Charitable Events

The alarm call came at 4.30am – everywhere was pitch black when the nice lady opened the door and shouts “Morning ladies, this is your 4.30am call” – I tried to move, it was painful! Someone turned a small light on, I managed to stand up and one way or another I started to get dressed, I was just about to go and clean my teeth when the last of the ladies finished getting ready and left the dorm, turning the lights off and plunging me back into darkness – this was miserable!

Having left Ian with the ranger Iain and I walked to Cottonwood, we still had nearly ten miles to walk before we would arrive at Phantom Ranch, it was very hot, we were way behind but at least we now knew that Ian was safe. We started making good time and were at Cottonwood within the hour, because of the heat we decided to spend the next hour sitting in the river, fully clothed, just cooling down, it was heaven. We topped up our hydration packs and saw the helicopter fly in to take Ian to the medical centre. We were approached by one of the walk guides we had met earlier that morning, he sat and chatted for a while, telling us how they had all been worried about “The Welshman” – he repeated the advice regarding when to walk and not to walk, he seemed very reassured that we ha

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It has been my dream for about 10 years to walk the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim – in my first blog “just a pipe dream?” I talked about some of the preparation, on 28th May 2013 Iain, Ian and myself all travelled to the States – it was happening! The flight was uneventful – Iain and I didn’t see Ian as he had upgraded and was in a different section of the plane, spirits were good and it was all happening. We were walking on 2nd June, our timings pretty much dictated by the fact that the North rim of the Canyon doesn’t open before 15th May, and quite often later, plus we needed accommodation close to the South rim for when we completed the walk. Having arrived in LA, we collected our car and Iain drove us safely to Las Vegas where we checked in to Circus Circus. We ha