Cedar Ridge

To kick off the day's training, we began with a hike down South Kaibab Trail to Cedar Ridge. The entire trip is only 3 miles, but it's a tough trek. Starting off you make your way down into the Canyon by way of tight and narrow switch-backs. These are very steep and the path is made up of crushed stone from whichever layer of the canyon you happen to be in at the time. For example, the start of the trail is coarse crushed limestone, where as the end of the trail (by Cedar Ridge) is fine sand from the sandstone layer.

Starting at 7:45am we hit the trail. I brought up the back of our group as I stopped often to take pictures. Equipped with water, snacks, and a few other essentials my pack was relatively light. Approximately halfway down the path you make it to Ooh Ahh Point. I'm not kidding, that's what it's called. Here the grade changes dramatically. From Ooh Ahh you can make out Cedar Ridge, and it honestly doesn't look that far.

With only about 300 yards left to our resting point at Cedar Ridge my knees and legs really began to protest. About a half dozen times my knee gave out or locked up; both of which are incredibly painful. My legs began to shake uncontrollably. When you know you have to turn around and hike the way back up neither of these are very comforting. Resting in the wind on Cedar Ridge we snacked and refueled. The way down took a little less than an hour.

Repacking everything (and putting away the camera) we made our way back up to the top. Typically the way up takes twice as long, and this time was no exception. Shortly into the trip I was very out of breath. You add the steepness of the trail to the elevation and lack of free oxygen in the air, and you can get worn down quickly. Though I was able to make my way without too much hassle to the top, I was definitely spent. The hike to Cedar Ridge is part of my duties every so often, so it's something I'm going to need to do.

Thanks to the kindness of one of my new coworkers, I was able to go home for lunch. This allowed me to take a shower, and change before we reported back for more training. Our afternoon training was in Law Enforcement and Medicals, which meant we learned how to use the radios in order to get help for medical issues and problems involving the law. It was very interesting, and a lot of fun! At one point our boss had to play the part of a belligerent visitor, a crazy with a knife, and an injured man. We never really stopped having fun.

One of our final activities of the evening was to go to the condor talk led by one of the rangers. Due to the popularity of the talk I was standing pretty far away from the ranger leading our talk, so I didn't hear the majority of it. I did see a condor though!! It was very cool.

Tomorrow is my day off, so I'm looking forward to sleeping in a little bit. That means those of you from the East coast, don't text or call me at 7am your time! That's 4am mine!! Just so you know, the pictures posted below are from my trip to sunset. The pictures posted above (hopefully) are the ones from the trip to Cedar Ridge today. Alright I'm off to stretch my legs before I crash for the evening. Also, I want to thank you all for posting comments and so forth. I don't really know who reads this, but it is an incredible experience for me, and I would like to share it with you all.