“Camp Lonely”

-35 days to trail

11.83 miles

Grand Canyon National Park

It’s astonishing that I made it here today, after so many forces working in the other direction, but I’m here no less. 

This is the first time I’ve done an overnight hike in more than a year. August of 2023 was the last time… it’s been 18 months… a lot has changed in my life since then. It’s been even longer since I’ve camped alone. It’s been since the CDT in 2019. 

It’s been closer to a decade since I’ve camped alone like this, in Grand Canyon. 

This trip was supposed to be 3 days, and there were going to be 4 of us. But then one member got injured skiing, and when bad weather rolled in, the other two canceled. Bad weather is an understatement. It snowed so heavily that it closed the road that accesses the trail that we were supposed to start on. As such, two of us drove to the canyon yesterday, only to be turned around after the road closed. Then today, it took 6.5 hours to get back to the canyon from Flagstaff due to more road closures from the snow. 

As such, I had to shorten the trip to two days. The important part is being out overnight with my full gear setup. I haven’t used it in a long time and need to be comfortable with it before the AT. 

I’ve been hiking the Grand Canyon almost weekly through the last few months. Since December I’ve been carrying most of my full thru hiking gear in my pack, just to get used to the weight. This is the first trip where just about everything is refined down to what  I’ll carry on the AT though. This is as close to what I expect in my final base weight as I can get right now.

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Hiking today was beautiful and painful. It destroys me to feel so alone out here. It hurts so much that I can literally feel it in my chest, just below my throat. But I’m still walking in spite of it. 

The trail is familiar because I’ve hiked the canyon so much. But setting camp–especially alone tonight is something like a memory from a former life. It’s been so long since I’ve been at camp alone, but then I’ve spent so many nights camped alone before the CDT… hundreds of nights alone. 

So funny then that it would feel so heavy to be here alone again. It should feel familiar. But I spent so much time believing that I’d never be out here alone like this again, that I don’t know how to feel. 

It’s overwhelming. 

I only had half the day to hike today. I started down the Kaibab Trail at around 1:30, and sunset was at 6:30. The top of the canyon was snow and ice, left over from yesterday. But within a mile it was just wet, and too warm for snow to stay. And soon after that, it was desert again, like the canyon almost always is. 

I made it 11.5 miles before finding this plateau to set camp on. I’m on the Tonto trail, headed east to Grandview. The trip was going to be much longer when we originally planned it, but after starting a day and a half later, and only getting to trail in the afternoon, I’ll end up exiting tomorrow. Tomorrow I can either do 18 miles or 32 miles; considering that the main focus of this trip is getting comfortable with camp, I’ll likely take the former. The exit out Grandview Trail is the same that I took last week, but I approached it from the east; this time I’ll be coming up the mesa from the west. 

My heart is broken and my soul is frail anymore. But I’m still trying. And I hope that I can look back on these memories and feel like it all makes sense someday. 

Wormwood.