In early March 2026 Layne, Tom, and I spent five nights (six days) on a backpacking trip in the Tanner Rapids area of Grand Canyon. Herman had originally planned to come on the trip, but had to drop out at the last minute due to an injury.
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| Our campsite above the Rim |
The drive up from Tucson was uneventful. We camped overnight on National Forest land off a dirt road near the East Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, which is closer to Tanner Trailhead than the more popular South Entrance. We were up and off early the next morning. The road into GCNP was empty as we drove to the trailhead in the predawn darkness.
Day 1
We were at the trailhead by 6 and started down the trail around 6:15. It was still dark and we had our headlamps on, but the sky lightened quickly and soon visibility was not a problem. I was carrying an extra gallon of water to stash by the trail for the return trip. The added weight made for a heavy pack that had me a little off balance and needing to step carefully, but we made good time.
On most of my previous springtime hikes in Grand Canyon there would be lots of flowers all around: tiny but festive little splashes of white and yellow and red peeking out of the rocky ground. This had been a very dry winter, though, and I think I saw fewer than a dozen plants in bloom over the entire length of the trail. It gave me hope that the lack of rain might at least mean that the Little Colorado River (LCR) would be running blue. But that hope was dashed when a couple of hikers coming up reported that, alas, the Little Colorado was a muddy brown. Oh well.
Tom was feeling under the weather, and beginning to get tired, by the time we had worked our way down the grueling stretch through the Coconino layer at the top of the trail. To make matters worse, it was a warm day and there was no shade anywhere. Tom ran out of water a couple of miles before we reached the Colorado River. By the time we reached the campsites at Tanner Rapids he was so exhausted he could barely walk. This did not bode well for our schedule the next day, which had us on a robust 9-mile hike to a campsite near the confluence with LCR. Then I found that my water filter wasn't working, and had to borrow Tom's. This was not an auspicious start to a six-day backpacking trip.
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| Comanche Point at sunset |
It was a warm night, and after dinner I lay on top of my sleeping bag pondering the logistics of how to work around the unexpected challenges that had come up. Tanner Rapids rushed by just a stone's throw away, its hypnotic roar drowning out all other sounds (and making me acutely aware that if for any reason Tom called for help during the night I wouldn't be able to hear him over the sound of the river). At some point I drifted off to sleep.
Day 2
Between Tom's fatigue, my balky water filter, and the disappointing reports of a muddy
brown LCR, the prospect of hiking to LCR didn't seem very appealing, and I decided to stay back at Tanner; Layne decided to go ahead with a solo overnight hike to LCR.
The site where we had set up our tents the previous afternoon was an open area near the river with little in the way of shade. One of the first things we did in the morning was to look for a place with more shade. We eventually found an inconspicuous and well-shaded campsite, tucked away below an overhanging slab of conglomerate, and moved our tents there. The rest of the day was lazy. We sat around, wandered around, watched some rafters float by. There didn't seem to be anyone else around, and it felt as though we had the entire Canyon to ourselves.
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| Raft party |
Comanche Point |
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After dinner Tom and I sat and watched as the sky darkened and stars appeared—in ones and twos at first, and then suddenly the sky was full of them. Occasionally a small speck of light—a plane or satellite—sailed silently across the sky. I opened my eyes a little before dawn the Big Dipper hung suspended above me. The air was cool, and except for the faint whisper of Tanner Rapids in the distance the world was silent.
Days 3 and 4
Shortly after breakfast I decided to head out on a short easy day hike on Beamer Trail to Palisades Creek, a little over three miles to the north. The air was pleasantly cool, but temperatures began rising once the sun rose above the cliffs. By the time I reached Palisades, around 11 AM, it was quite warm. I walked a short way up Palisades Canyon, but the heat sapped my motivation and before long I turned around and headed back to Tanner Camp. I reached camp around 1:30 PM, and Layne came in looking sweaty and tired maybe twenty minutes later.
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| Carnivorous limestone |
I spent a good part of the afternoon wandering around the rock slopes below Comanche Point: enjoying the views of the river and watching raft parties go by, admiring the towering cliffs before me, getting close to "carnivorous" limestone boulders—rocks whose surface has, over millennia, been gradually pitted into razor-sharp points by rain.
Given the changes to our original plans for the trip, at one point we had considered the possibility of hiking out a day early instead of hanging around at Tanner Camp for three whole days. But Layne was tired enough from his overnight hike to LCR that we decided to take a rest day before heading back uphill; that would also give Tom another day to recover. This would leave us on our original schedule.
That night was my 150th night below the Rim in the Grand Canyon.
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| Lizard tracks |
The next day—the fourth day of our trip—Tom and I took a leisurely walk westwards towards Cardenas Creek. The trail was very pleasant and we weren't in any hurry. There were some cool lizard tracks in the sand by the river, and a small nameless rapid, a little further downstream, whose waves were fun to watch. Importantly (since we had some tough uphill hiking back to the Rim coming up the next two days), Tom seemed to be getting his strength back.
As with the other nights on this trip, I slept without a rainfly on my tent. The sky was moonless and the stars put on an astonishing show. The Milky Way cut a bright fat diagonal across the top of my tent. Polaris, a modest little speck of light, sat just a little above my right shoulder. The Big Dipper started the night dangling over the cliffs to the north; when I opened my eyes just before dawn in had rotated to be directly above my tent. The Bengali name for the Big Dipper is Saptarshi, the Seven Sages ("sapta", seven + "rishi", sage), and for a moment it felt as though the sages were keeping watch over us.
Days 5 and 6
We had planned to hike back to the Rim over two days. The first day's hike would be from the Colorado River to just above the Redwall, about 3.6 miles with a vertical gain of 3000' (about 5.8 km and 910 m). (The Redwall Layer in the Grand Canyon is a cliffy layer of limestone, about 760' thick in the area of our hike. The trail through this section is steep, loose, rocky, and slippery, making for rough hiking.) The next day we would then hike from above the Redwall to the Canyon Rim, about 3.5 miles with 2100' vertical gain (5.6 km, 640 m).
We planned to get an early start to avoid the heat as much as possible. We rolled out of our tents shortly after 4 AM and set about the morning routine of breaking down our camp. We began hiking a little before 6. It was still dark out, and all we could see was the little circle in front of us illuminated by our headlamps. A splash of bright light peeked over the distant cliffs beside Comanche Point, then gradually grew into a sliver of crescent moon rising into the slowly lightening sky. Little by little the rocks and shrubs and gullies around us took form. We began to hear birds waking up around us.
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| Tanner Trail: Below the Redwall |
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The trail through the Redwall
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The sun rose above the cliffs to the east around 8:30. The day began to warm quickly after that, though it was still quite pleasant hiking. We set an unhurried pace. The climb through the Redwall Layer, one of the two hardest sections on the trail, didn't seem as bad as I had remembered it to be. Once above the Redwall we found ourselves a flat area where we could set up our tents and relaxed in the shade of a juniper tree.
The shadows gradually lengthened as the day wound down. The
Palisades of the Desert, a band of cliffs towering over the Canyon for miles, glowed golden in the afternoon sun. We sat and watched this spectacular show until the light faded and the hillsides grew dark.
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| The Palisades at sunset |
The next day was the last day of our hike. The first couple of miles, to Seventyfive Mile Saddle, were easy hiking with not a lot of elevation change. The trail steepened after that, finishing with a steep hard climb of 1100' through the Coconino Layer over the last half mile. We worked our way up slowly, and little by little the miles fell away. We reached the trailhead just after noon.
Postscript
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| Cryptobiota |
Although the trip didn't work out as originally planned—we went down Tanner, stayed at Tanner Camp for three days, and them came back up Tanner—it was still very enjoyable. Not having to hurry to get to a destination each day meant that we could take the time to get to know the place much more intimately. We had time to admire tiny little lizard tracks in the sand, check out "carnivorous limestone" boulders and cryptobiotic soil crusts, and watch the minute-to-minute change of colors on the vast wall of the Palisades as the sun sank down towards sunset. We had encountered all of these on previous trips, but hadn't really had the time to enjoy them in unhurried leisure. That was a delight.
And, of course, we all made it out in one piece, on schedule, under our own power. There's a lot to be said for that.
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