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Mar 25, 2022 — Garden Creek Canyon is a short, wet canyon near the Colorado River. It requires hiking from the south rim of the Grand Canyon along the Bright Angel Trail almost all the way down to the river, but not quite. The trail follows Garden Creek for a while, but avoids the technical section. Rather than waste time looking for parking closer to the trailhead, we parked at Lot D, a spacious lot a quarter mile away. The Bright Angel Trail, while it has excellent views, loses a bit of its charm due to the thick conga line and pungent smell of donkey urine. We passed one backpacker who may have actually smelled worse than the pack animals' excrement, and she had the brighest (knowing) smile on her face. A huge benefit of this popular trail is that there are water stations along the away, excellent for facilitating a reduction in water weight we'd need to carry. Many people do Garden Creek Canyon as a two-day endeavor, but this would require an overnight permit with the National Park.
Without stopping at the 1.5 and 3 mile comfort stations, we made our way down the many switchbacks along the Bright Angel Trail and took a little break at the Indian Garden Campground. This is a surprisingly beautiful little spot, complete with picnic tables, a bathroom, and budding cottonwood trees. The trail continues with a more lush vibe than the more dry first bit of the descent from the rim, created by the flow of Garden Creek. After entering a brief section of narrows along the trail and re-emerging to more expansive views, the head of Garden Creek Canyon popped in on the left.
We left the Bright Angel Trail and descended on slickrock into the flowing Garden Creek drainage, where we surreptitiously got quite naked in order to jump into our wetsuits. "It's quite warm," said Chris as he slipped on his sun-attracting black wetsuit, marking the 500th time one of us would say this phrase on our trip. We searched the watercourse for a reported piton that we could use to safely get into the canyon, but found nothing. The drop was too slippery and long to safely down-climb, so we searched elsewhere for where previous parties might have entered. After a few minutes we located some webbing on a boulder about 20 feet higher up on the left side of the canyon. While this rappel wouldn't lead directly through the first few small waterfall obstacles (sad face), it would get us out of the sun faster.
The next rappel had lovely bolts, as would the rest of the canyon. A 120' drop through gorgeous, winding narrows got us to the potential problem rappel of the day, a 360' cascade that reportedly has a ledge that would allow breaking this pretty significant drop into two parts. The rappel is characterized by a short section of narrows, followed by a gorgeous traverse within the watercourse, and then down a very slanted watefall. We somewhat irresponsibly decided we only wanted to carry two 70 meter ropes, which meant if we couldn't find the midway anchor station we could be in trouble. Chris couldn't locate the bolted anchor, but it's most likely he started looking for it too late, so there very well likely could be one there (no promises). Fortunately one of our lines was dynamic and the stretch allowed Chris to get within 50 feet of the ground, requiring some Class 3 down-climbing on the side of the slanted waterfall. Of course this unfortunately meant we had to skip the rap through the waterfall, but there was better stuff coming. Shortly after writing this trip report, someone reached out to inform me that there are in fact a pair of bolts for breaking the cascade into two shorter rappels. You just have to do a better job looking for them than we did. As in, any work at all.
Past the big cascade, a short (10 feet) rappel or slide into a deep pool served as a little obstacle just before the next rappel. The canyon narrowed again and the water was loud and prevented us the ability to communicate. We also forgot whistles, which would have allowed us to at least give little cues, so that was cool of us. I found this rappel to be the highlight of the day, a series of drops down winding waterfalls through gorgeous narrows. A short section of hiking through narrows led to the final rappel, another series of short cascades ending in a shallow pool.
From the bottom of the last rappel we could see the Bright Angel Trail. To reach it, I recommend keeping to the left of the Garden Creek watercourse until a social trail leads across and up to the trail. We packed up and then took the Bright Angel Trail back the way we came. This lower section along the trail had some very pretty narrows and foliage. I was tempted to hike the last half mile to the Colorado River, but dinner sounded better and both of my friends had already hiked rim to river on at least one occasion.
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