The Last Adventurer’s Short Guide and Tips to the Grand Canyon, Part 3

2. The Grandview Trail: This is not a bad option for those people who don’t want to wait for the Hermit’s Rest bus; or sit through the one hour bus ride. The trailhead for this trail is also not found in the village area; however as the trailhead is at the Grandview Point Overlook, it does receive a fair amount of foot traffic. Despite there being more hikers on this trail than the Hermit Trail, I can say that I observed the majority of the traffic hanging out and “hiking” within fifty to one hundred feet of the overlook.

How to Get There: Grandview Point is located off of the Desert View Drive. It is well-signed in both directions, and about a half mile drive on a paved road from the Desert View Drive. There is ample parking day use; as well as overnight parking for backpackers.

The Trail to Horseshoe Mesa: We had decided to day-hike the trail to Horseshoe Mesa; approximately six and one half miles round trip. Like the Hermit Trail, I was not that familiar with the Grandview Trail before I arrived at its location. Before I had arrived at the Grandview Trail, the word I had heard used most about it was “steep”. As descriptors go, I have always been unimpressed with “steep”. Everyone knows that climbing a mountain is steep; everyone also hopefully knows that 99% of the trails in the Grand Canyon are also “steep”. (The only exception that I know of is the Rim Trail on the South Rim that meanders from lookout to lookout along the park road, and is mostly flat – and almost completely paved!) As everyone more or less intuitively knows these things, the word fails to bring any information to the discussion. All I knew about the trail before I hiked it was what I could see on the map

After my group had made the necessary adjustments by the car to their gear on a cool March morning, we cut through the herd of people meandering around the viewpoint and onto the trail. I mentioned above that most of the “hikers” turned around within the first fifty to one hundred feet. This is because the Grandview Trail descends immediately with knee-shaking vigor through a series of tight switchbacks. Or as some people would say, the start of the trail is “steep”. One of the interesting things my group and I noticed is that in several early sections, the trail is shored up through a tough lattice/cribbing of logs and rocks. Having done a fair amount of trail work in my past, I was impressed by these sections, because most of them came on narrow, sandy, cliff-type sections of trail.

We were headed to Horseshoe Mesa, because I was interested in viewing some of the ancient mining ruins in the park. I find it interesting to wonder what would have happened to many of our national treasures had the Organic Act not been passed by Congress. A short list of some of the other Western Parks that were affected by human activities prior to becoming protected include the Borax mining in Death Valley, as well as logging and mining in Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. I definitely feel lucky that people had the foresight to preserve these and other areas from development. In order to view these ruins, we had to keep hiking down the switchbacks that cover the first portion of the Grandview trail.