- Distance: 11km
- Duration (with breaks): 4h 00min
- Route type: to the resthouse and back
- Start/end: Bright Angel trailhead
- Elevation gain/loss: 585m/585m
- Difficulty: easy to moderate
- When to hike: the trail is open year-round. To avoid extreme weather, spring and fall are recommended as the best time
- When did we hike: early September
Why this route?
This trail is one of the most accessible ones in the park. As we stayed in one of the campgrounds, the trailhead was only a couple of minutes’ driving. Besides, my initial plan was to do the Rim-to-Rim hike, which had to change once we didn’t get the permits… This day hike takes you through a small part of the Rim-to-Rim trail, so we got to experience at least some of it.
How to get there?
The trail starts in the Grand Canyon village, next to the Bright Angel Lodge (what a coincidence). If you’re taking the shuttle bus, then leave at Hermit’s Rest Route Transfer stop. If you come by car (like we did), there is a parking lot in front of the Bright Angel Lodge. It is not huge though and fills up quickly.
So how was it?
As you can see from the picture above, at the time of our visit, the Grand Canyon was enjoying a heatwave. This place is hot in summer already, but apparently, this heatwave was above normal expectations. This meant that we had a rather small time window for the canyon explorations. By lunch, the sun is just too hot and we even heard stories of 45 degrees Celsius at the bottom of the canyon. With all this information and multiple warnings, we started the hike at 7:00.
The first part of the hike is easy – you just need to walk down a very well-maintained path and often still in a shade. When we started the hike, we said to ourselves: let’s see how far we can get in an hour and then decide if we are turning back after 1.5 miles or after 3 miles (that’s where the rest houses are located.
For a day hike, it is also possible to descend even further to Indian Garden point (extra 1.5 miles from the 3-miles rest house) but we already knew that we left too late to make it to that point and back without putting ourselves at risk.
We reached the 1.5-mile rest house in roughly 30 mins and decided that we can still make it to a further stop. At the time of our visit, water refill was only available at Indian Garden, which made the hike even more risky and unforgiving if unprepared. Even though we started rather early, the trail was already bubbling with fellow hikers, we definitely didn’t have the canyon to ourselves.
Once in a while, we’d meet hikers with heavy backpacks – the lucky ones who got permits to camp at the bottom and thus probably were finishing their Rim-to-Rim crossing. Man, their faces were far from delighted… 
I can only imagine how tough the climb up is and how early one has to leave to beat the heat.
We reached the 3-mile rest house at around 8:30 and chilled there for a while enjoying the views. For a brief moment I had this devilish thought of going even further down, but ok ok, maybe it’s too long and too late… 🙂
Walking back to the top (also called the rim) was not as difficult as I first expected. As the trail is very gradual, we kept a good pace and went up in 2 hours (with resting and picture taking). On our way, we also met a ranger whose job was to stop every descending hiker and urgently advice on where they can descend further before they need to turn back.
Close to the top we were in full sun and that’s where I saw a lot of day hikers struggling to walk up. Even though the trail is easy, the hard part of the hike comes only on the way back – the tricksy Grand Canyon 😉
Overall, this hike is great for exploring the Grand Canyon if you only have a few hours (early hours). At the 3-mile rest house, we found a beautiful viewpoint with expansive views of the canyon. It’s a point worth descending to even though it might seem that the canyon views stay the same throughout the hike. Descending also helps to grasp the depth of the canyon as the top will look so far away while the bottom is not even in sight.
Tips
- It is a very popular trail, so if you want some solitude, leave early (very early). We also noticed that most of the hikers went to 1.5-mile rest house, the trail is less busy afterwards.
- I cannot stress enough how important it is to take sun protection (sun hoodie or sunscreen) and plenty of water. The trail is unforgiving and bare, so be prepared.