The Grand Canyon Years Later: As Hard—And Amazing—As Ever

By Nate Lanza

The relentless midday sun of this harsh desert seems to bake the parched earth and all the animals upon it—with its greatest cruelty reserved, it seems, for me—as I pound down the biggest descent on the Beamer Trail, one of the most remote paths in the Grand Canyon. I’m racing the pain in my joints and the building heat in my head, as well as the steadily rising heat of the day, toward my salvation: a sandy beach on the shore of a refreshingly frigid and uncharacteristically clear Colorado River. 

Reaching it, I escape my pack and shoes as though they’re on fire and flop into the crystalline waters of a shallow eddy, where the river and I rest together for a few blissful seconds, until I rise in a spell of cold-induced euphoria to dash gleefully around my new sanctuary. Unfortunately, my reverie proves short-lived: Eight miles remain to our next camp, and it’s already noon.

It’s the third day of my second backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon, and it’s already going rather like the first—at age 10, and my first time carrying a real backpacking pack—which, as I remember across 16 years of recollective haze, involved an unexpected amount of pain. The canyon’s “inverted mountain” profile earns its reputation for brutalizing hikers; it harbors as much elevation gain and loss as the most difficult of Colorado’s 14ers combined with a much drier, hotter landscape, highly erosive soils that often crumble underfoot, and rocky, rugged trails subject to yearly destruction during summertime monsoonal rains. These trails and the surrounding slopes conjure the shattered appearance of the rubble of buildings flattened by earthquakes or bombs. 

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But in exchange for the punishing terrain and climate, the canyon invariably rewards those willing to endure its inhospitality with vast and colorful desert vistas unmatched anywhere else on Earth.

On our first day, we descended the Tanner Trail—which we refer to only as “The Tanner,” as though it were some ancestral deity hell-bent on causing us suffering—where the Grand Canyon fully displays her hostility toward creatures with legs. Starting later than the rest of the party (on account of a rushed schedule—technically, three very satisfying days of skiing right before this trip that resulted in me arriving at the trailhead with all the accoutrements for a five-day backpacking trip scattered haphazardly around the back of my car). But once hitting the trail, my cousin, Marco Garofalo, and I quickly caught up to father-son duo David and Sam Ports picking their way gingerly down the stacked and constantly rolling rocks of The Tanner. 

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Sam immediately turned to us with a crazed look and summed up his feelings: “This trail SUCKS!” Indeed, a higher power would struggle to construct a trail better-suited to sending the unwitting backpacker tumbling deep into the canyon under the weight of five days worth of supplies, as my dad, Michael (the creator of this blog), almost did when a large boulder slid downhill under his weight (and he managed to step off it in the nick of time).

Yet despite an introductory mile that almost warrants a technical rock climbing grade, the Tanner flattens out twice during its 4,700-foot descent to the river to provide mellower hiking and expansive vistas overlooking terrain visited far less often by hiking parties than the well-traveled trails further downstream. To our right looms the South Rim, buttressed by colossal cliffs of Redwall Limestone; David and I debate the height of the wall visible to us, which turns out to be nearly 4,000 feet. 

The bottom of the trail delivers us directly to that night’s camp, which provides a perfect eddy for cold plunges and gorgeous views of the canyon walls and stars above us. I stay up late to shoot photos of the stars before laying my pad out on a rock just above camp, soaking in the views as I drift off.

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The Confluence

Our second day dawned cloudy as we packed up camp to head to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. I elected to sleep in and leave camp a bit later than everyone else, and in doing so, made a painful mistake: neglecting to pace myself for the rigors of a five-day trip. I took off at a fast pace and caught the group quickly, but at the price of further exhausting my already-worn legs. 

After a few miles of flat, easy hiking, the Beamer Trail climbed steeply to a shelf nearly a thousand feet above the river and proceeded to weave between sections of flat, easy walking and diving into deep, dry washes where routefinding proves convoluted and footing treacherous. I arrived at camp—a gorgeous alluvial fan pouring into the river, seldom-used by backpackers (spots like these are one of the many perks of having a professional trip planner creating the itinerary)—with legs even more worn than yesterday.

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Another evening filled with cold plunges and laughter as the eight of us—those already mentioned plus husband-and-wife friends Mark and Lisa Fenton and another longtime regular in this backpacking troupe, Todd Arndt—reached the state of wondrous and free socializing produced only deep in the wilderness by well-exhausted bodies that still retain the energy to laugh well into the evening. 

The next morning, Todd and my dad (who hiked to the confluence after we arrived yesterday) took off early, ahead of the rising heat, while the rest of us hiked to the confluence to witness a rare sight: the brightly pearlescent blue of the Little Colorado merging with a shockingly clear Colorado River. The transparent Colorado, normally an opaque and ruddy brown much of the year, both proved a boon to our trip and portended doom: while we can easily filter water from the river without the mucky silt clogging our filters, the Colorado flows so clear because it flows so much lower than it should at this time of year, on account of the worst snow year ever recorded in Colorado history. 

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I first visited the Grand Canyon 16 years ago as part of my dad’s book project to take my younger sister and I, in one year, to numerous national parks impacted by the climate crisis. I vividly remember the ruddy brown of the Colorado as it flowed below us; a desert river bloated and choking on spring runoff overtopping its usual banks to move megatons of sediment downstream. In his book about our family’s experiences, my dad details the effects of a warming climate on the Grand Canyon: mainly, aridification, where less snowfall in the mountains of Colorado leaves less water in the mighty Colorado and the reservoirs it feeds. 

Sixteen years later, these predictions are coming true. The Bureau of Reclamation recently announced that Lake Powell, upstream of Grand Canyon, faces the existential threat of minimum power pool by August of this year; such an event could seriously damage the dam. To combat this, Reclamation will take the extraordinary steps of both reducing the water output to Lake Mead (which will drop the power generated by the Hoover Dam, supplying Las Vegas, by up to 40 percent) and moving up to a million acre-feet of water downstream from Flaming Gorge reservoir, one of the last large reservoirs in the system with capacity remaining to do so. Despite the direness of the situation, elected and other leaders from the Colorado Basin states and the federal government have yet to agree on a new framework to eliminate overconsumption of water from the river.

See “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do”

Escalante Route

I shoulder my pack, clothes still dripping from my frolic through the sanctuary eddy and resume trotting away at the 14 miles (including my walk to the confluence and another minor detour) that I must cover on our third day. After the excursion to the confluence, which added about a mile round-trip without packs, our group split up: Marco and I proceeded ahead to catch my dad and Todd at the junction with the Tanner, where our group camped our first night; the rest of the group will sleep at my swimming hole and hike back up the Tanner in two day’s time. 

By that afternoon, Marco, Todd, my dad and I are back at Tanner Beach, waiting out the heat of the afternoon swimming and napping until evening, when we race across the first three miles of gently rolling to flat terrain on the Escalante Route to a camp at the dry Cardenas Creek, just further from the river than the gorgeous sandy beach that we found already occupied. Arriving late, it’s all we can manage to eat our dinner before collapsing into sleeping bags under a dark sky riddled with stars.

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Gear Tips 

Trekking poles are indispensable for this route’s steep descents and ascents. See “The Best Trekking Poles” and the stories “How to Choose Trekking Poles” and “10 Best Expert Tips for Hiking With Trekking Poles.” 

See all  stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

An avid backpacker, dayhiker, backcountry and resort skier, climber, and trail runner—and Michael Lanza’s son—Nate Lanza has spent an inordinate amount of time outdoors since he was a preschooler and has two decades of experience on wilderness adventures. He has joined The Big Outside and will be writing stories about trips, reviewing gear, and continuing to spend as much time in the backcountry as he can.