This was the start of the hike, it's a long ways down there. Six plus miles. And you start at 7,000 feet and end up at 2,400.

We went down on the Kaibab Trail and up the Bright Angel Trail.

Well the sign say it all, but no I was to macho to listen.

At this point May's wondering if I'm going to make it and frankly so was I.

We made it to the river. Notice May still looks fresh. At this point I'm dying from the heat.

We were on our way back up the canyon and it was getting hot. At the half way point it was 100. I don't know if you can tell from the photo but I've sweated out 2 gallon of water by now.

I think the heat was starting to get to May at this point.

We started soaking ourselves in the stream to cool off.

Finally lunch. Notice May's all refreshed, I'm thinking I'm never going to make it.

This was the last photo, but we were a long ways from the the rim and and it was getting late. We had spent the night at the river in the Bright Angel camp grounds and started out at 7:30. Now let's make this clear, we are about 3 miles from the the top and it's taken us (well me) over 9 hours to get this far, the Bright Angel Trail is 9 miles, so we've gone 6 mile in 9-10 hours. Which means we have a good 5 hours to go, this photo was taken at 5:12 PM. That's right we won't get to the top till 10 or so and the sun goes down at 7. Now that in and of it's self is not too bad, except for one small thing, on one side of the trail there is a dropoff, and in some places it's 3-4 hundred feet and the trail is full of all kinds of obstacles, rocks, logs and so on. And in the canyon when the sun goes down it gets dark fast, real fast. Oh, there is one thing I should mention, I forgot the flashlight. Well May decides she will goto the top alone, because she's in better shape then I am and may be able to make the top before it gets too dark and get a flashlight. Now I feel really good about this, here's my best friend going to risk her life because I'm a weakling. We had already whiched packs about a third of the way up, (mine was a little heaver), and now shes going to try to go the rest of the way alone and she wants me to just rest. Well I may be a weakling but I have my pride. So I was bond and determined that she would not have to come back down very far for me. Well it got dark. The trail was so hard to see that I could only step a few inches at a time and sometimes I still wasn't sure if I was on the trail or not. May's trip wasn't any better, it got dark not too long after May left, but she was worried about me so she had taken as much of the things as she could and headed up the canyon much faster then I could. Here she was taking on all this extra burden just so I would have an easier time getting to the top. I started thinking about, what if she falls with all that weight and hurts herself bad, how will I get her out of here. Mean while all she's thinking about is how's she going to get me out of this canyon. It was scary and May was worried. She had been on that trail all day to and by this time was getting tired, but her friend was down in that canyon and it looked like a thunder storm was coming and now after being over heated all day he would end up dripping wet and freezing. When she got to the top she went looking for help thinking I may not be able to make it to the top on my own, but the Rangers wouldn't help unless it was a medical emergency. As it turns out May didn't come right back down and I managed to make it all but a few hundred yards from the top before she got back. When I saw the flashlight coming down the trail I thought, now that's a Bright Angel. She ran up to me and took the pack off my back and through a shirt over my shoulders she had gotten out of the car. When we got to the car she was pretty upset. The hole thing had been very trying and some how even though it was over it still seemed scary. Shortly after that I when in to shock, but a hot shower and some of May's TLC and I was fine. The next morning at 4 we got up and headed for Seattle.

Well I learned something very important about May, she's a strong and caring woman with a great deal of courage and I'm proud to call her my friend.