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Outside Magazine June 2001

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Temple of Zoom -- cont.

THERE WAS HALF a moon, but its silver light was less useful than we had expected. Our headlamps illuminated the trail itself and nothing more, as if we were tromping down a tunnel. On one side there were boulders; on the other, a black abyss. We didn't talk. We hiked, single file, John in front.

Right here, before we go any further, I must say that you don't march off on a mad caper with just anyone. Not if you want to succeed, or sometimes to simply come home. It has to be someone whose bravery outstrips his banter. Someone whose strength and stamina are indubitable. Someone who has gotten himself into a hundred fixes and each time figured a way out. My 45-year-old partner, John Harlin—writer, editor, extreme skier, mountaineer, and all-around miscreant—is such a fellow. We had climbed on other continents together and knew each other well. More salient, we were matched in skill, temperament, and speed.

A two-man team leaves little room for error. On the other hand, if you're a seasoned pair, there's no weak link. Add another person—or, God forbid, a few—and fast, clean, continuous movement becomes nearly impossible. Somebody always has to stop. To take a leak, tie a shoe, tighten a buckle. Minor delays that burn precious moonlight. If you're in sync, two is the perfect-size team.

Before John and I walked into the Grand Canyon, we spent three days climbing in the Arizona desert together, working out the kinks, getting dialed. The night we dropped off the rim we felt ready. The temperature was 25 degrees, perfect for hiking. We sank into the cold, dark air as if it were a liquid. The season and the time of day were part of the plan.

In the desert, the two things most likely to kill you are heat and dehydration. Hiking at night, especially in March, neutralizes both factors. You don't overheat, so you don't get overly thirsty. Why do so few people hike at night? Perhaps it's a reluctance rooted deep in our psyches, a genetically imprinted trait that can be traced back for millennia to a time when humans were predators by day but prey at night. Today the saber-toothed tiger is gone, replaced by its shrunken descendant the mountain lion, which is generally not up for taking on full-grown humans.

Nevertheless, "people have strange phobias about darkness," says Ken Walters, who teaches outdoor skills for the South Rimbased Grand Canyon Field Institute. "I tell them it's just deep shade. Hiking in the desert, you're always looking for shade—trying to get some chunk of rock between you and the sun. When you hike at night, you're putting a very big chunk of rock, the Earth, between you and the sun. It's always a huge breakthrough when people stop being hung up on daylight."

Thus our dark descent along the South Kaibab Trail. After we dropped 500 feet, the ice turned to mud and we removed our cleats. It was our only stop. We crossed the suspension bridge over the quiet Colorado at 5:30 A.M. and followed the smell of bacon up to the Phantom Ranch mess hall. It was packed with people, light and noise streaming through the windows. We didn't go in. We stripped off our gaiters, changed socks, ate a bagel, checked the map, and chugged some Gatorade. As we were refilling our bottles from an outdoor faucet, two cowboys stepped from the lodge into the darkness, their coffee cups steaming.

"What're you boys up to?" one of them asked.

"Hikin'," John replied.

They sat down on some rocks and looked up through the trees at the dwindling stars. Likely as not they'd been awake as long as we had. Three hours earlier, driving past the trailhead on the rim, we'd met a cowboy already loading his pack animals. We'd asked him if there was any place to park where we wouldn't get a ticket. "Nope. Don't s'pose there is," he said. After a long silence, he told us, "You boys look all right to me. Guess you could park up there beside my cabin."

Now these two cowboys watched us reload our packs and asked just enough questions to figure out what we were really up to.

"Sounds like some kinda endurance thang," one of them remarked, tossing the coffee grounds from his cup.

"We'll see," John replied.

"I, myself," the cowboy said slowly, "ain't into self-abuse. But good luck to you anyhow."

We tipped our baseball caps and galloped away.

A quarter-mile past Phantom Ranch we doglegged onto the Clear Creek Trail and began zigzagging up the north wall of the canyon. Light was pouring from the sky, washing out the night. The shapely buttes, scalloped slopes, and crenelated shelf lines of the South Rim glowed as red as a Mexican dancer's dress.

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