Mark’s Photos #12

In March of 2017 I started my hike of the 800 mile Arizona Trail. Five hundred miles along, I injured my right big toe making it painful to walk. Of course I walked another hundred miles before I finally decide it was too painful to continue. I had reached Flagstaff by that point so I rested a couple days, planning to press on, but ultimately decided to get off trail.

The podiatrist diagnosed me with torn ligaments at the base of my big toe. Several months later, in September, I had actually recovered and flew back to Flagstaff to complete my hike of the Arizona Trail. A hundred miles north of Flagstaff I met up with Scatman and we hiked through the Grand Canyon together. We spend three days crossing the canyon, camping in two different locations inside the chasm. On the third day we hiked up to the North Rim along the North Kabob Trail, an elevation gain of a little over 4,200 feet. We started early to beat the heat, so it was pitch black for the first hour. Walking along the narrow cliff side trail in the dark with roaring Bright Angel Creek 70 sheer feet below, was… exciting if not unnerving. As it lightened up we moved away from the creek and up a long sinuous trail that had been blasted into the massive walls of the canyon. Now we could see where we would fall, and that was not necessarily an improvement. This photo is of that section of the trail which went on for several miles and several thousand feet of elevation gain. Of course, all of it was stunning and we did make it to the top in the early afternoon. To give you a sense of scale, that is Scatman walking towards the camera on the trail on the right lower corner of the image.