Arizona in the Fall
I’ve had years full of camping and hiking, but in 2020 I hadn’t quite ventured out into backpacking yet (unless you count a night in Channel Islands - though that was somewhere between car camping and backpacking in my opinion). But Fall of 2020 was going to be the year to backpack! A few friends and I found a great hike in the Inyo National Forest, heading to Thousand Island Lakes - with a few other lakes and beautiful mountain destinations along the way. It was going to be our perfect beginner trip - just a couple days, a completely doable distance and in the most gorgeous scenery.
We planned our trip for late September, since truth be told we didn’t plan as well in advance as we should have and so we really just went with what was left for permits. Even still, late September seemed like a great time to avoid the mosquitos by the lakes but beat the cold! Things were looking promising with our permits, even despite the COVID pandemic. Good thing one of the main purposes of backpacking is to get away from people! September rolls around and unfortunately most of California was on fire. Though we weren’t directly impacted in Southern California, it was still devastating to see. 2020 really knew how to kick ya when you’re down. They closed the Inyo National Forest and we were stuck waiting and refreshing cal fire webpage every 10 seconds to see if the fires were any closer to being maintained. As luck would have it, the closure of the forest pushed out into our scheduled time to be backpacking. So, time for plan B.
Where could we go that wasn’t on fire, had a water source, and wasn’t cold enough for late September/early October? We did a lot of research and landed on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Walk-in permits are a thing, so we decided we would test our luck! We drove through the night on Monday to arrive at the Grand Canyon in the early hours of the day on Tuesday. We drove straight to the office to reserve permits (which turned out to be online) and had our email sent in with our requested dates by 5am. After getting our request in, we drove to an overlook and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise - the plus side of being up so early!
And then we waited. They called back, and unfortunately they didn’t have the dates and the plan we wanted available. So the backup plan to the backup plan? Find some BLM land near the park and setup camp. We figured we’d do a hike in the park that day and try again to backpack the next day. After a morning nap in the tent (sooo needed), we hiked down part of the trail we would have done if we were to do the full backpacking loop we wanted, the South Kaibab trail. I thought this was a pretty trail leading into the canyon, and the time of day we went was perfect - just about golden hour. After our hike, we caught the sunset at Yaki Point. A sunrise and sunset over the Grand Canyon on our first day was amazing!
To cap off our first night, I of course couldn’t resist at least a few night time shots at our campsite.
The next day we followed our same process as before to try and get a backpacking permit: woke up early, emailed for a spot, and waited. We heard that usually you get a call back by 8 or 8:30 to inform you of your permit status and if you’ll be able to get one or not. 9am rolled around and we still hadn’t heard anything. So we gave up and decided to spend another day in the park. This time we hiked down on the Bright Angel trail, which would have been part of our route up from the base of the canyon if we had been able to backpack. We hiked down 4.5 miles to Indian Garden Campground, had lunch by a stream, and then hiked back up. I have to say, after doing this hike back up with just our day packs, I was glad to not have our whole packs. While we were bummed to not be able to make it to the very bottom of the canyon, we were still happy with being able to enjoy part of the hike we would have done! It was a really different kind of hike, and really pretty scenery!
And as luck would have it, right when we got back up to the rim of the canyon, we received a call from the permit office apologizing that they didn’t reach out that morning and offering us a permit for the next 2 days. While we still had a couple of days left in our trip, we didn’t feel the desire to re-hike all of what we’d already done, so we opted to pass on the permit and try our third backup plan for backpacking! We headed down back to our campsite that evening to grab dinner, and then headed back into the park for some nighttime photos by moonlight.
In the morning we woke up and drove South to Flagstaff. My Uncle told us about a potential hike that would be good for backpacking, but long story short we hiked in to where we would camp, only to find that there was no running water like we thought there might be, and that there were camping restrictions where we planned to set up camp. We didn’t have enough water with us, so after our hike we headed back to the car for the night. It was a great hike with our backpacks though and it was soo gorgeous with the aspens changing colors! The hike was well worth it, even without the overnight stay. Luckily our campsite was in a dispersed area so it was still very remote and a gorgeous setup.
Since our overnight backpacking trip fell through and we had just 1 day left of our trip, we decided to hike Humphrey’s Peak - the highest mountain in Arizona. I’m really glad it worked out to do this hike - it was a challenging peak with a few false summits, but the view once you finally made it to the top was so worth it! It was so unique to be able to see fall colors in one direction, and desert in the other.
The next day we headed back to sunny San Diego after a successful few days of camping and hiking. We were definitely bummed to not be able to do our backpacking trip like we had planned, but our backup plan(s) were still so fun! And luckily in 2021, Jon and I finally found ourselves backpacking together!