20 miles, 11 hours

We woke with a hard frost coating our sleeping bags and the cold made it hard to get going. We were packing up camp when two hikers came through – they were on the AZ Trail going the other way. We enjoyed talking with them and sharing trail notes and stories. But we all felt the need to make some miles so we soon had to part with Yapper and Dead Animal (their trail names, something many serial through-hikers have).

We walked about nine miles on gravel roads to get to the Nankoweap trail head. Then we headed down into the canyon. The NPS trail description calls this the most difficult trail in the Grand Canyon and has plenty of warnings about exposed edges and slippery steep slopes. I will say that it’s no harder than several parts of the Hayduke so far, and the worst bits aren’t too long, but it is a darn challenge. Not to mention you lose several thousand feet of elevation. When we reached Nankoweap Creek at the bottom we were pretty tired.

The campsite at the bottom is beautiful, and we had the pleasure of meeting a very nice couple from Tucson with similar outside priorities as we have. It was a warm but very pleasant night.

TRAIL NOTES:
We found no water between Sourdough Well and Nankoweap Creek.