Hermits Rest

A backpacker hiking the Tonto Trail from Hermit Canyon to Boucher Canyon in the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon’s Best Backpacking Trips—A Photo Gallery

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By Michael Lanza

I returned to the Grand Canyon yet again in April, my eighth backpacking trip there in the past 16 years. Any psychologist, behavioral scientist, or criminologist would describe that as an established pattern of behavior. I confess: I can’t get enough of that place. This time, six of us, family and friends, spent four days hiking about 36 miles from the Bright Angel Trailhead to the Hermit Trailhead off the South Rim, including a trail with a reputation as one of the canyon’s most difficult: the Boucher (photos in the gallery, below). Hiking more than nine miles and about 4,000 feet up it on our last day (and you would not want to hike down it), we found it matched its reputation as strenuous, with sections of scrambling over rockslide debris and a lot of steep uphill.

But it also matched its reputation for beauty, with incomparably Grand Canyon-scale vistas from the moment you step onto the trail, culminating with a long traverse on the rim of The Esplanade, overlooking a huge swath of the canyon (and seeing one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve hiked past). Plus, we traversed an excellent section of the Tonto Trail, including the stretch between Hermit Canyon and Boucher Canyon that sees much less human traffic (photo above).

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A backpacker hiking down the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon.

10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do

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By Michael Lanza

This is, in a way, a story about obsession. Or a love affair. Or both. Those metaphors best describe how the Grand Canyon constantly lures me back when I’m thinking about spring and fall hiking and backpacking trips.

It is that rare kind of natural environment that exists on a scale of its own, like Alaska or the Himalaya. There’s something soul-stirring and hypnotic about its infinite vistas, the deceptive immensity of the canyon walls and stone towers, and the way the foreground and background continually expand and shrink as you ascend and descend elevation gradients of a vertical mile or more—all of which validates enduring the wilting heat and trails that sometimes seem better suited to rattlesnakes and scorpions than bipedal primates.

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Backpackers hiking the Tonto Trail above Sapphire Canyon in the Grand Canyon.

‘Let’s Talk Water:’ Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems

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By Michael Lanza

The April sun seems to dangle just over our heads like a giant grow light—or perhaps a very, very big and hot interrogation lamp—as we hike down the Grand Canyon’s South Bass Trail, a steep path littered with enough ankle-rolling stones to keep pulling our eyes from the unfathomable expanse of canyon beyond us back to the unstable ground at our feet. We all lumber under packs heavier than any of us usually has any reason to carry: Including more than 10 pounds of water and 11 pounds of food, mine tips the scales at around 40 pounds. Everyone else hauls a similar load.

And we will carry them thousands of feet downhill on this unkind-to-ankles footpath, eventually to search for today’s lone, uncertain source of water that we may or may not find, so that we can refill the bladders and bottles we’ve sucked empty in this desert heat, allowing us to again shoulder ungainly burdens and continue walking what will total over 14 hot miles before we set our packs down for the night.

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A hiker on the Tonto Trail by Monument Creek in the Grand Canyon.

One Extraordinary Day: A 25-Mile Dayhike in the Grand Canyon

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By Michael Lanza

There’s not another hiker in sight as my friend David Ports and I start down the Hermit Trail on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, even though it’s nearly 8 a.m., hardly an early hour to hit the trail. And that’s just the first conspicuously unusual circumstance at the outset of our hike. The second obvious oddity this morning is that it’s overcast—a welcome sight here—and actually chilly enough that we’re wearing the light jackets we brought.

But most unusual aspect of this hike is that we’re only carrying light daypacks—and cruising along almost effortlessly—for a walk of nearly 25 miles, with some 4,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. That’s because we’ll do it all today.

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