- Grrrrant & K-9: 7 days, 85KM.
Hound Pound athletes, Grrrant and K-9 just got back from a 7 day wod in the Grand Canyon. Today's post is an exciting re-cap of their adventure. If anyone else does this wod in the next year, be sure to post your time/distance to comments. Thanks for sharing this with us, G&K!
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| G&K and the CrossFit Flagstaff Crew. 3,2,1..Go! |
For our 1 week Grand Canyon backpack trip earlier this month we (Kathleen, myself and our two friends Richard and Barb from the Gulf Islands) flew first to Phoenix and then on to Flagstaff. We arrived 2 days early to acclimatize to the 7300’ elevation (about twice that of Calgary). For some strange reason I decided that Filthy 50’s at CrossFit Flagstaff would help with that goal of acclimatization but soon saw the error of my logic. One guy even came over to me during one of my many breaks to ask if I had any heart issues. We hit the trail on Monday Oct 4th the same day as Xfit Flag graciously planned to head out with their crew to do a rim to river to rim trail run and also transport us to our common starting point at Lipan Point at the Kaibab South Trailhead (photo above; note that is Angela Hart the rowing guru in the bottom right of the photo). A few hours after we got started the 1 in 50 years rains started and lasted on and off for 3 days including huge thunder and lightning shows day at night. This wasn’t an altogether bad thing as we weren’t really sure how we were going to find water on the seldom travelled Tonto Trail in the eastern part of the canyon. When you are close to the Colorado River you can filter that awful tasting water but when you are a few 1000’ up from the river water is a hit and miss proposition. So the rains were a good thing and we never missed a chance to fill every water bag whenever the skies opened up which was frequently. The rain also moderated the temperature from the sometimes +100F to a more reasonable 80 or 85F and that was alright by us as the desert environment can be pretty unforgiving. We were surprised that during our entire 1 week backpack that we only saw 1 person going the opposite direction the whole time. The vast majority of backpackers explore the more popular western part of the canyon. The highlight of everyday was the food and our friend Barb is a genius in that regard. She planned, dehydrated and packaged all of our meals for the 4 of us for the 7 days. We were eating Tex Mex eggs for breakfast and Thai curry lentils for dinner (along with smoked Chum salmon thanks to Rob Sifton). The route finding was difficult at times because the Tonto Trail is more of a route than a trail so we were constantly looking for rock cairns or consulting the topo map or both. A common misconception is that you hike from the canyon rim down to the river and traverse along the river until it is time to come up. That as far from the truth as “for the 2010 Xfit Games sHELLy’s training involved buying an abdominizer” or “for Bruce to get his first muscle up he merely had to listen to a 30 second instruction from Jefff”. We were constantly either gaining or dropping elevation to get around the countless tributaries (usually dry) to the Colorado River while packing 7 days of supply. Whenever the trail brought us close to the Colorado River we would occasionally see rafters and I have to admit it looked boring just sitting there while a guide did the oar work. The last day of the hike Sunday Oct 10 was the big climb up Tanner Trail to Dessert View which is described as the most difficult trail on the south rim and it didn’t disappoint. True to form we had 2 CrossFit Flagstaff heros waiting for us at the top to take us back to Flagstaff about a 90 minute drive to the south. If you ever want to do that hike (or the popular Hermit/Bright Angel etc trails) just ask Kathleen or I details and we’ll fill you in. We got our vitamin D supply to last us until Christmas!
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They made it! G&K (second/third from right) looking good after 7 days in a canyon. The Ladies on ends are the CF Flagstaff Pick-up crew. Thanks CF Flagstaff for taking care of our athletes! |
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