The Adventures of John and Brenda: May 1, 2006

The South Rim offers FREE shuttle to 3 different sections of the rim. The green line, takes you east to Desert View, blue line takes you west to Bright Angel trail or east to Canyon View information center. This line is what we called the middle line. These are the only two areas that are accessible by private vehicle. The 3rd route, the red line is picked up at the west end of the blue line at Bright Angel trail. This route can only be taken by shuttle and goes as far west as Hermit Trailhead. This is the furthest western point you can go by vehicle.

We took the Blue line shuttle to Bright Angel trailhead.

Trail Beginning
We started our hike at 10:00am with the temperature in the mid 70’s. We were hoping to hike to Plateau Point, but after hiking down a very steep canyon 1.5 miles we had second thoughts. The trail consisted of loose rocks, a lot of stepping from boulder to boulder and very deep steps. This made the trip down the canyon very rough on ones knees. We decided to go to the next rest stop which was another 1.5 miles, eat our lunch and head back up. We believe we would have had another 3 miles before we arrive at Plateau Point. The weather was much hotter coming back up but the hike seemed easier than negotiating our way down. We estimate the trip to have taken us 5 hours. We were two very tired and very dirty people after this hike.