✓ Permits and Planning: Get caught camping in the canyon without a permit, and you’ll be kicked out and fined. So start out several months beforehand by visiting the park’s backcountry pages and getting a permit application.
For information on hiking in the Havasupai reservation, go here and here.
✓ Hitting the Books: You’ll want to read one or two trail guides in planning your itinerary. Also listed are a few pieces of purely inspirational reading and one very sobering work.
- A Naturalist’s Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon, by Stewart Aitchison. A guide to more than two dozen trails. There also are sections on the geology, ecology and recent history of the canyon.
- Grand Canyon Treks: 12,000 Miles Through the Grand Canyon by Harvey Butchart. Butchart ventured into practically every cranny of the canyon, and this book combines the series of guidebooks he wrote over the years.
- Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon by Elias Butler and Tom Myers. This biography/adventure tale tells the story of Harvey Butchart, as well as the history of foot exploration in the canyon. (Read a Denver Post review.)
- Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers. This book chronicles every known death in the canyon and on its rims. Macabre? Maybe. But the authors’ goal is to keep you from repeating the mistakes that have cost some canyon visitors their lives.
- A Field Guide to the Grand Canyon, by Stephen Whitney. Take this along if you’d like help identifying the critters, tracks, plants and fossils you come across.
- The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher. The story of Fletcher’s two-month below-the-rim walk from one end of the national park to the other.
- The River That Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain, by William H. Calvin. A theoretical neurophysiologist’s rafting trip through the canyon is the framework for a crash course on evolution. Check out the online version.
- Encounters With the Archdruid, by John McPhee. In one of the book’s three main sections, conservationist David Brower and dam-builder Floyd Dominy hash things out during a Colorado River rafting trip.
A toenail on the mend,
eight months after a canyon trip.
The first day’s descent sometimes causes a toenail or two to turn black and blue and eventually fall off. Loretta lost all of her toenails one year. If anyone knows how to prevent this, please clue us in.
✓ Organized Trips: Among the businesses, organizations and individuals that offer them are the Grand Canyon Field Institute and Canyon Calling Adventure Tours for Women. Also, check out the park service’s lists of possibilities.
✓ Lodging: If you’d like a room before and/or after your hike, get in touch with Xanterra, the park’s lodging concessionaire. Also, there is lodging just outside the park.
✓ The Weather: You can check the latest South Rim and Phantom Ranch conditions and forecasts. When planning and packing, take into consideration the monthly temperature and precipitation averages (in Fahrenheit and inches). Graphical version here.
