Rim2Rim2Rim Part II: Run Report

After sneaking out of the hotel room shortly after 4am trying not to wake up Janelle’s sleeping family, we drove the hour back to the Canyon (no traffic this early) while eating breakfast and listening to good tunes. Getting out of the car near the trail head, we were pumped but it was freezing! It was also very very dark, though a bit of navy blue was starting to appear in the eastern sky. Because we were rushing to get started as soon as possible, both to get warm and to have as much time as we could, I managed to leave all of my charging cords in the car in the dark, which would result in my watch dying at about the 50k mark and my phone somehow limping along with 4% battery life for much of the day (but I still got lots of great photos!). I’m always a bit disturbed to realize how much this bothers me when it happens, but it seems important to have some actual objective record of doing these epic things!

It took us a few minutes to find the trail head, and as soon as we did the awesomeness we had been waiting for began to reveal itself. The sky grew lighter by the minute, so that we could already see and feel the magnitude of the canyon appearing out of the darkness as we started to run down… steps? (The whole trail is basically giant dirt steps – well built and maintained to host millions of tourists hiking per year… amazing, but makes it hard to get a good running rhythm) Birds began to chirp, and we switchbacked down into the splendor of one of planet Earth’s magnificent features, stopping every few minutes to say (or shout) “WOW!” and “This is AMAZING!” and snap photos. At one point I skidded to a stop out of complete instinctual reflex, causing Janelle to gasp loudly and crash into me from behind. It wasn’t really until after the half dozen deer hopped a little further up the slope that my conscious brain made sense of what I was seeing. Suddenly uncamouflaged, they looked at us with their soft brown eyes and went back to chewing plants.

Other than this, it seemed like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. It wasn’t until much further down that we started to see the odd hiker making their way back up from one of the campgrounds at the bottom. One of the pleasant surprises was the availability of bathrooms at regular intervals. I packed TP and I didn’t have to use it! However, just short of the first bathroom (or maybe the 2^nd?), my nose started to bleed, which was a little disconcerting. I’m slightly prone to nosebleeds, especially in the dryness of Alberta winter, but reflected that I hadn’t had a nosebleed in a long time. “Maybe it’s the change in altitude?” Janelle suggested. This would be an annoyance that recurred 3-4 more times throughout the rest of the day… and it’s hard to run with a nosebleed. But I also didn’t want to have to stop running because of my NOSE. Around this point we passed a sign that said “Down is optional. Up is mandatory.” At the time we chuckled a bit self-righteously, knowing that we were doing more that most people do in a few days, let alone in a single day, way more than is generally advisable, and knowing that we were fit enough and skilled enough to attempt it. I would no longer be thinking this was funny when we saw this sign on the return trip…

I’ve mentioned our time estimate a couple of times, and I’ve thought about this a lot since that day. Why was I so stressed about time? It’s not like it was a race, there were no prizes for finishing more quickly. I think the self-inflicted time pressure came from a couple of places. One is that I am fairly competitive. I knew that Courtney Dauwalter’s time wasn’t going to be possible because she’s a superhuman runner, but frankly I wanted to keep up with the friends I knew who had done it. But even more importantly, I knew that my mom was going to be growing a grey hair for each half hour that we were late. Who am I kidding, she was probably growing some just because I was out here and out of cell service (and she’s probably growing more reading this blog – sorry Mom). The night before leaving Phoenix I’d heard a quote that “worry is the misuse of the imagination” and I left it for her on a note. But there I was, worrying about my mom worrying. A lot. Apple not falling far from the tree and all of that. It was an immense relief to me that when we reached the North Rim, there was cell service and we could send out an update (that also said “this is taking longer than I thought”). Even if I hadn’t known my mom was worrying, I guess I think I have enough people in my life who care about me that someone else would be (albeit maybe less acutely). So a semi-urgent feeling of needing to keep moving never went away. Later it was about the lack of water (see below), and eventually about just needing to be done. 

After only 2-2.5 hours we reached the Canyon floor and the rushing muddy Colorado River. We had descended 1320m or 4340ft and covered 15km. It was warming up, but we had been cruising downhill and had barely had anything to drink when we reached the water tap at the Bright Angel campground and saw a sign that said “No water at Cottonwood.” According to all of our pre-trip intelligence, Cottonwood was the last place to get water before the North Rim. Even with this in the plan, our friend Keith had recommended carrying an extra empty bladder to fill up there and stash part way up the North Rim to have some extra water for the return trip. So we both had an extra empty 1L bladder in our packs. I could have made it work to carry mine, it would have made my pack super heavy and probably awkwardly shaped, but Janelle’s pack couldn’t even accommodate the jacket she’d taken off, much less another liter of liquid. Some small voice in the back of my head said something about how this was a potentially serious problem, but in the early morning state of being still cool and well-hydrated, I just couldn’t conceive of running out of water. And frankly, I just didn’t do the math on the distance that meant we needed to cover with what we had on board. I topped up my bottles, but I did not fill up the spare bladder. It was a careless and stupid decision, and I should have clued in when it started to nag as a bit of a worry in the back of my mind as we ran the next section. Instead, we settled in to the beginning of a very long and very gradual, runnable climb. The views changed as we wound our way up the Bright Angel Canyon and looked back towards the impressively massive wall of the South Rim. A picturesque daytime moon hung above it. It was lovely.

By the time we reached Cottonwood campground, the day was heating up. We put on some sunscreen (out of a baggie!) and chatted with a family who had spent the night and the dad who had hiked up to the North Rim the day before. He described the amount of snow, but it didn’t sound too bad. They confirmed there wasn’t any water. The alarm bells in my head got a bit louder but I said nothing, there was nothing we could do about it now anyway. It was interesting to get reactions from others on the trail. Some people just looked at us strangely. A few communicated that they were impressed and in awe but could not see themselves ever attempting such a thing, didn’t believe they were fit enough, etc. I wanted to give them pep talks. I don’t think there’s anything so special that set us apart from any of these people. With training they could probably do it too – or maybe it’s easy to say that from inside my own experience. Part way up the North Rim, we passed a group of younger people who cheered for us and told us we were their heroes! That was pretty cool. We would meet them again coming back down (they were doing what we were doing but over 4 days and with packs), at which point they would fawn all over Janelle when they found out she was training for a 100-miler. Of everyone we met, I suspect they were the only ones who might attempt to run it one day. Also we passed two other runners – single guys on their own. I wanted to talk to them and find out how their adventures were going, but they were intent on running, probably feeling their own version of the pressure to keep moving (they were also coming down and we were hiking up, so they were probably in the speedier rhythm that downhill allows), so we only exchanged a few words.

I loved climbing up the North Rim. As we aggressively regained altitude (and then some, 1750m or 5740ft to the top), the views were pretty spectacular. We got closer and closer to the snow (which still didn’t seem like that much). The colours of the canyon in the sun were fabulous. There were little waterfalls from the snow melting above that made gentle showers on the trail. It was warm (but not overly hot, which I appreciated!) and we were climbing, and so walking through these felt amazing! I also remembered Keith telling me that if I was wet, my body wouldn’t have to sweat and I wouldn’t need as much water to stay hydrated. At one point we heard the distinct sound of rocks falling nearby. This was quite terrifying, because we couldn’t see where they were and realized there wasn’t anywhere to go if they were coming down towards us. We then came around a bend and there was a young woman sitting on the trail, which was way more startling than it should have been but I’d just been flooded with rocks-are-falling adrenaline. She was a park ranger and explained that they were blasting to clear some winter-induced debris from the pipeline going up to the rim. Sure enough, a few more switchbacks and we could see the workers and also the falling rocks. They were remarkably small for the echoey sounds they were making, but they would have done damage if they’d hit a person down below. About 400m from the top (although I didn’t know that at the time), there is a tunnel in the rock – this was one of my favorite pictures from the day.

Janelle was not enjoying this North Rim as much as I was. She mentioned she was running out of water as we reached the first patches of snow. She stopped to fill her pack with snow and I naively thought “oh, this will be fine. Snow = water!” But that last 400m took a long time. The “snow” was big coarse granules that was slippery to hike on, occasionally gave way below your feet, causing you to sink up to your knees, and also highly abrasive on the skin. In many ways it still didn’t live up to the dramatic descriptions of “there’s SO MUCH SNOW on the North Rim” that we had heard (my Canadian bias is showing), but we were anxious to get to the top so that we could start the return journey and have a sense of how much time we would have for it. Finally, we arrived at a sign. It had about a foot and a half tall snow cap on top. “I guess this is it?” we said, exchanging high fives. There appeared to be a road beyond. It was a bit anticlimactic. There wasn’t even a big trailhead sign, and there was barely any view of the canyon at all from here. Two guys rode by on a snowmobile, which seemed very strange given how warm it felt. I wasn’t impressed by the amount of snow, but later Keith would say “did you see the picnic tables?” and I said “what picnic tables?” so maybe the snow pack was deeper than I realized. We snapped some photos and sent a few text messages. Janelle opened her pack and we realized that there was no way the chunky ice-snow was going to melt into water fast enough to drink it. I still had some water in my pack, so I split what was left with Janelle, thinking that my water might melt her snow. I didn’t question doing this, sharing what water was left seemed necessary to continue. But the alarm bells got louder when I saw how much water was left. Not much. And now I knew exactly how far we had to go to get back to a water tap. Really effing far.

We slogged back down through the snow, sliding and post-holing. It was at this point that I realized I was missing all of my charging cables and spent a bit of time feeling bummed and beating myself up for not checking that they were in my pack. We found a waterfall that was more than a shower of droplets and I was so relieved. “This waterfall looks delicious!” I joked. I never drink untreated water. But it was clear to me that the risks of drinking this water were vastly outweighed by the immediate risks of not drinking it. Janelle filled her pack. I drank a belly full and filled up my bottles. I did not fill up my almost empty bladder. Or the spare bladder. Again, I don’t know what went on in my brain here except that I felt so relieved that we’d found water, but was a bit skeptical about its cleanliness so maybe I thought I could make due. This was a very poor and regrettable decision. 

Another major lesson I learned on this trip was about food. I had packed a number of items that were leftovers from last race season: a Larabar, these nut-butter-based squeezy pack things from MEC, and some gels. The gels were fine, but all of the things with nuts in them (I think there were three) had the following effect: First bite “yum! Nutty goodness!… wait… does that taste weird?” Second bite “hmm… definitely a bit off.” Third bite “this is kind of rancid. I don’t think it will hurt me though, I probably need the calories.” Fourth bite: “yuck. Ok, maybe I’m going to pack the rest of this out” (I think one of them I consumed in its entirety because it was going to be too messy to carry it half finished) And then spending the next little bit of running paying extra attention as to whether or not my stomach was bothered by it. Note to self: DO NOT CARRY OLD FOOD. Throw out anything left at the end of race season. Start over next season. Also, last year I’d found a brand of gels that I didn’t hate (Huma, chia based gels), but for whatever reason, I could barely stomach them this day. Consequently, as the day went on, also in seemingly pretty typical ultramarathon fashion, the calories I was carrying became less and less palatable. I’d saved one of my energy balls – my favourite running snack, for the uphill climb at the end. By the time I got to it, even that tasted and felt horrible in my stomach. Without any aid stations to offer something different though, I knew I had to choke it down. It did cause me to start dreaming about what I might want at the aid stations of the bigger races I am planning later this year (savory stuff!).

Buoyed up after the waterfall find, I settled into a speedier downhill rhythm. It felt great to see the miles cruising by, but every time I looked behind me, Janelle had dropped from view. I’d stop to let her catch up and keep going, but it kept happening. Finally when she caught up again, I could see that she looked a bit miserable. “What’s up?” I said. “Chafing” she said. Ugh. Another ultrarunning body nemesis. We rummaged through our supplies to try to deal with that, and I think after this she must’ve made up her mind to not let it bother her so much because she picked up her pace and I started to be the lagging one after we passed the ranger’s cabin at the bottom. At this point my nose started bleeding again, slowing me down and at some point just past Cottonwood campground again I ran out of water entirely. I’m guessing it was about 10k that I ran without water, I’m not entirely sure about the distance or the time it took because my watch was just a sweaty bracelet at this point. As I sit here at my computer, I can reflect that I run 10k without water all the time, but after having already run 50k and being out all day (probably already dehydrated), and possibly made worse by the emotional panic that it was causing, I did not handle this very well. I kept running but this whole portion of the run (the rest of it, in fact, so about 1/3) has this flavour of desperation and hardship in my memory. Finally we reached Phantom Ranch. The water tap was still about another 800m down the trail. Janelle beelined for the outhouse. I have never been so annoyed about having to wait for someone to use the bathroom. Biting my lip and hopping from foot to foot like a crazy person, I tried not to let it show on my face. We then ran past the canteen for the hostel and the campground; it was dinnertime and from every direction came the smells of cooking food. This might have seemed worse but I was so focused on getting to the water tap that I didn’t have any attention or energy left to be disappointed that the snack shop we’d heard had great lemonade (and maybe dream-worthy chips?!) was closed for the day. In any case I’d started to feel slightly nauseous and the cooking food smells weren’t so appealing. Finally, finally we reached the tap. I filled and chugged an entire 500ml bottle of water. Then I sat down and breathed a little. Sighed some relief. I was not going to die of dehydration (Ok, I never thought I was in actual danger of death… but I had been scared). I filled up both bottles and my big bladder this time. Mixed up some electrolytes. Had a snack. Washed my hands in a bathroom WITH RUNNING WATER. This seemed more than a little jarring after the day we’d had. It was around 6pm. The sun was definitely on its way down. We had about 15k to go and it was straight up. Now that I wasn’t so thirsty I started to notice a bit more how tired and sore my body was. But it was “only” 15k. The end seemed to be in sight. My spirits lifted. “Still think this is a good idea?” Janelle asked. I grinned “Hell yeah.”

We crossed the river and started to climb. Now the time pressure was governed by the sinking sun. I just kept thinking I wanted to get as far as possible before dark. Unfortunately it didn’t take long before the kilometers my body had already done caught up to me. Running up any of this ascent, even the gradual parts, now seemed impossible. Janelle was now the one running ahead and waiting for me to catch up at intervals. This zig-zag section was just as beautiful going up. The colours of the rock as the sun set were fantastic. But boy was I tired. And it just kept getting steeper. I could not keep up with Janelle. I power hiked as best I could and smiled wanly at her as I caught up again. “I’ve got no run left” I told her. The sun disappeared and gradually so did the view. Bats flew overhead and I smiled again, thinking about how much Trevor enjoyed bats. I extracted additional layers of clothing from my pack, my headlamp. We made it back to the Indian Garden campground as the last traces of light left the sky. People here were getting ready for bed! I briefly toyed with a fantasy about knocking on tents and asking if I could bunk in for the night, climb out in the morning. All backpackers are friendly, right? But my worry about my worried mom kept me moving forward. Janelle said at this point that I could lead so that we would stick together and she would just go my pace. I felt bad that I was slowing her down, and I was getting slower by the mile. My legs felt like I could barely lift them, all my muscles screaming. My feet hurt a lot and I could feel that I was developing blisters on the bottom from having gotten them wet repeatedly crossing small streams. I actually wished for spare dry socks. None of this was unexpected and yet I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this level of running pain before. In addition, although I now had more than enough water and had been drinking regularly, I was feeling nauseous. The energy ball I’d been saving tasted awful and I had to choke it down. The stairs on the trail became increasingly annoying. At one point I recall lifting my leg to go down a step and then up a few feet further and involuntary tears sprung to my eyes. Oh boy. I was about to start crying about having to lift up my own legs. This was not good. Not good at all. I took deep breaths. “Hey Janelle!” I said “What songs get stuck in your head when you’re running?” “Ugh!” she replied “I’ve been song-free most of the day! Don’t start that now!” I made a face. “I need a song or I’m going to cry” I said. She looked at me carefully. Realized I wasn’t kidding. “Ok!” she said “singing it is!” So we halfheartedly went through our mental playlists. My personal favorite, from a West Coast Trail scary moment, is “Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride/ Ain’t nothin’ gonna slow me down/ oh no! I’ve got to keep on movin….”

It was pitch black and all we could see was the path right in front of us now. The canyon was gone, we were in a small tunnel of light. We could see lights up in the sky – actually from the El Tovar hotel perched on the edge of the Canyon. They did not seem to be getting much closer and would periodically disappear due to switchbacks. At one point I stopped and shone my headlamp straight down in front of my feet. “Do you think that’s a scorpion or just a bug that kinda looks like a scorpion?” I asked Janelle. We observed the shape in the dirt. It seemed almost transluscent. I’m pretty sure it has gotten larger in my memory than it actually was – clearly it was small enough that some part of my brain thought it might be “just” an insect. “How about we keep going and don’t find out?” Janelle replied. I saw a few more of these but refrained from pointing them out. They didn’t move and I imagined that my headlamp was stunning or blinding them so that they would not.  We climbed back past the sign that said “down is optional, up is mandatory” and this time I thought “ok, I get it now.” By this time I was also getting a headache. At first it was kind of dull and I assumed it, like the nausea that wasn’t dissipating, might be a leftover effect of the dehydration I’d suffered earlier. But it got sharper and sharper and settled in around my right eye/sinus area. It was the weirdest, stabbing headache I’ve ever had. More worry set in: is the altitude causing some kind of terrible thing to happen inside my head? Janelle suggested Tylenol, which took the edge off the rest of the body pain but did not touch this at all. Part of me wanted desperately to stop. To lie down and curl into a ball and not move for awhile. But I knew I would freeze if I did that, so instead it just became an inner urgent plea of “I have to get out of here” arguing with some other part that said “but it’s the Grand Canyon! You don’t want to be wishing to get out of the Grand Canyon and this incredible experience!” Oh, but I did. I was done.

The hidden gem of this climb was that at one point we stopped and turned off our headlamps. For the second time in a year (both times while running up steep things in the night), I saw how incredible the stars actually are with absolutely no light pollution. A blanket of tiny twinkles that words cannot even remotely describe. The longer we stood without our headlamps, the better it got. But also the colder. And there were potentially more of those scorpion-things kicking around… so we kept moving. Finally, finally, we reached the top. I think we high-fived and “woohooed”. Maybe. Maybe not. I was so relieved. We got to the car. SAT DOWN. Turned on the heat. Called my mom. My weird stabbing headache vanished as suddenly as it had come. We stopped at one of the lodging places to use the bathroom and change into dry clothes. My feet looked grey and dead after being wet for so long. We hobbled and shuffled painfully to and from the car, also realizing that everything was basically closed up for the night. We weren’t really hungry, but knew we should probably eat something. My stroke of genius was realizing we could probably get Mr. Noodles at a gas station. It was the best crappy soup I’ve ever tasted. Showers. Advil PM. Sleep. We made it.

The next morning I picked up my phone and the first message I saw was from Sheryl Savard. It said “apparently running is safer than taking pictures” and there was a link to a news story. While we had been running, a tourist from Hong Kong tripped while taking a selfie and fell into the Canyon to his death. I think had I heard about this even a few days later it would not have affected me so much. But I could still taste the incredible difficulty and the edge of fear of that climb out, and the accompanying realization that I was not invincible. It’s like being asked right after giving birth if you want more children. I could still hear the sound of my own inner screaming, so to speak. It just added another layer to how humbled I felt about my relative size and power compared to colossal mother nature. We are but tiny beings on this big beautiful planet. I’m squeezing the most living out of my life… but it’s just one little human life. Fragile.

In the aftermath of this I thought a lot about the difficulty of it. Up until this experience, I had been pretty good at estimating how I will do in races because I usually have a pretty good sense of the terrain. I also typically know about where I am in the field of competitors. I have experience from which to draw. This was uncharted territory. My biggest error was perhaps assuming I had any clue how that would go, and naively assuming that on some level it would be comparable to other hard things I’ve done before. It was by definition stepping out into a giant unknown – both in terms of distance for me, and also in the terrain, which is unlike anything I’ve ever done with the reverse elevation/heat profile. On that climb I also had too much time in which to think (and panic a little) about my next adventure: soloing Canadian Death Race, which is 125km. It did not feel like it would have been possible to keep going for another 50k. However, 4 days later I managed to come in 4^thplace at the JAJA marathon. I had no idea if I’d even be able to complete a portion of this race, and I managed to keep going on super tired and sore/stiff legs, and by just keeping on keeping on (and trying to stay ahead of a few peers I have friendly competition with), I totally surprised myself with the results. More unchartered territory, but this time, I felt pretty tough. So I came away from that feeling comforted, and also reflecting that all of this had been a huge growth experience. You don’t grow by being comfortable. I scared myself. I found an edge. I got uncomfortable. I learned A LOT. I would do it again. I don’t know that I will. There are so many corners of this big world to see. But do I still think it was a good idea? Hell yeah.