William Cathcart-Rake shares his memories of a half-century of hiking in the Grand Canyon. During that time he spent sixty days and walked five hundred miles below the rim. As he recounts his thoughts and experiences of eighteen separate treks below the rim, he includes many fascinating facts about the Canyon's natural and human history. As the years go by, the author discovers that the Canyon has more to offer than just being a challenging place to hike-it becomes a sanctuary for reflection and renewal.

His time in the canyon is more than days below the rim, miles walked, switchbacks negotiated, stream crossings, walking speed, and pounds carried. Conquering the canyon-an impossible and foolish quest-ceased to be a goal. He returned to the canyon because of the effect it had on him, not because of what he could do in it or to it. The canyon allowed him to discover his ability to persevere despite discomfort, afforded an opportunity to learn more about the natural world we live in, and gave him a deeper appreciation of the need to seek the solace afforded by sauntering below the rim.

Sufficiently Robust

Fifty Years of Walking in Grand CanyonBy William Cathcart-Rake

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 William Cathcart-Rake, M.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4501-2

Contents

Acknowledgements..............................................................xiPreface.......................................................................xiiiChapter 1 First Crossing (Rim-to-Rim).........................................1Chapter 2 Havasu..............................................................15Chapter 3 Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim...................................................20Chapter 4 Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim, Again............................................30Chapter 5 Thunder River.......................................................37Chapter 6 A Father and Son Walk...............................................48Chapter 7 Rick Trujillo.......................................................55Chapter 8 Heeding Harvey's Advice.............................................65Chapter 9 Rim-to-Rim in a Day.................................................74Chapter 10 Elizabeth Hikes the Canyon.........................................82Chapter 11 North Kaibab Trail.................................................90Chapter 12 Hermit Creek, Redux................................................96Chapter 13 Return to Thunder River............................................101Chapter 14 A Guy Thing........................................................110Chapter 15 R2R2R#3............................................................118Chapter 16 Old Trail, New Experience..........................................127Chapter 17 Another Amazing Day................................................140Chapter 18 Winter in the Canyon...............................................151Appendix A Grand Ganyon Geology...............................................161Appendix B Thirteen Essentials for Hiking in Grand Canyon.....................162References....................................................................180

Chapter One

First Crossing (Rim-to-Rim)

August 1961

Who can adequately describe the scene?-who can describe the indescribable? In its stupendous ensemble the spectacle is too vast for art. It is indeed almost too much for human thought. You cannot behold it for the first time without a gasp, however blas your emotions have become by globe-trotting. -Fitz-James MacCarthy, "A Rhapsody," Grand Canyon of Arizona, 1909

I was a skinny kid, not at all athletic, content to ride my bike short distances, splash in the community pool, play catch with my brother, and begrudgingly mow our yard with a push lawnmower. I avoided walking long distances and running any distance. Given my lack of physical prowess, I was among the last chosen for a pickup game of baseball and the first cut after basketball tryouts. My father would occasionally take my brother Tim and me to the local golf course on Sunday afternoons. Dad would hit the ball around while his sons walked behind him. Walking the course with Dad was no treat for me. I wanted to ride in an electric cart.

In 1960, shortly after my eleventh birthday, I joined a Boy Scout troop in our sleepy little southern California town of Yorba Linda, the birthplace of Richard M. Nixon. This troop disbanded a year later, and my father encouraged me to continue with Scouts by joining Troop 99, the remaining troop in town. Every summer, Troop 99 spent five to six days hiking in either the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California or the Grand Canyon of Arizona. In August 1961, the troop planned a nearly twenty-five-mile hike across the Grand Canyon. Prior to joining Troop 99, I had not walked more than two miles in one day. What made me think walking nearly twenty-five miles in six days was possible? Was I overly optimistic about my physical abilities, stupid, or just nave? Having neither been to the Grand Canyon nor seen a picture of it, it was a great unknown.

Boys who anticipated making the Grand Canyon trip were required to make at least two conditioning hikes with the troop during the months of June and July. These hikes always started at a building called "The Scout House," a small two-room structure near downtown Yorba Linda, which at the time was a small unincorporated Orange County village nestled amongst orange, lemon, and avocado groves. Yorba Linda's main drag, appropriately named Main Street, was one block long, and all of the town's commercial interests were located here. I can still picture the buildings lining the street: a hardware store, drug store, grocery store, weekly newspaper, five-and-dime, Masonic lodge, barbershop, beauty shop, bank, caf, gift shop, gas station, Chevrolet car dealership, and Quaker church. The only other church in town, a Methodist church, was a block off Main. In the early 1960s there were no bars or liquor stores in town. The two local churches owned the sole liquor license. We had a volunteer fire department, usually called out to fight brush fires in the surrounding hills. Supposedly, a county sheriff patrolled the streets, although I never saw one. The town's children attended Yorba Linda Elementary School for kindergarten through eighth grade. After completing eighth grade we were bussed to high school in the neighboring community of Fullerton. Yorba Linda was the quintessential great place in which to be a kid.

A half dozen other boys and I made the two mandatory hikes, each time walking about five miles with packs on our backs, camping for the night, and hiking back the next day. Our routes led us beside and through the avocado and citrus groves and barley fields surrounding town. Rows of eucalyptus trees protected the fruit trees from high winds, their leaves emitting a characteristic fragrance that I will always associate with my boyhood home. The hikes in Yorba Linda were tough for me because they involved more walking than I had ever done, and an accursed pack had to be carried as well. Fortunately, these treks did not involve steep climbs or walking in extreme heat, and I discovered that I could walk five miles in one day.

Years later, I realized the training hikes did little to prepare me physically for a Grand Canyon hike. I suspect the scoutmaster determined which boys had the physical maturity and mental toughness to take on a bigger challenge. Somehow I managed to pass the test. One final preparation for the hike started two weeks prior to our departure. We had to repeatedly paint our feet with tincture of benzoin, supposedly to toughen the skin for the long walk. The stinky liquid only stained my feet brown.

Shortly after midnight one Saturday in August 1961, we started the journey from Southern California to the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, stopping for breakfast in Las Vegas, Nevada, and lunch at Zion National Park in southern Utah. My parents, my younger brother Tim, and my younger sisters, Marilyn and Jenny, accompanied nine hikers. Besides me, the Scouts were Kenny Quinn, Les Decker, Tom Dollarhide, Wendell Iwatsuru, and Torrey Webb. Our three leaders included Bob Ackerman, Jack McDavid, and Stan (last name long forgotten). A couple of Scouts rode with my family in our old Ford station wagon, while the remainder shared space with backpacks and other camping supplies in the back of a stock truck driven by the scoutmaster, undeniably an unsafe and uncomfortable mode of transportation.

Fitz-James MacCarthy, John Muir, and others have attempted to describe the nearly indescribable landscape one encounters upon peering over the Canyon rim for the first time. My first impressions of the Grand Canyon were its vastness, its wonderful array of colors, and the silence, broken only by a rush of wind from its depths. It was one immense gash in the earth. Additional adjectives could not adequately capture the scene. I had never seen a grander place in my life, but walking across it was another issue. The night before the hike I gazed across the Canyon, the lights of Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim twinkling in the distance, and a feeling of unease surfaced. How hard would it be to walk across this ten-mile-wide, mile-deep chasm?

After a day of sightseeing and acclimation on the North Rim, we started our 23.5-mile traverse across the Canyon. After depositing hikers at the trailhead, my mother drove our car to the South Rim, while my father drove the truck. Upon reaching the South Rim my father promised to make contact with a muleskinner and arrange for shipping extra supplies by mule train to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Canyon, where we would pick them up and use them for the second half of the hike.

Our leaders required that hikers wear long, light-weight, light-colored cotton pants (no stiff, heavy jeans), a long-sleeved white shirt, and a white pith helmet, attire designed to protect us from the intense summer sun. No markings identified us as Boy Scouts. My white shirt was a well-worn dress shirt handed down to me from my dad-a little large for me, but serviceable once I cut several inches off each sleeve. I must have brushed a half dozen coats of white enamel paint on my once khaki-colored pith helmet, the white layer meant to reflect the sun's harsh rays. Leaving the pith helmet its original khaki color was unacceptable, according to our leaders.

This trip predated specialized backpacking stores. The boys purchased gear from army surplus stores and searched through garages and attics for usable equipment issued to their fathers during stints in the military. My pack, heavy and incredibly primitive, was basically an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch sheet of plywood with shoulder straps (made of two-inch-wide cotton webbing) attached to one side, with eyelet screws along the edges of the other side so that we could lash our gear, stuffed in a canvas bag, to the packboard. Troop 99 had an abundant supply of these instruments of torture. These packs did not feature padded shoulder straps, hip belts, modern fabric rucksacks, or space-age metal components. Additional gear consisted of an extra pair of socks, a six-foot-by-three-foot plastic sheet to be used as a poncho and ground cloth, a light blanket, a pair of moccasins for camp use, toiletries, a bowl and spoon, and a share of the cooking equipment and food. Given this relatively small load, my best friend, Les Decker, and I "buddy packed." We placed our gear in one bundle, strapped it to the packboard, and took turns carrying the load. While one of us toiled with the infernal pack, the other carried a canteen belt-an army issue web belt with four heavy steel one-quart canteens filled with water; two of the canteens nested in heavy steel canteen cups.

Les and I had few disagreements except when it came to Major League baseball. Having lived in New Jersey during his early childhood, Les followed his father's lead and became a New York Giants fan. Mr. Decker moved the family to Yorba Linda about the same time the Giants moved to San Francisco. Although transplanted to Southern California, home of my beloved Dodgers, Les remained a Giants fan. In response to hearing about the exploits of Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal, I sang the praises of my heroes, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Junior Gilliam, and Maury Wills. Our rivalry remained intense yet friendly, and we were a compatible team on the Canyon hike.

After saying good-bye to my family, the troop started down the North Kaibab Trail on a warm August morning. The North Kaibab Trail (U.S.G.S. maps: Bright Angel Point, Phantom Ranch) from the North Rim down Roaring Springs Canyon to Bright Angel Canyon was completed in 1927 to replace the original route to Bright Angel Canyon-the Old Bright Angel Trail-located several miles to the northeast. The Old Bright Angel Trail followed a route used by the Indians and prospectors and was improved in 1902 by Francois Matthes, a U.S.G.S. geologist and mapmaker. The newer North Kaibab trailhead was much closer to the visitor facilities on the North Rim than the Old Bright Angel Trail.

During our descent of the North Kaibab Trail we periodically encountered mule trains carrying visitors up and down the trail. The muleskinner barked out orders for us to move to the uphill side (inside edge) of the trail and remain silent until all mules had passed. For a brief moment I felt morally superior to the mule riders. I was the purist-walking my way across the Grand Canyon, while they were riding a short distance into the canyon on a stinking mule. However, it would have taken very little encouragement for me to hop on that mule and ride the rest of the way to our destination.

Summer months are undeniably the worst months to hike in the Canyon because of the searing summer heat in the inner canyon. Daytime high temperatures regularly exceed one hundred degrees during June, July, and August, and nighttime lows rarely fall below seventy degrees. Unfortunately, because of our school schedule, summer was the only time we could make a weeklong trip. Our leaders were aware of the weather in the Canyon in August, and they made sure we carried plenty of water, rested frequently, and avoided uphill walks in the heat of the day.

The temperature rose as we descended the many switchbacks through the upper layers of the Canyon. My thighs burned from the steep downhill walk. This walk was nothing like those I had taken in Yorba Linda.

The thin straps of my pack cut into my shoulders. I swore they were made of barbed wire. Trading the pack for the canteen belt lessened the load on my back but brought no reprieve from the heat. Rest stops did not occur often enough for me. So this was what descending into hell was like. I shuffled my feet down the dusty, winding trail-kicking up red dust in the Hermit Shale, Supai Formation, and Redwall. More than one of the hikers behind me cried out, "Pick up your feet."

"Eat my dust," I wanted to reply.

The trail cut through the Redwall on the south side of Roaring Springs Canyon. Across the gorge water poured out of the rock wall and cascaded to the canyon floor on its way to join Bright Angel Creek and eventually the Colorado River. A lush hanging garden clung to the wall surrounding the springs. The creek formed by Roaring Springs was the largest tributary of Bright Angel Creek.

Below the Redwall the dust I generated from my shuffling gait became brown. Not far from Roaring Springs, the trail intersected Bright Angel Canyon and turned south, following a nearly straight line beside Bright Angel Creek to the Colorado River eight miles downstream. Once out of the confines of Roaring Springs Canyon we could see our final destination, the South Rim, on the far southern horizon. It appeared a long distance away.

As we walked along Bright Angel Creek I silently wished our scoutmasters would stop and let us cool off in one of the many clear, natural pools in the creek-some large enough to accommodate our entire group. Only upon reaching our first night's campsite in late afternoon were we finally allowed to soak in the chilly waters of the stream. There were no improvements at this camp-just a wide spot in the trail on the west bank of the creek, approximately seven miles from our starting point and seven miles upstream from the Colorado River. I have no idea whether our campsite was near Cottonwood Campground, which was located on the east bank of Bright Angel Creek one mile below Roaring Springs Canyon.

Cottonwood Camp was established in the 1920s as a layover for mule riders on their way to the Colorado River from the North Rim. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved the campground. I cannot remember seeing Cottonwood Camp on the walk. Focused on keeping up with the boy ahead of me, observing the scenery was low priority.

The boys on the trip were divided into three groups: Ackerman's Aces (led by Scoutmaster Bob Ackerman), Mac's Maniacs (led by Assistant Scoutmaster Jack McDavid), and Stanley's Steamers (led by Stan, a college student and assistant Scout leader). Each group was assigned daily tasks. One group gathered wood for the fire and washed dishes, the second group cooked, and the third enjoyed a day off. We rotated duties daily. Les and I were assigned to Bob Ackerman's group. Mr. Ackerman was strict, quick to criticize our shortcomings, and demanded obedience. The boys called him Mr. Ackerman. Raised to respect my elders, I listened to him and generally followed his commands. In contrast, Les disliked Mr. Ackerman's dictatorial style and repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, challenged his authority. Mr. Ackerman kindly reminded Les that the scoutmaster would determine when and how tasks would be done on this trip.

Short, thin, and prematurely grey, Mr. McDavid led by example rather than fiat. Mr. McDavid could be stern, but he was kind. He loved the hike and related well to the kids-a leader, yet one of the guys. To me, he was Jack or Mac, not Mr. McDavid. Jack had been a medic in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater in World War II, but he chose not to dwell on the horrors he had witnessed. I never heard him tell a war story. At each rest stop Jack enjoyed a Pall Mall cigarette, teaching us how to field strip a cigarette in case we took up the smoking habit. He also taught us how to apply moleskin to hotspots on the skin of our feet to prevent blisters. Jack shared our sentiments about the heat and complained that his pack was just as heavy and his legs were just as tired as ours. The boys made sure his pack was heavier (when it was unguarded, we would sneak a few rocks into his pack).

In 1961, wood fires were allowed in the Canyon, so we cooked directly over wood coals. Food was memorable for how bad it was. Our meals consisted primarily of first-generation dehydrated products such as Chili Mac, a dreadful mixture of macaroni and highly seasoned chili. Additional foodstuffs included beef stew, dried beef, cheese, oatmeal, stewed prunes, Hershey tropical chocolate bars, hard, thick crackers called pilot biscuits, and powdered eggs. Pilot biscuits were nothing more than thick, petrified saltine crackers made a little more palatable by smearing them with the jelly and peanut butter, each magically made by mixing water with a bag of dehydrated ingredients. The tropical chocolate bars were as tough as a bar of soap, although a bit tastier. I hated eggs as a kid and the powdered eggs in camp were an order of magnitude worse than the eggs my mother made me choke down for breakfast at home.

(Continues...)

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