Piece of Cake

Some time back my dad recommended to me the book "A Walk in the Park" by Kevin Fedarko. Having just finished it, I can see why - it's an alternately funny and gripping memoir of a long-distance desert backpacking journey. In particular, Kevin and his hiking/photographer buddy Pete resolved to hike along the entire length of the Grand Canyon: not a north-south rim-to-rim jaunt, but an east-to-west hike following the course of the Colorado River throughout the entire length of the canyon.

 

 

In some ways, they seemed like natural fits for a journey like this: Kevin had worked for many years as a volunteer for the oar boats that travel down the Colorado River rapids through the Grand Canyon, and he and Pete had previously collaborated on a variety of adventurous photojournalism assignments, including foreign mountains and wintry tundras. But the book by far focuses on their incredible lack of preparation or suitability for it. Neither of them were particularly fit, especially the special kind of fitness needed for long-distance hiking. And more severely, at least as depicted in this book, they were cocky and sure that they wouldn't need to prepare for such an expedition: they could hike it "from off the couch," not needing to spend a lot of time researching the route, planning supplies, or talking with previous hikers.

I don't read a ton of hiking books, but enough for some elements to sound familiar, in particular Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" and  "A Blistered Kind of Love". It would be pretty boring for someone to write "I spent a year carefully reading and planning for a trip, and it all went smoothly without any unexpected developments, the end." It's far more entertaining to read about some disaster striking - ideally not life-threatening, hopefully humorous but bearable, providing a sort of cosmic rebuke to hubris but giving people a chance to recover, learn and grow from their experience. A Walk in the Park felt very much in line with that tradition.

One specific thing that comes up in all these books is people overpacking for their trip. As novice backpackers, they will bring along all the creature comforts that they think they need. And sooner or later they are lovingly set straight by a more veteran hiker who methodically goes through every item in their pack, asks "Do you need this?" "Do you need ALL of these?" and discards anything inessential. (There's a great depiction of this scene in the Reese Witherspoon adaptation of "Wild.") In A Walk in the Park, this comes even earlier, on the night before the hike begins. Kevin and Pete have acquired a quartet of guardian angels, much more experienced hikers who are embarking on their own journey and have lovingly but foolishly agreed to take this inept pair under their wings. As Kevin and Pete haven't yet actually hiked with their loads, though, they fail to appreciate the ritual, and sneak those heavy items back into their packs when they have the chance.

I found the description of their route really interesting. The naive way to do this hike would be to follow the course of the river. But there is no trail through the canyon, and you would essentially need to bushwack through a solid mass of vegetation to do it, much like through a thick jungle; and the ground itself is treacherous, as the river frequently floods and recedes, leaving behind a lot of scree and sand and various unstable surfaces. Hiking along the rim, or even at any point of the rim, is frowned upon: it's perfectly level and not "in" the canyon at all. In between are about 5500 feet of vertical space, essentially compressing climates from Canada to Mexico within much less than a single horizontal mile: the weather at the North Rim might be icy and have huge snow banks, while the weather at the river could be sweltering hot. In recent years, most through-hikes have picked their way along the middle elevations of the canyon, mostly for speed purposes: hiking over rock is vastly faster than through vegetation or sand. But it's also considerably more treacherous. Falls are a real risk, and people can and do fall to their deaths while hiking the cliffs. You're also far away from water - well, as the crow flies you're close, but it might take a whole day or more to descend to the river and refill your water bottle. This is where local knowledge becomes incredibly important. Depending on the area of the park, there might be some reliable springs, or unreliable springs, or "potholes" that retain (scummy) water for some time after rain, which you can use an eye dropper to painstakingly collect.

One upshot of all this is that the hike ended up being even longer than you would think, which was long to begin with. While hiking along the rock was faster, it also adds a lot more miles as you need to navigate into and out of the side-canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon, and you also need to vertically ascend and descend (using ropes!) to navigate between the layers of geological strata. All very hard! Not something to do "off the couch"! 

The injuries and indignities they pick up on their journey are painful to read about, and I frequently found myself wincing in sympathetic pain: blistering feet, cactus prickers stuck in skin, grains of sand wedged into tear ducts. It sounds absolutely miserable. In addition to their physical pain, the duo felt emotional guilt at how they were slowing down their companions' own long-planned-for and ambitious hike. It eventually gets to a point where Kevin and Pete need to call it quits: they are dehydrated, depleted of electrolytes, feverish, miserable, sick. But this is only a temporary setback - I don't think they had ever intended to do the whole hike in a single go, but like many people tackling long journeys like this or the Pacific Crest Trail, they planned to hike it in sections until they traversed the entire thing.

I kind of idly thought about technology and "purity" while reading this. Rich and his friends are very prepared for their hike; in particular, they have access to satellite phones and can send and receive text messages even from within the remote backcountry of the canyon. This is life-saving, as they can summon help and evacuate injured hikers. They also make use of "caches", plastic buckets that are securely placed within the canyon by helpers in advance of their trek, that they can use to resupply along the way. Obviously, these are huge conveniences that wouldn't be available to "true" explorers traveling this way for the first time. I suspect that older veteran hikers would scoff at this and say it invalidates their accomplishments. And they in turn might scoff at someone who, say, floats down the river or hikes along the rim for a section of the hike (or rides a tram into the canyon bottom).

In my trip through the Southwest national parks, the rangers emphasized that the National Parks Service has a fundamentally contradictory mission: "To preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations". If you want to "preserve unimpaired" the resources, the best thing to do would be to close off the parks entirely and not allow any humans to enter them. If you want to provide enjoyment for this generation, you should let as many people as possible into the park and use it as many ways as they would enjoy: driving, helicoptering, offroading, hooking up an RV, etc. In the early years of the NPS they leaned more on the "accessibility" part of their mission, building great hotels and train lines to the parks. More modern parks have focused more on the "preserve unimpaired" aspect, trying to keep a minimal footprint and minimizing human impact on the natural lands. That tension will always exist.

Anyways, back to the book: there are a few storylines that get woven together throughout the book. The first and the narrative spine is the journey itself, the description of the terrain and obstacles as they gradually move from east to west. In parallel is the change in themselves, physically and mentally, as they adapt to the challenges of the canyon: growing stronger muscles, thicker calluses, but more importantly a deeply-seated sense of caution and respect for the dangers of their journey.

Later in the book Kevin also begins to weave in social threads of environmentalism and native history. Quite a few distinct native American tribes have historically lived in various areas in and around the canyon, and those tribes have followed different roads as they seek to preserve their lives and culture in the 21st century. In some cases these are congruent, as the tribes advocate for maintaining the serenity of the canyon, but in one case they are strongly opposed, as a western tribe allows an unlimited number of helicopter tours to descend into their area of the canyon, inflicting immense damage on the peacefulness of nature (but also providing a livelihood for their tribal members for the first time in 150 years).

The final major storyline is a more personal one centered on Kevin Fedarko's father. He grew up near Pittsburgh in a horribly polluted town, and was introduced to the Grand Canyon as a child thanks to a paperback book. Many decades later, the father is dying of terminal cancer, which casts a pall over... well, everything. Kevin deals with some guilt - in all his years living near and working in the canyon, he never invited his father to visit. In between the major sections of the trail, Kevin checks in with his father, tracking his decline or traveling home for a visit. In a touching account near the end of the book, Kevin flies his entire extended family, including his dad, out to visit the canyon. They're doing more of the touristy thing, remaining near the rim, but it's still an amazing chance to witness the beauty of the place in person. 

I had a sort of personal connection to the book since the Grand Canyon was the last place where I went on an honest-to-goodness backpacking trip, back in 2019. Mine was orders of magnitude shorter and easier, just a thru-hike along defined trails from the North Rim to the South Rim, with a couple of nights at Bright Angel Campground and a pretty gentle hike up the length of the canyon. But having those memories helped me connect with Kevin's descriptions of the amazing colors of the rock, the elusiveness of the (enormous!) river, at least some of the impossible-to-communicate sense of the scope and size of the canyon.

So, yeah! I liked this book a lot. It looks like Kevin has written a few other things, including books and quite a few magazine articles. I enjoyed his humor, vivid descriptions, well-crafted storytelling and broader awareness of the context shaping an adventure, so I'd be interested in seeing more of his work in the future.