Grand Canyon (Utah Flats/Phantom Canyon): March 2016

Utah Flats is an area to the north of Phantom Ranch and about 1,500 feet above it.  The landscape of rolling red slickrock is a delightful and refreshing change from the steep cliffs and deep chasms commonly associated with Grand Canyon.  It's also the gateway to the beautiful and secluded Upper Phantom Canyon.  Martha, Tom, and I spent five days in mid-March 2016 backpacking in this area.

Day 1 [March 14].  The last time I hiked this route, back in 2012, we'd spent the first and last nights at Bright Angel Campground; this time, though, the campground was full the first night, so the plan was to hike up to Utah Flats and camp there (South Kaibab Trail down to Bright Angel Campground: 6.5 miles, 4,800 vertical feet; then up Piano Alley and over onto Utah Flats: 1.5 miles, 1,500 feet).  This promised a long day of hiking and we wanted to get on the trail early, so we headed out from Tom's cabin right around dawn and headed for the shuttle stop outside the GCNP Backcountry Office to catch the "Hikers' Express" shuttle out to the trailhead.

There were already a few people waiting when we got to the shuttle stop, with more trickling in steadily.  By the time the shuttle arrived and everyone piled in with all their gear, it was a pretty full ride.  The people were impressively motley bunch: youthful excited college-age hikers, families trying to corral young kids, middle-aged fogies like us, and even one little old lady who must have been well into her seventies!  (Yay to the parents introducing their children to hiking the outdoors so early—you rock! Yay to the little old lady—I hope I can still hike into GC when I'm your age!)

Once we got on the trail, of course, we unclumped rapidly.  Tom, Martha, and I were not in a big hurry, and we stopped every so often to enjoy the views and take photos.  Most of the other hikers were moving faster than us, and quite soon we had our section of the trail more or less to ourselves.  And although we'd bunch up every so often at the viewpoints—Ooh-aah Point, Cedar Ridge, Skeleton Point—the trail never really felt crowded.  And I don't think we ran into any mule trains until we were quite far down the trail.  Although we weren't hurrying, we made faster time than we had expected, reaching the river around 12:30-ish.  We stopped briefly at Bright Angel Campground to rest a little and take on some water, then continued on towards Piano Alley.

Views from along South Kaibab Trail

Piano Alley gets its name from the grand-piano-sized boulders that are strewn about the hillside.  The (unmarked) trail starts out just outside Bright Angel Campground, levitates up a steep hillside covered with loose rocks, and then keeps levitating.  It's hideously steep and loose initially (a description I use affectionately); on the bright side, one benefit of "hideously steep and rocky and loose" is that you're too busy watching your footing to worry about the descent on the way back.  After a while the trail moderates to merely "ordinary steep", and just when you're lulled into complacence it dissolves into a tangled mess of monster boulders that makes you nostalgic for "hideously steep".   (In fairness, it couldn't have been all that bad, because we were able to hike both the ascent and the descent without having to take off our packs, and emerged, as far as I'm able to tell, without any residual psychological trauma.)

Tom powering up the "hideously steep" portion of the trail

Vishnu schist cliffs on the other side of the Colorado

Catching our breath

Negotiating the boulders at the top of Piano Alley

Although we could feel the effects of the rim-to-river hike by the time we started up Piano Alley, the hike seemed to go easier than I had expected, and we reached Utah Flats some time after 3:30 pm.  To make sure we camped  above 3,600 feet, as required by our permit, we pushed ahead into Utah Flats for a while and made camp around 4 pm.

Utah Flats

It was pretty windy on Utah Flats.  This made putting up our tents somewhat tricky: anything that was big and light and sail-like was liable to be blown away.  A related problem was that we were camped on solid rock, making it impossible to stake our tents down.  I stabilized my tent the best I could by putting big rocks inside in the corners.  This seemed to work, but a little later, as we were eating dinner, a particularly fierce gust of wind tilted my tent over on to its side and began dragging it along the ground... it took some scrambling to get it back under control.  The wind intensified as the evening went on, and by the time I went to bed it was blowing so hard that my tent poles were getting bent into worrisome angles.  But my tent held together, and eventually the wind died down, and by the time morning came around the weather was quietly perfect.

Day 2.  This was a nice relaxed day: about 2½ miles to Phantom Creek, pretty much just contouring along towards the Isis-Cheops saddle and then dropping steeply down into Phantom Canyon; and then another ¾ miles or so upstream along Phantom Creek to the campsite.

Hiking out of Utah Flats
Cheops Pyramid (L) and Isis Temple (R)
Approaching Phantom Canyon
The hike to Phantom Canyon

We set up camp at the Overhang, the same place that we camped at back in 2012.  This is a little piece of flat sandy ground, sheltered from the sun by a big overhang, maybe a hundred feet from Phantom Creek; across the way on the other side of the creek rose the sheer concave face of Schellbach Butte and, a little ways upstream, The Colonnade.  After the usual chores of camp setup, we just relaxed and took it easy.  The weather was perfect for goofing off, and it was lovely to be lazy.

The descent into Phantom Canyon

The Colonnade

Schellbach Butte

Day 3.  Another relaxed low-key day.  We hiked up Phantom Canyon to Hippie Camp (2.4 miles each way), crossing back and forth and back and forth across Phantom Creek.  The day was clear and sunny, the temperature was perfect, and the lush green cottonwoods growing along Phantom Creek glowed in their new spring foliage (in some spots the vegetation was a little too lush and we had to struggle to get through).  Hippie Camp was much as I remembered it, though sadly, the Antler Man was gone---a victim of storms or vandalism.  We sat and relaxed at Hippie Camp for a little bit, then Tom and I went exploring a short distance up Outlet Canon.  We headed back towards camp a little after 12:30.

There were a lot more frogs active in Phantom Creek on the hike back than we had seen on the hike up in the morning.  The only sounds we had heard on the way up were those of water and wind; on the way down, we'd hear a chorus of frogs as we approached each pool in the creek, and once we got close there'd be a succession of plops as the frogs jumped off the rocks on which they'd been sunning themselves to hide in the water.  It must've been their high mating season because their raucous lusty calls were so loud that night they drowned out the sound of the creek.  I guess adolescent frogs have their version of rock concerts too!

Views heading upstream on Phantom Canyon

Day 4. We had a spot at Bright Angel Campground, so our hike this day was a mellow 4.6 miles, most of it fairly flat except for the initial climb out of Phantom Canyon and the final descent down Piano Alley.  It was a relaxed hike, with many stops to photograph the flora and fauna we encountered. We reached the campground in the mid-afternoon.  I missed the tranquility of Phantom Canyon.

Day 5. Up early and on the trail back to the rim.  We took Bright Angel Trail up—a little longer than South Kaibab Trail (about 9.5 miles from the campground to the rim) but also not quite as steep.  It was a very pleasant hike: we saw many redbuds in bloom around Indian Gardens, the bright purple of their blossoms a lovely splash of color among the green vegetation.  Also near Indian Garden we detoured off the trail to look at some prehistoric Indian ruins, not too far from the trail, that Tom knew about.  The rest of the hike was uneventful, but the closer we got to the top the denser the crowds became and the more I missed the serenity and solitude of the off-trail Canyon.  We reached the rim some time in the mid-afternoon.

Western redbud