One of the world’s hotels that sells out the quickest is the Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim in Arizona.
Booking for the 2023 season opened only in August 2022 for stays between May 15 to the end of August. Bookings for between Sept. 1 and Oct. 15, when the hotel and North Rim close, could be made a few weeks after that first booking window.
That is only 154 days in total, and such is the demand to go to this spectacular canyon, the phone lines crackle quickly for both the lodge’s 91 hotel rooms and 23 stand-alone cabins.
This year, though, heavy snows — on April 10, Hotel News Now reported the site received had more than 250 inches since October — have caused its hoteliers to delay its opening, something that has not happened for decades.
When the lodge does open on June 2, it opens at 6 a.m. The property is the only accommodations option on the north side of the 22.5-mile-wide canyon.
The North Rim sits at an elevation of 8,295 feet, while the South Rim sits at 7,001. The North Rim is more affected by winds and temperatures of the vast land between the last town, Fredonia, Arizona, and the canyon edge — land that climbs steadily for 75 miles.
The South Rim is lower in altitude and has many more hotels and rooms. But due to the immensity and topography of the Grand Canyon, to reach it from the North Rim requires a drive of almost four hours and 200 miles.
Among those clamoring to book the small amount of inventory are runners, but only for the first and last weekends of the dates listed above. Running across the canyon in either direction is not encouraged, which takes some 45 miles and 21,000 feet of net elevation.
Visitors need a permit — another competitive and time-consuming task — to camp overnight in the canyon, but hikers and runners do not, which might be an oversight considering how potentially dangerous it can be on the trails.
Organized races of any kind are prohibited.
Runners could theoretically run from the South Rim to the North Rim and back again before May and after October, but the weather might be too extreme in the other direction, with cold, not heat, being the worry.
I did the double-crossing run in 2011, as I did manage to get a booking at one of the North Rim cabins for two nights. What a wonderful place to simply do nothing once my 12 hours of running was over.
For every one person who comes to the North Rim, nine people go to the South Rim, which is a far easier drive from Las Vegas or the large cities of Arizona.
I wonder if some runners’ plans have been botched this year. Running in June might not be an option as the mathematics state that for every 1,000 feet lost in elevation the mercury rises by 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
July and August are the hottest months, not surprisingly, but June’s average high is only a couple of degrees cooler, at around 101 Fahrenheit.
I would not try that run today. I was fitter back then and well-trained. My friend and I triple-checked where water was available, carried spare water bladders and drank copiously.
We hid a large bladder of water in the rocks halfway down the South Rim — it drops for seven straight miles — and of course told friends what we were doing.
Phantom Ranch is the only place to stay on the canyon bottom with any facilities. People with permits can camp there, and there are tent pitches, toilets, water, the Bright Angel Creek for ice-bath cooling of tired legs to get rid of lactic acid and a café with rudimentary food and beverage.
Here are the official National Parks Service warnings and all the advice one should heed.
Some people do get a little too gung-ho.
It seems a pleasant jaunt the seven miles downhill from the South Rim to the Colorado River, with another flat mile across scrubby meadow to Phantom Ranch, but after sitting down at the ranch for an hour or so, the climb back up can suddenly appear to be a daunting zigzag of seemingly endless bluffs.
The beauty and immensity are stunning.
It is so steep, runners can only plod behind the occasional line of mules that bring in supplies to the ranch and also — for a fee as steep as the rock sides — can ferry the tired back up to their cars for the current rate of $170.28. According to the official website for the service, that does include tax and a souvenir water bottle.
The mules collectively are called the Grand Canyon Taxi Service. Taking two hours to plod up the mountainside, they probably do not take much more time than a black taxi going to the center of London from Heathrow Airport during rush hour.
They only go to the South Rim, where there are numerous hotels either by the canyon’s edge or just a little farther in towards the area’s airport.
Those who had more sensible plans to merely sit at the viewpoint looking down at the largest hole in the planet this May will be disappointed, and it is not as though the hotel can do anything other than say sorry and refund their deposits.
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