We arrived at Grand Canyon a little after 6am and headed to the El Tovar for a nice pre-hike breakfast to start the day. The El Tovar did not open until 630 so we were a little early and had to wait. I was a little disappointed to see that the El Tovar had changed their breakfast menu and that the Mexican options of the breakfast quesadilla and burrito were no longer available. I had to satisfy myself with the blacked trout, which was fabulous. Michael was happy that they still had the Belgian waffles on the menu as he had been looking forward to having those. I am sure no one was disappointed with breakfast.

After breakfast we headed over to the Backcountry Information Center to wait for the Hiker Special shuttle to the South Kaibab Trailhead. That arrived a little after 730am and we were at the trailhead and ready to start our hike by around 815am.

The top of the South Kaibab Trail had some icy sections and that was were the only fall of the trip occurred when Rob slipped on an icy patch. The ice did not last long and was gone by the time we reached the bottom of that first set of switchbacks.

I knew it was going to warm up quickly once we started hiking and headed down into the Canyon so I started with just a long sleeve (winter) hiking shirt and my sweatshirt. I had a down jacket with me just in case and that at least served to make for a nice pillow at night. I don't think it ever came out of its stuff sack. The sweatshirt was done when we arrived at Cedar Ridge.

The weather was beautiful for hiking and we had a nice time going from Cedar Ridge to Skeleton Point. There was one amusing point when we encountered a mule trip coming up from the bottom. The lead wrangler got off of her mule to help one of the other riders and her mule decided to continue down the trail without her.

We had a small "second breakfast" at Skeleton Point before starting down the Redwall break. There was another small break at the resthouse near the junction with the Tonto Trail but from there we headed right for the bottom. We had two encounters with a couple of Grand Canyon bighorn sheep on the way to the bottom. The first was just below "The Tipoff" when we encountered a young sheep walking right up the trail. The second encounter was near the bottom of the trail as we approached the Colorado River and this one was just resting off on the side of the trail.

We arrived at Bright Angel Campground around 2pm and after picking out a campsite along the creek we headed up to Phantom Ranch. John and Rob had sent some gear down on the mules and needed to claim that and I needed to claim a beer. I also brought down a fresh copy of my "Grand Canyon Memories" photo book since I noticed the one I left there in 2010 was in pretty bad shape when I saw it in 2015. The old copy was still there but was now missing the front cover completely. Perhaps it was a souvenir for someone.

We headed back to the campground when the cantina closed for dinner at 4pm. We made some dinner for ourselves and then headed over to the evening ranger program at 7pm. Everyone was pretty much falling asleep by the time that ended and no one was interested in going back to the Phantom Ranch Beer Hall that runs from 8pm-10pm. I slept very well that first night and I think it was the best night's sleep of the entire trip.