| South Kaibab & Bright Angel Trails Page 4 |
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| My first view of the Phantom Ranch. This is the corral where the mule riders stop. In the background a couple cabins can be seen. The canteen is further back and the dorm buildings are back behind the canteen. The picture below shows the inside of my dorm building. There are five bunks for a total of 10 beds. Dorms are segragated into men and women. Each dorm has a sink, toilet, and shower. Sheets and towels are provided. There are hooks on the wall to hang your backpacks up off the floor. This is a good idea because the doors have spaces where rodents can come in and I have heard that they will chew their way into your pack for food. When I was there a woman in a cabin woke up to find ants swarming her backpack. She had to take it down to the creek to wash all the ants out. Yuk! Reservations for Phantom Ranch must be made months in advance through Xanterra. |
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| Stew dinner in the canteen. This all-you-can-eat stew dinner included a salad, corn bread, and chocolate cake. It was really tasty: everything is made from scratch right there. An all-you-can-eat steak dinner is also available. Breakfast is served at 5:00 a.m. for hikers wanting an early start. It included pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. Sack lunches are also available and included summer sausage, apple, raisins, pretzels, oreos, gookinade mix, and bagel with jelly. Next time I will skip buying the lunch: I only took the sausage, apple, cookies and gookinade. All meals need to be purchased when making your reservations. I highly recommend getting the stew dinner. It is really excellent to pour the stew over the cornbread. After a day of hiking it really fills you up and recharges you for the next day's long hike up the canyon. |
| A very large Yellow-backed Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus magister uniformis) that I saw hunting for insects along the bottom of my dorm. |
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