When Ron Callihan first glimpsed the gaping wilderness gorge he was to cross last month, doubt flickered in his mind.
Ron Callihan celebrated his recovery from cancer by taking a grand hike.
Ron Callihan has the admiration of his grandchildren Evan, 9, left, and Rebekah, 11, right, as well as
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Ron Callihan talks about his recent hike at the Grand Canyon.
"Wow, " he thought, "I volunteered to do this?"
He had cause for concern.
Trekking the Grand Canyon from rim to rim is "no walk in the park," as Callihan pointed out.
Field guides rate the 23.5-mile, cactus-studded traverse as strenuous.
The rock-littered trails are ski-slope-steep.
Even in spring, the mercury at the bottom of the chasm can nudge the century mark.
Callihan is an experienced marathon runner and endurance bicyclist, but he was untested in the back country.
What's more, the 66-year-old Willow Street man had recently rebounded from a life-altering bout with rectal cancer.
He'd fixed on the idea of the hike as a way to confirm — and celebrate — his recovery.
The journey had taken two years, and it marked a low ebb in Callihan's life.
Nine months after he was diagnosed, in November 2005, he recounted, his wife, Ann, died after cancer spread throughout her body.
A large portrait of her sits on Callihan's dining-room table.
Lying in bed after receiving doses of chemotherapy and radiation, Callihan said, he didn't think he was ever going to be able to get up and go on.
The treatments exhausted him so much that he couldn't work. For about a year, he wore an ileostomy waste-collection bag.
But, slowly, he got better and regained the 40 pounds he'd lost.
This past January, he contacted the Wildland Trekking Company, in Flagstaff, Ariz., and reserved a spot on its May 13-17 Grand Canyon hike.
On the morning of the departure, Callihan woke up to freezing temperatures at Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim. Fog shrouded the mind-exploding vistas; a rare May snowstorm had coated the ground.
The dump delayed the arrival of the other hikers. Finally, though, the group shouldered packs and descended into the ancient, mile-deep abyss.
"I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do this," Callihan said.
Grand Canyon sweetThey marched five miles down the Bright Angel Trail and pitched their blue tent at Indian Garden Campground, a leafy oasis perched on a massive plateau.
The only other client, besides Callihan, was a 57-year-old hiker from Albuquerque, N.M.
"He said, 'I trained by eating potato chips' " and by running the stairs at work, Callihan noted. "He did real well."
Their Wildland Trekking guide, Margie Erhart, 55, was the third expedition member.
"The other guy shared the tent with me and the guide slept on the picnic table," Callihan said.
Food was locked away from mice and other critters by stowing it in ammunition cans.
Not that they were burdened by extra calories.
"We packed light," Callihan recalled. "For dessert the first night, [Erhart] pulled out one big Hershey bar." Over the remainder of the trip, they divided the candy among themselves, two squares each per day.
Breakfast was oatmeal. Dinner was tuna and noodles cooked on a tiny gas backpacking stove.
"You didn't get fat on that," said Callihan, who has a lean build. "I lost four pounds."
But, as they hiked to Phantom Ranch on the Colorado River the next day, he gained new insight into the canyon.
"It actually looks prettier from the bottom," he said.
Callihan's photos show fire-hued rock cliffs and mule deer browsing on desert vegetation.
California condors with 11-foot wingspans sailed the azure skies.
The hikers crossed the cold, green Colorado aboard a spidery metal bridge and threw off their 35-pound packs at the ranch.
The cluster of 1920s log buildings is a nexus for the trekking pole set and for mule packers shuttling tourists and supplies.
But if the scene appears cut from an Old West daguerreotype, the bureaucracy wasn't.
Grand Canyon National Park strictly regulates camping, Callihan said, and rangers periodically checked the hikers' permits.
Still, Callihan said wryly, the Phantom Ranch store inventory would do a minimalist cowboy proud.
"All your camping needs. No ice cream."
The trio mixed with other sojourners, including a ranger who cooled off by diving into the river, formally, with all clothing on, and some archaeologists commuting to a dig via river raft.
Erhart, who is also a writer, world traveler and commentator for National Public Radio, according to the Wildland Trekking Company Web site (
www.wildlandtrekking.com), pointed out fauna and flora.
"She knew every flower, every bug, every rock," said Callihan, who added that they saw scorpions but none of the Grand's famous sidewinder rattlesnakes.
"On her day off she went on a hike," he said of the guide.
A meditative stillness reigned. At night, the dry air was luminescent.
"It was almost full moon," Callihan recalled, "and down in the canyon it was like dawn."
After a day's layover at Phantom Ranch, the group tackled the climb to the North Rim via the North Kaibab Trail.
The route is much steeper than the Bright Angel, said Callihan, who wears bifocals and was careful to keep his balance.
"You get off that trail, you're done, you're MedEvac-ed," he said.
Helicopter rescues, at $2,000 an hour, are launched only when someone suffers serious injury or illness. "They won't baby you," Callihan said.
He photographed a lonely emergency phone in a red box that was none-too-helpfully padlocked.
He said he carried no cell phone because he expected no cell service in the canyon depths.
The group stayed the fourth night at the Cottonwood Campground, on Bright Angel Creek, partway up to the North Rim. The next day, with Callihan setting the pace, they polished off the final seven miles in less than six hours.
"I'd sooner go uphill than downhill," which is harder for a backpacker to negotiate because of the extra momentum, Callihan said.
At the top, he said, "We all shook hands and gave each other high-fives."
Soon, it was time to bid goodbye and return — by vehicle — 4½ hours to the South Rim.
From Phoenix the next day, Callihan flew home to his job as a paperhanger and painter at Willow Valley Retirement Community.
First, though, he phoned his cheering section back home — his daughter, Paula Brewer, of Lancaster, and her children, Rebekah, 11, and Evan, 9.
"He was very active and fit before he was diagnosed with cancer," Brewer said.
Seeing her father recover and accomplish the canyon hike has been gratifying, she added.
"I'm just proud that he did it."
So, of course, is Callihan, who trained for the challenge by filling a borrowed backpack with 40 pounds of dumbbells and trooping around the Pinnacle Overlook (near Holtwood) and Mount Gretna.
The result: no blisters. No aches. No pains. No problems, either, with the 8,300-foot altitude of the North Rim.
Callihan said he was thrilled by the Western tour, which he deemed worth every cent of the $1,050 trip fee.
"We had a great time. I would do it again tomorrow."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
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