Packing for Adventure

I’m going to time travel a bit for the next couple of posts. I’ll come back to tell you all about Phantom Ranch soon—trust me, I have a lot of insights to share.

For now, all you need to know is that we were lucky to score our one-night reservation, we went to bed early, and we planned to begin our ascent to the South Rim at 3:30 AM to beat the heat.

The Plan That Took a Year to Make

I booked the trip to the Phantom Ranch over a year before we actually went. Based on our research, our plan was to hike down to the Phantom Ranch via South Kaibab and ascend via Bright Angel. This is a popular route that would let us experience two of the Grand Canyon’s most iconic trails. South Kaibab is steeper and more exposed, with no water sources, while Bright Angel is slightly longer, less steep, offers more shade, and has several water stops.

This plan also aligned with one of our bigger goals: to immerse ourselves in as much of the park as possible. Outside of doing a full Rim-to-Rim trek, the South Kaibab–Bright Angel combo was going to give us maximum exposure to the Grand Canyon’s beauty.

So we spent months preparing for this specific plan: 7 miles down the South Kaibab trail and 9 miles up the Bright Angel trail spread over two days. Just a couple short weeks before the actual trip, I found out that the Bright Angel trail was CLOSED – at least the part that connects to the Phantom Ranch. I was very disappointed to find out that we would have to ascend back the way we came.

Don’t get me wrong, the South Kaibab trail is BEAUTIFUL. But we didn’t come all this way to backtrack.

Looking for a Workaround

Upon further inquiry, I learned there was a way to still ascend via Bright Angel—but it came with a catch. We could hike back up South Kaibab to Tipoff Point, then connect to Bright Angel via the Tonto Trail. But this reroute would add 4.6 exposed, waterless miles to our hike. And given the recent heat wave, nearly everyone I consulted—rangers, Grand Canyon staff, seasoned hikers online—told me the same thing:
Don’t do it.

I want to stop and point out that I am not stupid, and neither is Chris. We have our two toddlers and two dogs at home. We weren’t about to get ourselves into a situation we couldn’t hike back out of. But we also weren’t ready to throw in the towel on hiking the Bright Angel trail quite yet.

That being said, many other hikers offered some good compromises for us to consider.

• Option 1: Hike to the North Rim from Phantom Ranch and take the Trans-Canyon Shuttle back to the South Rim (where we had lodging at Bright Angel Lodge).
• Option 2: Hike up South Kaibab, then later do a shorter out-and-back on Bright Angel Trail to the 3-Mile Resthouse.

Ultimately, neither of these options were viable. For one, all of our lodging and amenities had been booked over a year ago—changing them last-minute wasn’t likely. The North Rim route is significantly more difficult, and we hadn’t trained for it. Plus, the Trans-Canyon shuttle leaves at 2:00 PM, and it wasn’t clear we’d even make it there on time.

As for the second option, we were on a tight timeline with baby and dog sittersback home. Maybe we wouldn’t have the time (let alone the energy!) to do an extra hike after climbing out of the canyon.

The Only Real Choices

That left us with two options:

1. Hike straight back up South Kaibab
2. Take the Tonto Trail from Tipoff Point to connect with Bright Angel.

The overwhelming advice we received was to play it safe and stick with South Kaibab. I understood the concerns. The Tonto Trail is fully exposed, has no water, and very few other hikers—which means limited opportunity for help if something goes wrong.

But here’s what no one pointed out:
The South Kaibab Trail also has no water or shade. The main argument seemed to be that by the time we reached the Bright Angel Trail via Tonto, we could’ve already been near the top if we had just stuck to South Kaibab. One hiker even said, “I’ve never reached the rim and wished I’d gone an extra 4.6 miles.”

Still, I wasn’t convinced that “shorter” automatically meant “better.” The Tonto Trail, though long and exposed, had a few key advantages:

• It’s much less steep than either of the main trails
• It would give us the trail diversity we came for
• It’s off the beaten path (also means less opportunity for rescue…)

One Last Voice of Reason

Our first stop when we first arrived at the Grand Canyon was to speak with a park ranger at the Visitor Center for some last minute in-person advice. The park ranger we spoke with seemed genuinely distressed when she heard we were considering the Tonto Trail. She warned us that we’d likely be alone, and there are no emergency phones along the way.

I told her we planned to cross the Tonto before the day’s heat set in—reaching Havasupai Gardens on Bright Angel by 8:00 AM. That seemed to ease her nerves. She gave us this advice:

• Leave early enough to cross the Tonto before peak heat
• Stay together at all times
• Remember there are emergency phones at Tipoff Point and at Havasupai Gardens, but none in between

Our Decision

In the end, we decided to be flexible—trail mix in our packs, both routes in our heads, and a “we’ll see how we feel” attitude. The plan was to get to Tipoff Point, take stock of the heat, our legs, and our sanity, and then decide.

One way or another, we were climbing out of that canyon!