earlier on the clock) We kicked off as early as we thought we could do it. Turns out we could have started even 30 minutes earlier and still had lots of false light before sunrise. As can be imagined, getting the Scouts out of their sacks at 4AM was a little hard, but the excitement of getting on the trail helped some. The trip out to Lipan Point from Mather campground seemed to take forever, and in fact it's a 45 minute drive. The trail starts about 200 years east of the Lipan Point parking lot - just walk back along the road toward the Rim Drive, and you'll spot the trailhead and a sign board.

Immediately below the rim, the trail starts into tight switchbacks on a fairly steep slope to descend the limestone layers of the rim. Dan R., Karen R., and Dr. Nigrey work their way around one of these switchbacks.
Pinon pines still cover the hillsides high up in the switchbacks. Say goodbye to trees, guys! We're heading to a part of the world where a tamarisk bush is the best shade you'll see!
Looking back up toward the rim after dropping through the Coconino sandstone.

7:45 AM: 75 Mile Saddle

This saddle at the top of 75 Mile Creek is a striking location! It divides the very sharp dropoff into 75 Mile Canyon to the west, and Tanner Canyon to the east. A row of rocks across the saddle gives this formation the nickname "Stegasaurous Rock". Even though it's two hours into the hike, we're only about a mile and a half down the trail. Seems we're moving slower down the steeps than we expected. Some of the trail has a lot of thin air just off to the side, and that's a little unsettling, although the trail is fairly wide and very rarely has any obstruction with tree branches or rock at the side.
Looking back up toward the rim, this time from close to 75 Mile Saddle.

Above 75 Mile Saddle, we get our first glimpse of the river from the trail (almost invisible in this photo, down in the bottom of the canyon - where else?)

10:00: Top of the Red Wall (Asinine Hill)

After skirting Escalante and Cardenas buttes on the Esplanade for another two or three miles, we came to the top of the Red Wall. Dan, Andrew, Jerry and Derek seem to be saying, "come on, let's hike this puppy!"

After having seen the 400 feet of sheer cliffs that are the Red Wall all along Tanner Canyon, it's a little hard to believe there's a good way down it here. Sure enough, though, there's a talus slope that runs the complete height of it, giving us a path down (though not necessarily a pleasant one). We met four Eastern European hikers going up-trail at the top of Asinine Hill, carrying little more than a couple of daypacks. Not even enough hats to go around their group - not a good sign. We asked if they had enough water, and they assured us they did. One trail guide we studied before we started described Asinine Hill as consisting mostly of a series of "half-hearted switchbacks", which our crew agreed described the often-straight-down path pretty well. That guide didn't mention just how loose the talus was, though, so it took us about an hour to descend, then recover from the effort. Looking back up the hill, it's impossible to see the trail in most spots.

Dan and Jerry took advantage of a break at the foot of Asinine Hill to cool off as well as possible, considering there's not a bit of shade.

There's a couple of small campsites evident here, just as there was back at 75 Mile saddle. Also, there's a great view back up to the South Rim and the Watch Tower. Pretty vivid view of the Red Wall, showing just how high it is, and how close to pure vertical it gets.

12:00: Lunch in the Bright Angel Shale

From the bottom of Asinine Hill we walked over lots of loose Bright Angel shale. A couple of minor drainages with side-slope trails made for some slow going, due to the loose rock on the trail. By noon we had found a nice spot for lunch where a vertical cliff on the west of the trail provided just enough shade for our crew to stretch out. By now it was surely over 100 degrees, and we were starting to really feel the effects of the heat. Everybody ate their lunch quickly, then we grabbed a few winks. Lunch was all trail-type food that didn't require cooking, although we COULD have just put a pan of soup in the sun and had a hot lunch in, five minutes. By one o'clock, though, everyone wanted to get going again. We could clearly see the river, and no one was in the mood to wait out the heat here.

2:00: Stalking across the Dox

Perhaps the longest, hottest 2 miles on the whole trip turned out to the the long slope down to the river across the Dox formation. It seems the dark color really soaks up the heat, it's terribly dusty, and the river just lays there in front of you, teasing you with it's bright blue-green water and green bushes on the shore. Part way down, we ran across an obviously-well-experienced two-person hiking group, holed up under the rocks. After exchanging pleasantries and finding they planned to stay under the rocks until about 4, then hike out to the rim, we pressed on. Our lack of experience with the canyon's heat in June probably was evident.

As we closed to within a quarter mile of the river, Dr. Nigrey felt like he was completed drained. Yep, probably initial symptoms of heat exhaustion. We made some shade for him with our bodies, got him to drink some more water, and let him rest. When he was dizzy and weak after a break, we had him drop his pack, and we proceeded on to the river without it. Some river water on his shirt and hat cooled him down quickly, making him feel so much better that he wanted to go back for his pack within about 30 minutes.

2:50 PM: Ah, the Colorado

Finally, we're all down to the river. A short way down river from the Tanner trail, we find a great campsite right next to the river and the Tanner Creek bed. Although the most shady site under the big rock is already occupied by six folks, the site on the south side of the creek is just waiting for us. Can you believe that we immediately began pumping water with our filters, not stopping until we filled up all the containers we had? Seems like quite a bit of the cold river water was drunk, since some containers had to be filled more than once. From the campsite, we had a great view to the east of Espejo Butte and, beyond that, the Palisades of the Desert.

Then, right in front of us, a great view of Tanner Rapids. The Colorado was running at 13,000 cubic feet per second, and was so clear it astonished us. No summer storms had been occuring to stir up muddy water flows, and we could filter water without having to let silt settle. What a treat!

Mr. Cox and Mr. Maggart from Crew 1 hiked into camp about 5:30 PM. They wanted to check on us, so they came back up to our camp from Cardenas Creek. They had run out of water while crossing the Dox, and had even a harder trip than our crew. Most of their day had been spent just getting everyone rehydrated and rested. After refilling their water bottles from our supplies, they headed back to Cardenas beach, ready to start out on the Escalante Route early the next morning. Our crew had wanted to hike down to their camp very early and surprise them, perhaps even cook breakfast with them, but when we found out how early they were getting up, and how they didn't plan to cook for breakfast, we cancelled our "pre-dawn raid" plans.

By 7 PM, we finished up a dinner of spagetti (the other crew packed (and had already eaten) our meatballs, sigh) and by 8:30 we were sacked out, to the sighing of an unusual evening wind that was blowing moderately. Even though warnings about stringing up packs to keep the rodents out were circulated to all, one or two Scout backpacks didn't make in into the trees. During the night, a pack of peanuts disappeared and a small hole appeared in one of the boy's packs. We discovered the small animal warnings we had seen on previous GC trip reports were right - all the food needs to be up off the ground.

Last Updated: 2000-07-21

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