UP?????

Feb 15
Happy Birthday Ori!!!


The Next morning someone stuck their head into our cabin at 5 am, I figured I would wait for everyone to go to breakfast, Jack and I had brought our own since breakfast was $17. Jack was up like a flash, “Colin, Colin, you wanna get going?” I looked over to see what is fantastic about Jack Julian- utter enthusiasm, like it was Christmas morning. He was so excited he was radiating a glow. And so at 5:15 AM up we got; showered, dressed, ordered a coffee (only $1- probably the cheapest and greatest coffee of the trip), we made some breakfast, peanut butter and cheese sandwiches with a side of dried figs, and headed into the dark.

“Jack where is your flash light”

“oh its in my bag, lets just see how it goes”

… three steps later we were emersed and could not even see our own noses. Out came the headlight.


It slowly became light as we made it over the other bridge. (Jack has some great pics).



This morning my calves were killing me and my back was really sore but the first part of the Bright Angel trail was mellow, felt like we were in some gold rush movie, just a big valley inside this massive canyon. We had been told that this trail was not as impressive and Kaibab, but no, no,no- it was spectacular in its own way. Not least of which was our stumbling onto some unflappable wild life.



So....This hike was a killer. Down was hard on the body but the hike up was a full on workout lungs gasping, 6 1/2 hours to the summit. As we got closer to the top there were frequent stops and rounds of water.

We brushed past sightseers to step into the surface sunshine at 1:30pm. We could hardly walk, our calves and thighs were screaming with every step—where was the Advil? Jack fell asleep on the bus ride back to the car and I desperately made attempts to massage my legs.

We were going to get in the car, find a Hotel and just chill until the next day. Recoup. That was the plan until we got in the car, started driving and must have gone slightly mad.

Instead we drove to Vegas arriving at 9PM


We could hardly step out of the car, legs like jello. There were 150 people in line to check into Circus Circus( oh, the NBA All Star Game is in town), we got rooms in some paper thin walled room 100 miles from the main hotel.
Jack said
“lets just sleep until 10 and then hit Vegas…hard!”

Jack never got up.