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Any recommendations for day hikes in Grand Canyon National Park? Keeping in mind that I’ll have a 25 pound year and a half year old on my back in a baby carrying pack? We plan on going in mid March which I guess could still mean ice and snow too.
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Feb 24, 2023 04:18
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Any recommendations for day hikes in Grand Canyon National Park? Keeping in mind that I’ll have a 25 pound year and a half year old on my back in a baby carrying pack? Hey! Was an interp ranger at the Canyon, actually happen to currently be here visiting. Here's my speil: Well, you've got three main options: Rim Trail, Bright Angel, and South Kaibab. Rim Trail is exactly what it sounds like - it follows the rim of the canyon for about 13 or so miles between Hermit's Rest and the South Kaibab trailhead. The most popular part of the trail is roughly a four mile stretch between Mather Point and the Bright Angel trailhead, though that's mainly due to the location of the village area as opposed to any greater scenic value. Trail is mostly paved and mostly flat, and with the shuttle bus system you can usually walk as far as you like and then take a bus back to where you started. Easy trail, great views, and if you hike the section alongside the Hermit's Rest shuttle route you won't see very many other people except for at the various viewpoints/shuttle bus stops. Bright Angel and South Kaibab both go down into the canyon, though they have their own quirks. BA is effectively a long series of switchbacks descending into a side canyon, while SK was blasted out of a ridgeline and extends further out into the canyon as it descends. SK is a bit steeper than BA, though both are real obnoxious to climb out of if you're not used to the altitude or canyon hiking. Key note: Don't let the distances fool you. A 6 mile hike is an easy jaunt at sea level or when the trail is flat, but here it can really kick your rear end if you're not prepared. I usually recommend taking a shorter hike into the canyon before planning a longer one, just so you can get a better sensation of how your body handles the ascent and descent. For a lot of people it's ready to get suckered in by the downhill, only to realize the uphill is much, much harder than they'd realized. For BA, the usual day hike locations are the 2nd tunnel (~1.6 mile round trip, 600ft elevation change), 1.5 mile resthouse (3 miles, 1,200ft), 3 mile resthouse (6 miles, 2k ft), and the freshly renamed Havasupai Garden (9 miles, 3k ft). Each of these stops (except for the tunnel) have water and pit toilets, though the pipeline is busted all the time so check the water status before you try and rely on it. Because it's switchbacks descending into a side canyon, the view doesn't change all that much until you get to HG, but you do get the sensation at various points of being able to look up at the steep canyon walls above you and get a sensation of how far you've descended - and how far you have to go back up. For views, it's South Kaibab. Ooh Aah Point (1.8 mile 600ft), Cedar Ridge (3 mile 1,100 ft) and Skeleton Point (6 mile 2k ft) all offer excellent panoramic views of the canyon, and at Skeleton you can even hear the river in the deep distance. There's no water and no shade though, so it can be a tough hike in the summertime. Not your problem, though! Weather at the canyon has been all over this winter. Just two days ago there was a big snowstorm that closed Desert View Drive, and then the day after I was clearing out the car in a T-shirt. If you were to hike now, then trail conditions would be real icy/muddy up top, but the ice will rapidly drop off as you descend. By mid-March this will probably still be the case, but with the way the weather has been, who knows? You should have poles anyway, but poles and crampons are definitely items to pack. Also make sure to dress in layers, so you can take stuff off as you descend and the day gets hotter. Temperatures usually rise about 5°F per 1k feet, so it can get a LOT hotter halfway through your hike than it was when you started. Hope this all helps! Lemme know if you have any other questions.
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Feb 25, 2023 17:16
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Wow! Thank you so much for all that info. I hadn't even considered elevation sickness, but as a flatlander from Northern Minnesota I suppose I ought to factor that in. Will definitely plan on bringing poles and crampons now too. Thinking we'll start off slow and maybe only do 1-1.5 mile out and backs our first few days there.
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Feb 26, 2023 13:40
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Elevation sickness can happen, but the rule of thumb is it's not a thing until over 8k feet. The south rim of the grand canyon is ~7200 feet. Be alert to the symptoms just in case but I wouldn't worry about it. The more immediate problem will be altitude adaption. You absolutely will feel short of breath any time you try to climb a hill. If you're an marathoner you'll feel it less but the average joe is gonna experience a lot of huffing and puffing. Plan for a lot of pauses to catch your breath when moving uphill.
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Feb 26, 2023 14:19
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Good to know. I'm in decent shape after a winter of running, cross country skiing and rowing but will plan on taking the up hills pretty easy. I'm hoping we can let the kid hike on her own in bits and pieces too if she's up for it which will help lighten the load a bit.
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Feb 26, 2023 14:26
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I usually get around that problem by huffing and puffing after any hill climb at any elevation.
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Feb 26, 2023 18:06
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withak posted:I usually get around that problem by huffing and puffing after any hill climb at any elevation. Yeah I did up to 12,220 last June then went home to do like 1,200 and I am a huffin and a puffin the whole time all the time. I’m happy with my cardio and can out-hike all my friends but I sound like a cartoon fish on dry land the whole time.
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Feb 26, 2023 18:38
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I'd like to explore a family property, map the trails w/ GPS and annotate. Anyone recommend an app?
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Mar 1, 2023 16:24
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Caltopo is good for doing cool stuff with map layers.
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Mar 1, 2023 16:26
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For a phone app, I'd use Map Plus. It's kind of a pain to learn but it's geared towards GIS usage so it has a lot of tools related to mapping and marking features. It also exports to a half dozen major formats so you can re-use the data in other tools (eg, QGIS which is my desktop mapper of choice). One of my favorite features is the ability to designate an area to download google map tiles so everything still works when away from cell towers. I've never used it to log a gps track but it's a supported feature, just not sure what it'll do to your battery drain. It did take me a while to get comfortable with the app though. Fortunately they have decent documentation online.
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Mar 1, 2023 17:02
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For any big guys looking for a running vest I just picked up an Ultimate Direction ultra 6 and it's an amazingly comfortable fit with room to spare on my 48" chest.
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Mar 1, 2023 21:16
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Rolo posted:Yeah I did up to 12,220 last June then went home to do like 1,200 and I am a huffin and a puffin the whole time all the time. I'm a big dude that runs hot, and I look like a steam train going up hills in the cold. I've literally had clouds coming off my shoulders while I'm walking. Put me on flat land and I feel unstoppable now
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Mar 1, 2023 22:12
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Given the insane snow year the sierras are having right now, how do you think things will look the first week of June in Sequoia/Kings Canyon? Planned my trip for that time thinking I’d get decent weather and lowish crowds but now I’m worried that trails may not even be pasable by then 
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Mar 10, 2023 22:10
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That range is forecast to get over 100 inches of snow this weekend. I'd make alternate plans. Unless it gets insanely hot real quick and melts it all.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:49
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You always gotta be flexible with this poo poo, sadly. Had alternate plans for my marquee trip last year and wasn’t sure I could do it until a week before.
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Mar 12, 2023 14:22
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Whoever recommended the Lululemon ABC joggers a few pages back... god drat, these things are comfy.
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Mar 12, 2023 20:06
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You're welcome. The other pants that are nearly if not more comfortable are my Patagonia joggers. They feel like literally nothing but they have pockets and if they weren't $50 in the garage section at REI I probably wouldn't have paid full price for them.
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Mar 12, 2023 23:42
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I got me a pair of the normal ABCs and they are excellent
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Mar 13, 2023 03:42
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Anyone familiar with hiking Monument Valley? The Navajo are super protective of it outside the main auto tour loop and it's hard to find any authoritative explanation of where you can hike and what requires a guide. They sell overnight backcountry permits but are loving terrible about telling one when/where these can be used. I don't really want to do anything super exotic, I want to hike the to the Totem Pole and photograph the eclipse in October this year. Just trying to shop around for as much information as possible before contacting the park directly so I can gauge if I have any chance of getting access. Fortunately it's easy to come up with a backup plan, I can do valley of the gods which is outside reservation land. But the spires in Navajo land are so loving iconic I would be ecstatic to be able to take pictures there. xzzy fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Mar 14, 2023 |
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Mar 14, 2023 02:31
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Someone posted this up on Reddit, vid of a hike I did 5 or so years ago. Its an incredible area https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWPE1_SFJGM&t=2s
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Mar 17, 2023 03:26
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xzzy posted:Anyone familiar with hiking Monument Valley? The Navajo are super protective of it outside the main auto tour loop and it's hard to find any authoritative explanation of where you can hike and what requires a guide. They sell overnight backcountry permits but are loving terrible about telling one when/where these can be used.
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Mar 17, 2023 03:30
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xzzy posted:Anyone familiar with hiking Monument Valley? The Navajo are super protective of it outside the main auto tour loop and it's hard to find any authoritative explanation of where you can hike and what requires a guide. They sell overnight backcountry permits but are loving terrible about telling one when/where these can be used. In general you need a guide, and it's relatively straightforward to hire one for whatever specific thing you want to do. It's extremely common for people to hire guides for recreational photography so that's probably the route they will want you to go. If you want to go without a guide, your best bet is to call/email the visitor center and ask for permission specifically. They may give you a permit, they may say hire a guide. Sometimes, when you have a guide, you can ask them about this or that place and they may say "yeah just go there you're fine nobody cares" or "please don't go there" but even in the former case, if its an area that is regularly patrolled you may get stopped to see if you have a permit. In those cases, having a business card from the guide you hired and just telling them so-and-so told me I could just go here is good enough. Monument Valley is probably more heavily restricted than a lot of other places, though.
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Mar 19, 2023 16:48
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liz posted:Given the insane snow year the sierras are having right now, how do you think things will look the first week of June in Sequoia/Kings Canyon? Planned my trip for that time thinking I’d get decent weather and lowish crowds but now I’m worried that trails may not even be pasable by then For high country: lol For the big tree hikes in sequoia, probably OK? Some of the lower elevation backcountry canyons etc. might also be OK in terms of snow, but the stream crossings will be hellacious. What routes in particular did you want to do? 1st week of June is ambitious even in a low snow year for the high sierra, unless you are specifically looking for alpine conditions. Even last year there was snow on the north side of Glen pass into mid June, for example. In 2017, some trails at 10k ft+ were snow covered into mid-August.
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Mar 19, 2023 17:00
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Just to emphasize how insane the sierra snowpack is this year, here’s a graph of the snow levels on the trail segment where the PCT and JMT overlap in the sierras: As someone who is planning a PCT thru this year I’ve been watching it very closely and there’s definitely quite a bit of anxiety about it in that community. It probably won’t be impossible in early June but you should prepare gear/provisions for alpine conditions and going solo is probably a bad idea. If that’s not your bag it may be possible to stick to areas below the snow line, which will require its own planning and monitoring of conditions.
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Mar 20, 2023 06:21
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Morbus posted:For high country: lol Welp, just checked the NPS site and looks like Sequoia is closed until mid April and “likely much longer.”  I’ve never been so as a first trip I was at least hoping to check out the main areas. What a crazy year. Any suggestions for other California areas worth checking out around that time?
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Mar 21, 2023 02:30
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liz posted:Welp, just checked the NPS site and looks like Sequoia is closed until mid April and “likely much longer.” It's not a bad time to visit the coastal redwoods. Prairie Creek is my favorite of the redwood parks but there are many good ones and they all have huge trees. Castle Crags state park is kind of up there too and is good for a solid day's visit-it will almost certainly be snow free by June. Lassen is up there too but it will be mostly closed. Mt. Shasta will be pretty to look at. Coastal stuff like Pt Reyes or Sonora coast aren't bad options either and could be tied in with the above. It can get very foggy during the summer...but it can also get very foggy at any time. Similarly it's never really a bad time to visit Big Sur but the roads look turbofucked right now and I'm not sure if fixing it will be the typical seasonal crap, the ~2-3 month job we had in 2021, or the giant year+ long construction superproject we had in 2017. The popular hikes around Yosemite valley will probably be OK. Four mile trail / glacier point / panorama trail and the trails to the main waterfalls were all passable by the first week of June in 2017. It's a crowded time of year, but since glacier point road is still closed for construction all of 2023, you'd have far fewer people on the 4 mile and panorama trails (but that's a very long day hike with a lot of elevation change). It's also possible that this year, glacier point and the top of 4 mile / panorama trails may still have some snow. The main waterfall trails will almost certainly be passable, and the waterfalls ought to be impressive this year. If you really want to do some high sierra stuff and can't wait, horseshoe meadows will probably be open and accessible a week into June (taking again 2017 as a reference), and the trail to cottonwood lakes, even if there is snow, ought to be passable without too much difficulty. The lakes and surrounding scenery are pretty, and can be visited as a day hike or as an overnight. The nearby passes over the mountains will almost certainly still have snow, though.
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Mar 21, 2023 09:06
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Point Reyes is a very fun place and is absolutely gorgeous. You can do worse as a backup option (and I’ve used it that way myself a couple of times when weather didn’t cooperate). Ask me about hiking through the dark from the beach back to camp, incredibly paranoid because we saw a trail cam for studying big cats on the way down!
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Mar 21, 2023 17:22
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TheSlutPit posted:Just to emphasize how insane the sierra snowpack is this year, here’s a graph of the snow levels on the trail segment where the PCT and JMT overlap in the sierras: Well on the plus the water spots are gonna be nice and full! Are you able to delay the start to avoid some of that? I really need to do the PCT already. I did the AT in 2017 and I really want to just gently caress off from work for 5 months and do it
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Mar 21, 2023 17:28
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Banff reservations open tomorrow, excited to be disappointed. Hoping for the Sawback
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Mar 21, 2023 17:50
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Is Moraine Lake totally closed to traffic this year or is that still in progress?
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Mar 21, 2023 18:01
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got it! 4 nights 5 days on the sawback first week of august, then 1 night on the skyline in jasper
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Mar 22, 2023 16:40
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xzzy posted:Is Moraine Lake totally closed to traffic this year or is that still in progress? Yes. Shuttles or disability placards only. It had become such a poo poo show in recent years. Of course this time of year its totally closed off unless you xcountry ski in
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Mar 23, 2023 03:40
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George H.W. oval office posted:Well on the plus the water spots are gonna be nice and full! I’m staring mid-april, so my hope is to miss the last of the socal storms and take it slow through the desert. Unfortunately I suspect it’s going to be a “pick your poison” scenario in the sierra, where entering pre-thaw means dealing with deep alpine snow conditions and closed resupply locations, but entering later means dealing with insane amounts of melt runoff during river crossings. Both options are sketchy for different reasons but my hope is to adjust timing as I go based on beta from earlier hikers. Ultimately as much as I would love to try for a continuous footpath, flipping up to norcal/oregon may be a better option if the Sierra winter storms continue into may/june.
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Mar 24, 2023 01:07
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Thanks for the feedback about Sequoia/California plans. Still trying to figure things out… In the meantime, I have a random question! Where is the best place to experience cloud inversion? This has been on my list to see for the longest time. However, is there a certain place and/or weather that would be ideal for these conditions?
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Mar 25, 2023 18:48
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Mt Tamalpais north of San Fancisco is famous for photogenic inversions, mostly because it's pretty easy to get to when the conditions are right. But it can happen anywhere a layer of cold air gets underneath a layer of warm air. I got no idea how to predict them but it's relatively common along west facing coastlines. Alternatively climb any mountain that gets above the cloud layer. Should look about the same.
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Mar 25, 2023 20:33
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The one time I saw a really great inversion was first thing in the morning after a big rain. I assume it's more likely when a front moves in, maybe when it gets stopped in place by the topography?
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Mar 25, 2023 21:32
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In the coastal range of Oregon on just about any fall morning, you can climb up on a peak and see what look like rivers and lakes of fog in the valleys below.
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Mar 25, 2023 22:05
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I'm on the hunt for a trail to backpack within one hour of Portland (either in Oregon or Washington). Trying to plan my first summer overnight since having a baby last May. I'm pretty experienced and in decent shape, but it's been a while since I've done this. The friends who agreed to go with me are up for just about anything so long as it's short-ish (likely no more than 6 miles one way, so an out an back with camping spots along the way would work even if it's a long one). We've had some wild snow and I imagine the places we've hiked in the past are also still going to be covered in snow later than we're used to. Basically, looking for something without snow (or minimal snow) close-ish to Portland, something short or a trail we can make short come June/July. It's been a while since I planned one of these that I almost don't know where to start that isn't All Trails.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:17
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Beezus posted:I'm on the hunt for a trail to backpack within one hour of Portland (either in Oregon or Washington). Trying to plan my first summer overnight since having a baby last May. Go to your local library and get William Sullivan's North Oregon Cascades hiking book. I've never found a hike in his books that was anything less than stellar, and he breaks them down by backpackability, difficulty, what time of year it tends to be feasible, etc. e: that time of year you might be limited to lower elevation stuff, especially this year. Maybe check out his coastal range book too.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:31
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| # ? May 23, 2024 03:36 |
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alnilam posted:Go to your local library and get William Sullivan's North Oregon Cascades hiking book. I've never found a hike in his books that was anything less than stellar, and he breaks them down by backpackability, difficulty, what time of year it tends to be feasible, etc. Thanks for the rec. I've definitely seen his books before on shelves before but never thought to pick them up.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:44
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