Bright Angel Trail

SW: Grand Canyon, USA

William Mackesy’s account of this walk

Here is our climb of the Bright Angel, as part of the Grand Day Loop:

Back at Indian Garden, some water and mental strength gathering, then it is the tough 4.5 mile (3,200 ft) slog back to the South Rim.

The first miles or so is actually pretty easy, a steady climb  up the pretty, if mid-afternoon hot, Garden Creek Canyon. Dry grasses shine in the sun. Then the trail steepens and starts to climb above the canyon floor in wide loops rather than switchbacks as yet. A great advantage of the Bright Angel as an afternoon climb is that it is mostly in the shade, which helps reduce the impact of the long if gently graded climb.

 My view-admiration pauses become more frequent. The 3 mile (resthouse (hut) comes and goes. Then the 1.5 mile. It is steady enough walking for one to disappear into one's head rather than to be stuck with the struggle, but even so it goes on too long. 

The upper trail is amazingly engineered, an endless series of switchbacks working their way up gaps in impossible-looking cliffs. We drag our way up the huge, bright red lower cliffs, then the sheer pale upper ones. After a more sloping, broken section, we make great loops that get us brilliantly, by dint of wide loops and a couple of doors blasted into extending fins, up the white cliffs that are the final hard layer of the southern rim. 

It has been a bit over 3 hrs up,  1,000 ft an hour, my nirmal rate of climb: nit bad fir the end  rather than the start of a long day. (upside down walk)

We're back in the (very) populated world. It feels weird.