Saumya's Hiking Trips: Grand Canyon (Tonto Trail to Horn and Monument Canyons): December 2019

A bunch of us—Tom and Herman, the usual suspects; Nirmal and Nicole, friends from Canada; and I—spent four delightful days in December 2019 backpacking in the Grand Canyon along a stretch of the Tonto Trail that took us from its junction with the South Kaibab Trail, to Horn Canyon and Monument Canyon, then back to the Rim on Hermit Trail.

Day 1: Rim to Horn Canyon

The most direct and straightforward way to get to Horn Canyon is to take Bright Angel Trail down to Indian Garden [4.8 miles], then march down the Tonto to Horn Canyon [2.5 miles], for a very reasonable first-day distance of 7.3 miles. But back in March I had really enjoyed hiking the section of the Tonto from S. Kaibab to Indian Garden, which I remembered as being around a couple of miles of easy, flat, scenic trail (the figure "2.5 miles" was firm in my mind), and talked the group into going down S. Kaibab instead. And so, after dropping off a vehicle at Hermit Trailhead, we took the Hiker's Shuttle over to S. Kaibab Trailhead. We were on the trail around 8:30.

The hike down was delightful. The trail was dry, without any accumulation of snow or ice from recent storms, and the sunshine took the edge off the cool air. We reached the Tipoff around 12:30 and stopped for lunch in the recently-completed shelter. At this point, Herman—sharp-eyed as always—discovered, from one of the signs nearby, that the distance from there to Indian Garden was actually 4.6 miles, not 2.5 miles as I had originally claimed. This put Horn Creek campground about 7 miles away, and—given the short winter days—raised the prospect of getting into camp after dark. We stopped dawdling.

The hike along the Tonto was just as enjoyable as always: gorgeous vistas, perfect hiking weather, and silence. We saw a few deer grazing among the low shrubs some distance away, but other than that the trail was deserted and it felt as though we had the Canyon all to ourselves. There were several more deer as we approached Indian Garden, and these mostly just ignored us and grazed nonchalantly as we sat by the creek working our water filters. (The water at Horn Creek, where we would be camping that night, is considered unsafe to drink due to the leaching of radioactive material from an old uranium mine upstream. This meant we had to take on enough water for the rest of the hike that day, for cooking that evening and the next morning, and for the next day's hike to Monument Creek.) We left Indian Garden a little after 4pm and reached the campground at Horn Creek just as it was getting dark—which is to say that it was still twilight when we began setting up camp, and dark by the time we were done. Dinner was by the light of our headlamps. Everyone was tired from the day's hike, and we didn't stay up long after that.

Day 2: Horn Canyon to Monument Canyon

Monument Canyon is a little over 8 miles from Horn Canyon along the Tonto. Another day of wonderful hiking, with blue skies, sunny and cool weather, and solitude. The trail followed Horn Canyon for a little while, then swung away westwards, skirting the cliffs above the Colorado River and offering gorgeous views of the cliffs on the other side.

There is something primitive and savage about the Vishnu Schist cliffs of the Inner Gorge. Unlike the orderly layered decorum of the strata above them, these rocks seem riotous and undisciplined. It is as though an ocean of molten rock was frozen in mid-boil.

The trail eventually veered away from the Colorado and headed into Salt Canyon. As with Horn Creek, the water in Salt Creek is undrinkable, though this time due to high mineral content. Salt Canyon is pretty deep, which meant a wide detour on the Tonto. A little later we went through the much shallower drainage of Cedar Springs, about halfway between Horn and Monument Canyons. By mid-afternoon we were at Monument Canyon.

Day 3: Day hike to the Colorado

A rest day, with nothing more demanding than a mellow 1.3 mile hike down to the Colorado. The day began cloudy and overcast, with the forecast (from a couple of days ago, back on the Rim) calling for a chance of rain in the evening, We were feeling sluggish and lazy, and the cloudy skies did nothing to energize us; of course, there wasn't any real reason to hurry. We had a slow and leisurely morning and eventually got on the trail somewhere in the vicinity of 9am.

The trail headed downstream, along the side of the canyon, for maybe a third of a mile before descending to a massive 130-foot sandstone-and-granite pillar that is the monument the canyon is named after, then down to the creek bed. The creek wound its way gently down to the river, flanked on either side by cliffs of black schist shot through with streaks of pink granite intrusions.

As we got closer to the river, we could hear the rapids some distance away. When we reached the Colorado, it was running thick with mud and silt, the color of masala chai, churning through Granite Rapids with a continuous deafening roar that made conversation difficult. We sat around for a while, watched a couple of kayakers run the rapids, enjoyed the rush and roar of the river, then eventually headed back up towards camp.

Back at camp, an inventory revealed significant quantities of unconsumed alcohol. As experienced backpackers, we knew that that hauling out all that weight the next day, over 9+ trail miles and 3,600 feet of elevation gain, could adversely affect hiking efficiency, which could then impact our fellow hikers' Canyon experience. Therefore, purely out of a sense of social responsibility and civic duty, we spent the rest of the afternoon polishing off the booze. Much merriment ensued.

Day 4: Hike out

We had a long day ahead of us—9+ trail miles and 3,600 vertical feet to Hermit trailhead—and so started early: up at 4 and on the trail by 5:45. It was pitch dark, and our headlamps illuminated only a few feet of trail in front of each of us. Tom was in the lead, and despite the poor visibility and although the trail was often rocky and faint, somehow managed to not go astray. Gradually the sky lightened and the terrain around us began to take shape: faint outlines at first, then slowly gaining substance.

It was daylight by the time we reached the junction of the Tonto and Hermit trails. The weather forecast had been for morning rain, and the sky was heavy and gray as we turned left and headed uphill on Hermit. It began to spit on us intermittently above Cathedral Stairs—not quite rain, but not quite not-rain either—and the wind gradually picked up until, as we approached the appropriately named Breezy Point, it was gusting hard enough to wobble us as we hiked. The wind eased up eventually, but we could see the weather moving in: much of the skyline north of the river was obscured by clouds, and some of the cliffs on the south side as well. By the time we reached Santa Maria Springs the occasional drop of rain had changed to the occasional flurry of snow. Towards the top the trail was covered with a thin layer of snow.