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Epic Ascent on New Hance Trail — Grand Canyon Day Four
It’s no exaggeration to say that hiking out of the Grand Canyon was one of the most challenging and strenuous things I’ve ever done. We took three days to hike to the bottom. And we took one day to hike out, climbing 4,422' vertical feet in 7.5 miles in an all-day scramble fest. By the end of the day, I looked and felt like my ass had been kicked.
And I loved it. I had a blast. I’d do it all again tomorrow.
About New Hance Trail
John Hance built New Hance Trail to replace Old Hance Trail in 1894. The trail is not maintained and scarcely qualifies as a “trail” as it’s rocky, steep, at times unstable, and difficult to find. Travel writer Burton Homes had this to say about New Hance Trail in 1904. His description is still dead-on accurate.
There may be men who can ride unconcernedly down Hance’s Trail, but I confess I am not one of them. My object in descending made it essential that I should live to tell the tale, and therefore, I mustered up sufficient moral courage to dismount and scramble down the steepest and most awful sections of the path on foot …. ‘On foot,’ however, does not express it, but on heels and toes, on hands and knees, and sometimes in the posture assumed by children when they come bumping down the stairs …. The path down which we have turned appears impossible …. The pitch for the first mile is frightful … and to our dismayed, unaccustomed minds the inclination apparently increases, as if the canyon walls were slowly toppling inwards….
An Early Start
The group rose with the sun around 6 a.m. We needed to get an early start to tackle the long hike out. It was a working breakfast — granola and coffee while breaking camp and packing up. Soon we hit New Hance Trail, leaving the Colorado River behind.
For the first hour or so after leaving camp, we hiked on a dry, rocky creek bed. The morning sun was spectacular on the canyon walls with the bright, blue sky.
