One Week in the Canyon – The Climb to the Tonto Shelf

If you’ve ever set foot in one of the numerous gargantuan football stadiums in the States, imagine the Grand Canyon as something of a natural, hyperbolic version of one. An amphitheater carved by nature with sightlines from all angles allowing you to peer into the action below.

The Colorado River, here, is the action on the field. The upper rims – the South Rim and North Rim – serve as something of the top bleachers of the upper deck. As George and I woke on the morning of Day Three, it was neither our intent nor our purpose to truly begin the hike out, though our goal for the next few days was to have our progress ultimately take us in that direction.

That meant we had to go up, and up for good – away from the River itself, lifeblood to everything in the Canyon. For the purpose of this extended metaphor, we needed to head to the concourse that sat below the upper deck on the backside of the lower levels to grab two beers and a pretzel before the second half kickoff.

At Hance Rapids, where we’d reach on the late morning of Day Three, there’s a three-trail junction, one that marks the end of the Escalante Route, the bottom of the New Hance Trail through Red Canyon, and the eastern end of the Tonto Trail. Said Tonto Trail runs for some 95 miles west from that point, mostly sitting on the bluffs and shelves 1000 to 1500 feet above the River itself, mixing precipitous cliffs with just enough elevation for perspective that makes it one of the most exhilarating hikes human eyes can absorb.

To get there we first had to tangle with the Papago Wall, a 50 foot nearly vertical rock face that slams into the River at Papago Creek just east of where we’d camped at Escalante Creek. There were only two ways around it – either hop in a boat and float around in on the River, or trust your balance and handholds to climb up and over it. I should mention here that after heading down the Tanner Trail and west up the Escalante Route, there are no mapped trails that exit up to the South Rim until that Hance Creek junction with the New Hance Trail, meaning that even if we’d had any desire to get out early, the Papago Wall was still a requirement to navigate for any exit (lest we turn around and backtrack the nearly 22 miles we’d trekked to get there).

Despite my innate fear of heights, I think I’d underestimated just how important the simple concept of don’t look down can be. If you don’t give yourself any frame of reference for just how far down down is, it’s hard for the acrophobia to set it. I say this both as an important aspect of why I had little issue scaling the Papago Wall and why the two days after it tested my heart’s ability to properly palpitate.

While there are certainly conditions that might warrant use of ropes to haul-up packs at the Wall, it was bone dry, comfortably warm, and our packs were relatively light. It took us just a few minutes to climb to the top, a period of time far longer than it took for use to realize the the rock slide on the back of the Wall was going to be infinitely less comfortable to get through. Some 300 feet of talus and scree with the River below it, all pitched on a perilous slope with, once again, no alternate route available.

While a tad technically tricky, the most difficult part about the descent down the Papago Slide was the balancing act – and I’m not talking about staying upright on two feet. When working in tandem, you want to make sure you stay close enough to one another to be on the same page with the best route down the slide, but the absolute most dire priority is making sure you don’t kick loose rocks down on whomever is leading the pack. Considering George was below me as he headed down first, that meant I was doing everything I could to watch his route down (and provide what advice I could from above) while being mostly terrified that I’d ignite a rock fall with every step I took.

With all ankles and knees intact and accounted for, we finally made it down the slide, reaching perhaps the most peaceful section of trail we’d encountered to that point – a couple mile jaunt on flat ground at the edge of the River that took us past Hance Rapids. It’s as if the trail gods were allowing us a small victory lap for reaching that point, knowing full well that next on our agenda was peeling off to the south and up, up, up to the cliffs of the Tonto Shelf.

The conditions, which had become a wonderful theme, were tremendous. Hiking in shorts and a thin shirt was more than ample, while the crystal clear blue skies provided the perfect backdrop for our venture up to the shelf and the views of Vishnu Temple, et al, to the north. To be quite honest, it might well have been the most pleasant few thousand feet of elevation I’ve put on my legs before, especially with the context of the two previous days and their grind fresh in mind.

For all the great views we were able to sear into memory on those first two days, they were simply nothing compared to what the shelf began to reveal on the first of our days on the Tonto. The kinds of sights and silence that began to make the last 30 or so miles – roughly halfway through our journey – feel much more than just worth it.

This kind of place should be this hard to get to, really. I simply wouldn’t collectively trust us to keep it anything akin to how it is now if it were a drive-thru.

It became something of an affirmation of the desire to wander, too. The idea that if you head out away from the known for day after day after day, doing your best to avoid running into any other people, there really are places like this out there that unveil themselves to you, and only you.

It was enough to prompt a stroll of a day, one bent on soaking in the entirety of this experience rather than the stress of days prior. On those two, we knew the goods were when we got to our camp, and while our camp at Hance Creek on the night of day three was alongside some much needed fresh water and views of its own, this day was all about the journey.

We rolled into camp as the sun was setting, and barely had a chance to begin heating up water for dinner before it was as dark as dark gets. For the first time since we left, we also weren’t next to the roar of the River, making it feel as if the big, burly third party on our trip had left us out on our own for once.

I polished off the wine under an array of stars so layered it made me sure my eyes had built-in telescopes I’d never been in the right spot to be able to use before. I had no way of knowing that savoring the day, and the weather, was something I’d come to appreciate more as that day faded into memory, as it would be the the sound of rain hitting the top of the tent – not an alarm – that would wake me the next morning.

You can read Part Four of this weeklong trek through the Grand Canyon’s Escalante Route here.