I’ve Hiked 1,000 Miles Below The Rim. The Grand Canyon Still Finds My Mistakes.

By the time Dr. Tom Myers and I reached the Colorado River at Tanner Rapids, the mistake was already several thousand feet above us.

His headlamp was charging at home in Flagstaff.

Mine had made it as far as the car.

It was sitting in the console.

This was January. The days were short, snow covered the trail at higher elevations, and Tanner is not one of the Grand Canyon’s busy corridor routes. It is steep, remote and sparsely traveled. We had descended from the South Rim to the river, turned around and only then realized that neither of us had brought one of the most basic pieces of hiking equipment we owned.

Tom had spent more than 30 years as a physician at the Grand Canyon Clinic. He had hiked the length of the canyon with his son, Wes. Author Kevin Fedarko has called him “Mr. Grand Canyon.”

I had more than a thousand miles below the rim.

Between us, we had enough experience to know better.

Neither of us had a headlamp.

That is the useful thing about a confession. It closes the distance between the person who made the mistake and the person hearing it. The labels disappear. Expert. Beginner. Local. First-timer. What remains is a human being at the bottom of a very large hole, finally noticing the hole in the plan.

That is also the idea behind Canyon Confessions, a new bonus series from The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show. Members of our Hike Club Grand Canyon community tell us what they got wrong. I add my own mistakes, because I have plenty. Nobody gets shamed. Everybody gets to leave a little smarter.

I expected the first episode to be about bad plans and hard lessons. It was. But as I read the confessions, I kept hearing something deeper than a collection of forgotten gear and misjudged miles.

The Grand Canyon does not ask me—or you—for a perfect plan.

Experience Is Not A Checklist

There is a seductive point in almost every pursuit when familiarity begins to feel like protection. I know because I keep reaching it.

I have done this before. I know what belongs in the pack. I know how my body responds. I know the trail, or at least a trail that resembles it. The checklist starts to feel unnecessary because the checklist is already in my head.

Until the headlamp is not in my pack.

The Tanner mistake was embarrassingly basic. That was exactly why it mattered. Tom and I did not lack knowledge. We failed to use a system that would have caught a very ordinary human error.

I keep seasonal canyon checklists in the Notes app on my phone. I usually review one before leaving home. That got the headlamp into my car. A second check at the trailhead would have gotten it into my pack.

We skipped that one.

I used to think preparation was mostly about how much information a hiker possessed. The confessions suggested a better definition: preparation is what I do with that information when excitement, habit, fatigue and confidence begin competing for my attention.

Christy Daniels Fargason credited a successful rim-to-rim hike to becoming “canyon obsessed” before she ever set foot on the trails. She studied National Park Service information, listened to the show, followed canyon communities, trained, practiced her food and water plan, tested her gear and stayed ready for the unexpected.

Then she added the sentence every experienced canyon hiker eventually earns:

“I’m sure there are weaknesses in my planning the canyon will eventually reveal.”

— Christy Daniels Fargason

I do not hear a lack of confidence in that.

It is respect without theater.

Becky Rumfelt put it even more plainly:

“It demands your respect, and you must give it.”

— Becky Rumfelt

That is the kind of hiker I want to be. The strongest hikers I know do not prepare because they believe they can control the Grand Canyon. They prepare because they know they cannot.

The Deadline At The Other Rim

Some plans contain a hidden failure point. I have learned to look for the part of an itinerary that refuses to move.

For a rim-to-rim hiker, that part is often transportation.

When Bella LaMal confessed to believing she could finish a South Rim-to-North Rim crossing in time for the shuttle, I knew exactly why it was worth discussing. She remembered seeing hikers sleep in the Grand Canyon Lodge lobby after missing theirs.

That old fallback is gone. The lodge was destroyed in the 2025 Dragon Bravo Fire, and the 2026 North Rim is operating with limited access and services. The National Park Service says the former lodge parking area is open, but the old lodge-to-trailhead hiker shuttle is closed. The details will continue to change, which is precisely why they cannot be treated as details.

A shuttle departure is not impressed by your training plan.

It does not wait because your stomach turned, a blister formed, water was off, a friend slowed down, the heat arrived early or the climb took four hours longer than the spreadsheet predicted.

I have passed hikers on North Kaibab in the middle of the night who had already been moving for 18 hours. Some expected to finish in 12. I do not think they were careless people. I think they were living inside the difference between an estimate and the canyon.

Put a hard transportation deadline at the end of a first rim-to-rim and the entire hike can become a race against a clock the hiker does not yet understand.

Here is the principle I keep coming back to:

I am not saying every hiker must travel in the same direction or use the same transportation plan. I am saying the finish deserves the same attention as the trail, the shoes and the training. A plan that works only if everything goes right is not a plan with much canyon in it.

Before any hike, check current National Park Service information for weather, trail closures, drinking water, transportation and North Rim operations. The status you remember from last year—or last week—is not the status you should bet a hike on.

The Pack Can Be Perfect And The Hiker Can Be Wrong

When I read Joe Giles’ confession, I laughed because I have packed versions of the same pack.

He arrived at his rim-to-rim with enough food for what felt like a five-day stay.

He carried more water than he needed between reliable water stops. He imagined wanting a big meal at El Tovar when what he really wanted afterward was a shower, a glass of water and a clean bed.

His sharpest confession, though, was this: he had emphasized perfect weight instead of an ideal level of fitness.

I understand why gear gets so much of our attention. It gives us numbers. Ounces can be weighed. Liters can be counted. Calories can be divided by the hour. I can spread a pack across the floor until every object seems to prove that I have thought of everything.

Fitness is harder to flatter.

It is the body you have now, not the race you ran years ago or the mountain you climbed before work became busy. It includes the long descent that pounds the quads before the climb has begun. It includes whether you can still eat when exertion dulls your appetite, whether you can carry the pack you actually packed and whether your judgment remains useful when the day outlasts your expectations.

Joe’s food problem is one I may never solve. I routinely finish with more than I wanted to carry. I never seem to eat as much during a hard effort as I imagine I will at home.

The answer is not to find somebody else’s perfect menu. It is to practice with the food you intend to carry and learn what your body will accept when the canyon removes your appetite.

The same is true of water. Water availability can change with pipeline breaks and maintenance. South Kaibab has no water along the trail. Other sources may be seasonal or temporarily unavailable. A smart water plan comes from current status, conditions and personal need—not from a video recorded under a different sky.

I still care about the pack.

I just have to remember that the person carrying it matters more.

The Trail On A Screen Is Not The Trail Under Your Feet

Luciana Arman Zubic’s confession reminded me how much research can show us—and what it never can. She watched video after video of hikers descending South Kaibab to Phantom Ranch and climbing out Bright Angel. Then she arrived and found herself surprised by the size of the mule ruts.

The surprise sounds small until a foot lands badly.

In wet winter and spring conditions, the holes and ruts on corridor trails can deepen and hold water. The iconic views pull a hiker’s eyes outward while the next step demands attention at ground level. Looking up and moving at the same time can become its own little wager.

I once turned my ankle on the first switchback of the Chimney on South Kaibab. I had sprained enough ankles to recognize that this one was not good. I knew what the sensible decision looked like.

I kept going.

It hurt for the rest of the hike.

I finished. For a while, I probably let that ending soften the decision that came before it.

Videos are valuable. Maps are essential. Community knowledge can prevent mistakes a hiker would otherwise have to make personally. But none of them can reproduce the exact trail that will exist beneath your feet. They cannot give you that day’s heat, mud, ice, fatigue, water status or appetite. They cannot make the decision for you after the ankle turns.

That is what I want research to do for me: make me more responsive to reality, not more committed to a script.

Do Not Spend The Hike Before It Starts

Linda Kovacik Ortner’s confession was my favorite kind because I was not sure she regretted it at all.

She spent two nights at Phantom Ranch, a dream trip that became 50 miles in four days.

She descended South Kaibab, used what might have been a rest day for the roughly 14-mile round trip to Ribbon Falls, then eventually hiked out by way of the Tonto and Bright Angel trails. Her feet were not pleased. She also admitted she would probably do it again.

That is a very canyon confession: the mistake and the joy refuse to separate cleanly.

The detail that caught my attention happened before the main trip. Linda did an approximately four-mile round-trip test hike on Bright Angel the day before descending to Phantom Ranch. I heard that and immediately thought: I would not have done that.

But I absolutely understand the impulse. You finally reach the rim. The trail is right there. Adrenaline is high. After months of imagining the place, sitting still feels absurd.

But downhill miles have a cost, especially for legs that are not accustomed to long canyon descents. A test hike can become an early withdrawal from the body you were saving for the centerpiece.

If I could give a first-time hiker one piece of advice about that day, it would be this: the goal is not to prove that you can hike.

It is to arrive at the real hike as fresh as possible.

I would walk the rim. Look into the canyon. Let the anticipation build. If I stepped below the rim at all, I would keep it short and intentional. I would not spend tomorrow’s legs because today’s excitement made them feel free.

The same principle applies inside the trip. Two nights at Phantom Ranch do not automatically create a rest day. A day becomes rest only when you decide not to fill it.

There is nothing wrong with wanting Ribbon Falls, the Tonto, Plateau Point and every other mile your permit makes possible. But ambition should remain a choice, not an obligation created by the itinerary.

What Respect Looks Like

I have said “respect the canyon” so many times that I sometimes worry the phrase has lost its edges.

So what do I actually mean by it?

In practice, respect looks ordinary.

For me, it is a checklist at the car, not only at home.

It is testing my food before packing it.

It is training the body I have now, not the one I remember having.

It is checking current water and trail status instead of remembering what was true last time.

It is arranging the finish so two late hours do not become a crisis.

It is reaching a twisted ankle, a tired friend or an empty appetite and allowing that new information to change my plan.

Most of all, it is leaving room for me to be wrong.

That is the point of Canyon Confessions. I am not interested in dividing hikers into those who prepared and those who failed. Tom and I knew to bring headlamps. Mine was perhaps a hundred yards from the trailhead. Knowledge was not the problem.

I want us to tell these stories because shame makes mistakes harder to examine, while honesty makes them useful.

More than a thousand miles below the rim have not made me mistake-proof. They have given me a larger collection of mistakes and, I hope, a quicker willingness to admit when the canyon has found another one.

It always will. If that sounds discouraging, I do not mean it that way.

I love this place partly because it keeps asking me to pay attention. It will not let experience become a substitute for humility. It does not care about my hiking résumé, and there is something strangely freeing in that. I get to show up as the hiker I am today, make the best decisions I can and stay willing to change them.

I am not trying to become the hiker with a plan that cannot fail.

I am trying to become the hiker whose plan can change before a mistake becomes something worse.

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Listen to “Canyon Confessions 1: Bad Plans, Hard Lessons, and Why You Can’t Wing It in the Grand Canyon” on The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show. Have a confession of your own? Share it with the Hike Club Grand Canyon community so another hiker can learn the lesson without having to earn it the same way.