Day 219 (HDT 33)

Day 217 (HDT 33): 0 miles

After climbing out of the canyon last night, we knew we would effectively have to take a zero day today. We had a lot of errands to run and things to figure out. We started the morning by catching a bus to save us about 2 miles of walking into Grand Canyon Village.

When we were getting dropped off, she mentioned something about a buffet and I perked up like a dog when the mailman enters the yard. I had spent probably over a half hour the night before online trying to find out if there was a buffet in town and I couldn’t really tell. This was a sign.

I wanted to race into the buffet, but I was disciplined. I went to go resupply first and get some work out of the way. I bought food for 7 days and it came out to $190 with Grand Canyon prices 🥲

I then went to the buffet and had a grand ole time. But I think I’ve lost my touch. I could only pound out 4 plates of food. I truthfully think I can binge eat more while not hiking and just lifting regularly. I’m not sure if it’s the continual burning of calories 24 hours after an anaerobic workout or what, but I feel like I can’t eat as much as I used to. Maybe I’m just getting old

I took a break from the buffet to go to the post office and pick up my new trekking poles. Woohoo! They were going to be much appreciated. Having only one pole in the Grand Canyon, especially going down Nankoweap Trail was not cool.

But I also picked up a food box I had bounced from tropic. I totally forgot about this food box. And I had already bought 7 days of food. I took a little bit from it but gave most of it to Fancy Feast.

We closed down the breakfast buffet and then went to the backcountry information center to extend our permits (when I originally got our GC permits I thought we exited the park after the north rim but that is NOT the case) and ask some questions.

We just missed the bus as it was pulling away so we had to wait a while for another one to get over there.
After we got in the new one and arrived at the backcountry office, we walked into the building…and they had just closed for lunch. So we had to wait there for an hour. There was a lot to read and see but it was a vibe check. Some fun death statistics about the Grand Canyon. 86% of the deaths were men which I thought seemed right given how macho and dumb we can be. But in the same vain, I was surprised only like 12% were people 20-39. I figured that’s be a bigger dumb/risk taking population.

When we finally got to talk to a ranger, we totally changed our plans for the rest of the Grand Canyon. Saddle Canyon and Tapeats Creek area are pretty notorious. With the snow that was falling, I was a little worried about Tapeats Creek (which can be dangerous) and Fancy Feast was worried about the plunge pools with the highs being in the 40s (pools of water you have to slide down into cause there’s nowhere else to go).

We got to talk to a ranger that had done the Hayduke before and knew the saddle Canyon and Tapeats area really well. She pretty much said everything she could except “don’t do this section now.” She strongly advised against it. She said with the level of snow falling that creek would be raging and one bad step and you’re flying downstream. She said she has pulled a lot of bodies out of Tapeats. She gave us an idea of how to maybe attack the section a little safer, only crossing the creek at the mouth with the Colorado, but still recommended we don’t do it.

She instead recommended what she said was her favorite thing in the whole park, and she had spent a lot of time around there. She recommended we still drop in at Swamp Point off the rim and walk the esplanade, and beautiful and pretty rare earth layer in the Grand Canyon.

She gave us a route that she really couldn’t have hyped up any more. It added miles but she kept repeating how much she loved it, and we would reconnect in back with the “official” Hayduke around Deer Creek so we could still do the suffer fest of Boulder hopping along the Colorado and climbing out Kanab Creek. I felt much better about this. I was worried about Tapeats with the snowfall and this sounded cool. I’ll come back and do saddle canyon and Tapeats someday. My attitude with a lot of these long distance hikes has become that they’re just recon missions to find cool stuff to go back and do someday.

Got a taxi to Tusayen and got a hotel for the night. I ate at what was allegedly the 2nd most expensive McDonald’s in the world according to our driver.

Media of the day: rewatching “Saul Gone”