The Night at Phantom Ranch

When we reached the Colorado River, we were officially at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  But it was still a long walk to our lodging at Phantom Ranch.  First we had to go through the tunnel, then we crossed over the black suspension bridge across the Colorado River at 12:45.


After the bridge, it is another mile hike to get to Phantom Ranch.  Much of the walk is along a creek that feeds into the Colorado River, and it is surprisingly green at the bottom of the canyon. 

We are happy to report that we had lots of beautiful "relatives" at the bottom of the canyon, as Engelmann prickly pear cactus are blooming now.

We arrived at the welcome sign right at 1:00--about 5.5 hours after leaving the canyon rim.  We went down in elevation almost a mile, and the temperature soared from 33 degrees when we first entered the park this morning, to a sweltering 97 degrees at Phantom Ranch.

The reason that so few people make the hike to the bottom is because there is very limited lodging down here. (It also might have something to do with the fact that you must be crazy to do this.)  Most of the people we talked to had made their reservations 13 months ago.  If you wanted to make this hike in April 2015, you must have been on the phone on April 1, 2014, the minute the reservation office opened.  Hiking companions told us that all the reservations for the entire month of April 2015 were sold out by 8 a.m. on April 1, 2014.

Obviously there are cancellations that people like us can snag if you can be flexible enough to take any opening that comes up.

The lodging options at Phantom Ranch include three options.  Our preference would be the cabins, but there are very few of them.

Another option is the Bright Angel campground.  There are 30 camp sites available along the creek.  But this necessitates carrying all your camping gear down (and back up) the long trails.  Toilets are available for the campers, but no showers.

Our only option was a twin bed in the dorms.  There are two men and two women dorms, each with 5 bunk beds.

The dorms are quite sparse, but include a toilet and one shower to be shared with the ten occupants.  The beds were surprisingly comfortable, or it might just have been that we were surprisingly tired.  

As soon as we got checked into our dorm rooms, we got to choose a bed in our assigned dorm.  We both got upper bunks.  We thought that at our retired age, the youngsters might take the upper bunks.  But we found that we were probably average in age amongst the hikers.  In the middle of the week during normal school months, most of the hikers today were retired just like us.

With heat in the 90's and a sunny afternoon, it was time to unzip the leg section of our hiking pants and transform them into hiking shorts.  Then we headed to the creek to soak our feet in the cold water.  Going downhill for 5 hours makes your toes sore!  We spotted a shady spot on the other side of the creek and headed across the rather swift current.  We would have pictures perched in this idyllic spot, but when crossing the creek Mark stepped on a sharp rock and fell in.  The main camera we use for the blog is his camera phone, and it was soaked in his pocket.  He dried it out, and surprisingly it is working fine now!

In the meantime, we stopped by the women's dorm to pick up Denisa's camera, and headed a mile back to the Colorado River for another ice cold foot soak.  The water in the Colorado was numbing cold, which is probably good for feet that were tortured with a 7 mile hike straight downhill.  That is a big difference from any other hike we have done.

Mark also enjoyed the Colorado River.  Between our hike in the opposite direction down the creek, then back to the suspension bridge to the river, we added another 3 miles to our already long hike.  So we hiked ten miles before the day was over.


Even though we had snacked during our hike, we were certainly hungry by the evening.  There are different options for food when reservations are made at Phantom Ranch.  You could choose to bring in your own food, and that is certainly the cheapest option.  For the evening meal you can sign up for the $50 steak meal at 5:00 p.m., or the $30 stew meal at 6:30 p.m.  Since we were taking over someone's cancelled reservation, we had the stew served in the cantina.

It was served family style, and we sat at a table with 10 other hikers.  It was a very tasty meal with stew, salad, cornbread, and chocolate cake.

They also serve breakfast in the morning--at 5:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.  The 5:00 wasn't available to us, and we wanted an earlier start out of that hot canyon than the late breakfast would allow.  So we opted to bring our own breakfast.  We could have also ordered a very expensive box lunch, but we planned to be on the rim for lunch.

It was getting dark by the time we were finished eating stew, and we were getting very tired.  But we went to a very interesting ranger program about the Grand Canyon mules.  Then we went on the ranger-led scorpion hunt to find these insects that glow a bright turquoise color under black light.  Both were good entertainment, but meant we had to walk back to the dorms in the dark.  Even though it was only 8:30, most of our bunk mates were already asleep.  So we each got ready for bed in the dark, needing a good night's sleep for the hike out of the canyon tomorrow! 

Denisa slept well and enjoyed visiting with her bunk mates.  Mark soon found out that most of his bunk mates snored.  In the middle of the night he could count at least six different snores.  He would recommend ear plugs for anyone sleeping in the men's dorm because he didn't get much sleep.