My wife and I went to the Grand Canyon during spring break, without the kids. They didn't like the idea of hiking it too much. We went with the idea of hiking from the South rim down to the river and back in the same day. While people do it all the time, the grand canyon website is very adamant that visitors should not attempt to hike from rim to river and back in the same day. After doing it, I can see why they would say that. The day of the hike (4/10/12) the weather was great. We started at the Bright Angel Trail at 6:15am. The temperature was in the 40s. We got down to the river by 10:15am, at that it feels like it probably was in the 70s. We were feeling pretty good, and felt this hike might not be as difficult as we had anticipated. The hike is about 8 miles each way. We started back up at around 11am. By 12:30pm we were back at Indian Gardens, (4.6 miles from the rim). We were still feeling great, but the temperature has now gone up to about 95F. The last 4.6 miles up to the rim took 3 hours and 15 minutes. We used up about 1.5 liter of water each on that last stretch. The heat and the 11 miles of hiking finally took it's toll on us. We made it back to the rim, and did pretty good. But had it been a much hotter day, (it routinely gets over 100F in the summer), we would not done nearly as well.
In any case, the Grand Canyon was GRAND and beautiful! Well worth the hike. We plan to do this hike again someday, but this time down the South Kaibab trail and up the Bright Angel trail.
