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Trip Report - December, 2020 - The Grand Canyon in the years of Covid 19 |
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December 28, 2021
This pandemic seems like it will never end. I think most people figured it would end or at least be more under control by the end of 2020 but that never happened. There would be no Grand Canyon hiking or backpacking for me during 2020 because of the Corona virus as I did not feel comfortable enough to be traveling by plane and, living back East, it would me a minimum of a three-day drive to get to Arizona. Even three days would be pushing it and it would probably be four or five days, each way. For the first time in 33 years there would be no Grand Canyon. I had been hoping to do a spring trip, a rim-to-rim-to-rim, starting and ending on the South Rim and had this all planned out in my head. I was hoping to do it over three days: South Kaibab to Cottonwood on day one, then doing a day hike from there up to the North Rim and back, and then back out via the Bright Angel on the last day. I really wanted to do it over two days but I didn't think I could do the cross-Canyon trip in one, let alone two days back to back. Even three days was pushing it and I don't know how enjoyable that would have been. It is on my list again for fall of 2021 but I may just push it to a five-day trip and use Bright Angel Campground for the first and last nights. I had also been hoping to do a fall trip in 2020 and had been leaning towards a Hermit-Tonto-Bright Angel trip, with a side trip to Phantom Ranch as a day hike from Indian Garden. I was hoping that my nephew, Michael, would be joining me on this one. It would have been his second Grand Canyon trip following a trip he did with me to Clear Creek in March of 2019. With luck I probably could have talked cousin John into joining us again as he always seems to be up for Grand Canyon trip. But it was all not to be. I held out hope and had plane reservations for April which I finally had to end up cancelling. My wife and I also had a trip to England and Scotland planned for the end of May and beginning of June that bit the dust. That trip had been fully booked at the beginning of January and we were already aware of the Corona virus at that time but hoped it would still be safe to travel by the end of May. Not so much. I started working from home full-time at the end of March of 2020 and that continued until August of 2021 when they finally made us start to come back into the office. We still get to work from home two days each week which is one more than than we had before the pandemic. I work as a software developer for Boston College and probably 90% of my time when I was working from home had been spent working on an application for scheduling and tracking Covid 19 testing and vaccinations for the students, faculty and staff of Boston College. I had been to the campus only three times during that work from home period: once to get tested for Covid, one because my laptop crashed and needed to be re-imaged, and once to pick up a new laptop. I have a very nice setup for work in the sun room on the back side of our house. That used to be a deck that we converted into a sun room a couple of years ago and it is the perfect work from home environment. The backyard is surrounded by wetlands on three sides so it is very dense and green back there during the spring, summer and fall, and there is lots of bird activity. In additional to my laptop I have two other large monitors and they all run shifting Grand Canyon wallpaper images using various Grand Canyon photos that I have taken over the years. I am thankful for the Grand Canyon Hikers and Backpackers Facebook group and the support I received there. I was not alone as there were many others with the same problem, just living too far away from the Canyon with no way to get there in a reasonable amount of time without flying. I spent the year living vicariously through the trip reports of others. I also ended up re-reading many of my own trip reports from the past 33+ years. I have also been rereading some of my past trip reports going back over those past years and have picked out some of my favorite trips. In those 33+ years I have logged just over 2,100 miles in the Canyon and have slept 223 nights below the rim. All of the trips are special in one way or another, mostly good but a few bad experiences.
I finally did get back to Arizona and Grand Canyon in 2021. Robin and I were out there in May and I had considered attempting a rim-to-rim-to-rim hike on my own but hotter than normal temperatures in the inner Canyon put an end to those thoughts. I ended up settling on a night hike along the West Rim trail from Grand Canyon Village to Hermit's Rest and that was a great choice and ended up being a wonderful hike. It was a good thing I never attempted that rim-to-rim-to-rim hike as when I finally started hiking again back east I discovered that I was grossly out of shape for hiking. I worked on that over the summer and attempted to plan a rim-to-rim-to-rim hike with some friends and family members for September. I was unable to get a permit for that and ended up doing a relatively easy four-day/three-night trip to Hermit Camp, Granite Rapid ad Monument Camp which was very nice. I had given thought to trying to get out again during the Christmas break from work but warnings about air travel chaos had me give up on that idea. I experienced some of that chaos coming back from the trip in September when Southwest Airlines imploded and canceled numerous flights and had people scrambling, trying to get rebooked. I was glad that I did not travel over Christmas break as the predicted chaos has happened and people are scrambling again. So I did end up getting some Canyon time in 2021 but I still don't know what's up for 2022. I have not applied for any spring trips and if I don't do that in the next few days to try for something in May it's not going to happen. I am leaning towards a fall trip again and just waiting to see what happens in 2022. |
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