How does one stay active during a global pandemic? Sarah DeBeer, Krista Ahrendt and David Duffy hiked the Grand Canyon Rim-To-Rim trail on Sunday, Oct. 25.
The trail is 26.7 miles long and took them 13 hours to complete.
The route they took wasn’t the longest, but it was the most challenging due to the elevation.
“Our hike was fun and challenging,” Duffy said. “We collectively put together a plan on how much food, water, and gear to bring before we started. We knew the mileage of all the water stops and knew we needed to get through the box as early as possible.”
The issue that the hikers ran into was water.
“The only thing that went wrong was they shut off the water the night before at one of the stops on the way up,” Duffy said. “I was out of water and the girls had very little.”
He said they had a sterile pen along to use as an emergency. It purifies creek water for drinking in about 90 seconds, but the trio opted not to use the sterile pen, but to push through another 1.8 miles to the next water stop.
“Once at the next stop, we took a longer break to rehydrate and fill up all of the water bottles that each of us carried,” Duffy said.
The band of hikers plan on going back to the Grand Canyon this December to hit more trails and to get away from the Minnesota winter for a while.
“Next trip for us is actually this December,” Duffy said. “We are going back to the Grand Canyon. Our original plan was to try to get to Havasu Falls again, but the Supai reservation is shut down."