Grand Canyon Hiker Blog

A recent request on our website was for information on the South Bass - Tonto - Hermit loop. She and five other people (including one “seasoned Grand Canyon hiker”) - are going in sometime this year. He must be pretty seasoned - frankly you couldn’t get me to lead a group of 5 other people on the Corridor trails - let alone this loop.

We (Rob and I) didn’t have any personal experience to offer - but reading up on it gave me the bug to get out there and do it.

I’m going to use this blog to keep track of my progress and planning.

1. Collating trail information from multiple sources (there are a lot of sources these days) - matching duplicate information and filling in the blanks about the loop will be quite a job in itself. But this is important, I was careless about this step the last time I hiked in the Canyon - and it almost got my best friend and I killed. More on that later.

2. Pack weight — last time in my pack was 50# — not much for some people — but something like having an anvil strapped to your back. It takes all the fun out of it. So this time it’s light - or I’ll forget the whole thing.

3. Physical conditioning — I’m pushing 59 this year — and I’ve been slacking off for months. Time to get my eyes on the prize. On my tape I recommend a Cooper Test of 1.5 miles — don’t know if I’ll come close to that but we’ll see. More on the Cooper Test later.

— A little thought on how to rate my progress –
Trail Info X Pack Weight X Condition

On a scale of 1 to 10 —
Trail Info -
1 = have topo, elevation change, and distance
10 = detailed current info including important intersections, distances, times, water sources, cairns, details on crossing obscure sections, rock slides, false trails

Pack Weight -
1 - 50#
10 — How light can you get?

Conditioning -
1 - couch potato who shouldn’t even consider this
3 - about where I am
10 - could carry a 60# pack and match Butchart’s times (a Cooper of about 2.25 miles — or world class athelete)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 at 9:28 pm and is filed under South Bass. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.