Day 5... I love to feel the snow on my face

We awoke on day 5 tired, slightly grumpy, and incredibly cold... crawling out of our tents to snowflakes gently falling through the pines and sprinkling the tents and chairs with a light dusting of the white stuff. Breakfast... as efficiently as it had been prepared in the field... became cold the moment it touched the plate and given that I had spent most of the night awake and shivering, I was not in the most positive of moods. I had not brought along winter gloves or a winter coat... smugly expecting at least 20 degrees C higher than the UK. How wrong was I! My sleeping bag was also inadequate for the near freezing conditions I found myself in.

After breakfast we piled into the vans and once at the trailhead split up into 4 groups. Our group was to attempt the Grand View trail and had a bit further to drive to the trailhead. Grand View was a fairly steep and exposed trail compared to the other paths and I was really looking forward to seeing a different trail than the Bright Angel Trail that I had walked a short way down on my last visit during my Route 66 ride.

We drove along the road to the trailhead and as we stared out of the window the snow got heavier and heavier until we were passing snowploughs and inches of snow in the forests to the side of the road.

We arrived and dragged ourselves out of the warm van into ... and I am not exaggerating.... a blizzard! Complete whiteout conditions with no view at all of the huge hole in the ground right jn front of us. We all had many layers on and our snoods were pulled right up to our eyes. I kept my sunglasses on to protec5 my eyes from the driving snow. As we slipped and slid after our guide the short distance to the restrooms, I felt pretty uneasy about heading down. As I reached the group, Jules and Mike were having a discussion about the sense of trying to hike down thus path in this weather.  In our group we had Mike and Jules who have hiked Kili... Jules who lives in Aspen and does varying winter sports... and myself who has cycled across countries solo as well as many others who have done exceptional things and are used to difficult conditions.... these weren't just difficult.... without proper snow equipment it was downright dangerous.  Jules was the first to voice whaf we were all thinking but didnt want to be the first to say. All of us.... despite a major degree of disappointment... agreed that it would not be a good idea to hike this trail in these conditions. As soon as this decision was made... you could see the relief on people's faces. None of us wanted not to trek... but we were not correctly equipped for the conditions we found. We did have a bit of fun taking pictures of 'the view' ... essentially clouds and snow, before piling back into the bus to execute plan B.

Plan B was a trek around the rim (and you have no idea how many jokes have come out of that word). So we drove back to the Rim trailhead, where the snow had not been nearly as bad, and started on a 7 mile trek.

This trek gave us all the opportunity to have a good chat and we walked and talked, the miles passing us by.... time which is precious spent getting to know each other better. I fell into step with Smiley and we made our way along the path, occasionally catching our breath which felt occasionally as it had suddenly been taken away due to the altitude.

At one point we almost literally bumped into some elk, calmly grazing just on the side of the path, totally unbothered by the intrusion.

Suddenly to our right we caught a glimpse of the grandeur. The cloud briefly cleared, revealing the breadth and depth of this truly Grand canyon. The colours were muted by the cloud which swirled around but at one point we could see the north rim also covered in snow, and the Colorado River wending its way, still helping to carve out the canyon.

As soon as it was revealled, the view was hidden by the clouds again and as we rounded a bend, we came upon a point of interest, ironically called 'Diminishing View', only they had got the name slightly wrong as the view was closer to Diminished View!

However as we continued round the rim (yeah yeah, we heard all the jokes), the weather conditions improved and we were able to appreciate the beauty of the Grand Canyon in its entirety.

It turned out that they actually closed off Grand View trail shortly after we left as it was the worst hit of all the trails. Fortunately all the other groups managed to make it down into the Canyon in areas that were slightly less snowed in!

The 7 miles went quickly and we caught the shuttle bus back. It turned out that no one was looking forward to shivering round a fire whilst eating dinner so a plan was quickly formed to bus to a lodge where the manger had kindly closed off a separate room for our use only, which meant that we could sit and eat in the warm, listening to the musicians entertain us.

The evening was a riotous success, with everyone up on their feet clapping and singing along. Possibly cheering the fact that for the moment at least, we were dry and warm. However our snowy campground awaited us and many of us stopped off at the store and invested $20 in a fleece summer sleeping bag as an extra layer, effectively double bagging ourselves. One person however (Andy!!) went so far as to triple bag... genius or overkill??

We headed back to the tents, warm, full and hoping that the weather would drastically improve for our second day descending into the Grand Canyon.