A decade from now, Wendy Copp will still remember the sun rising over the Grand Canyon.
The image is burned into her brain, after she and two other Jasperites—Kim Stark and Mike D’Antonio—ran the famous 76-kilometre Rim to Rim to Rim through the Grand Canyon, Oct. 24.
They set out just after 6:15 a.m., in the morning darkness. The beginning of the run is a 12-kilometre switchback descent down the South Kaibab Trail—without a doubt the most fun they had on the whole run.
According to Copp, the trio flew down the hill, screaming like crazy people in the creeping morning light.
“We were hooting and hollering and yelling and screaming our whole way down,” she recalled, “skipping and singing and yelling in the tunnel and checking out how much our voices could echo. It was so much fun.”
On top of that, the sight of the sun rising over the canyon was almost indescribable.
“The first downhill was one of the most amazing moments. Just watching the sun rise and every time you turn a corner ... the view felt like it was constantly changing. And as the light changed everything was turning from pink to red to daylight—it was amazing.”
“I didn’t have words; I lacked words to express how beautiful it was,” Stark commented in a separate interview.
Rim to Rim to Rim isn’t an official race, but it’s well known amongst the ultrarunning community. The route is a grueling one: encompassing 3,173 metres of elevation change, as it snakes in a series of switchbacks up and down the canyon’s steep walls.
On Oct. 24, as the trio made it to the bottom of the canyon, they encountered a few campers milling about with cups of coffee, and a line of mules carrying passengers who couldn’t make the hike on their own.
But with the downhill finished, they had to begin the first climb: a 22-kilometre push up 1,736 metres on the north side of the canyon.
Stark remembers this as the hardest part of the whole day.
“The north rim is very, very hard. It’s even higher on the north side than it is the south. And it’s just sheer rock and you’re like ‘when is this going to end?’”
The desert heat didn’t help either. According to Stark it was more than 30 degrees at the bottom of the canyon, and with little shade, the heat was nearly unbearable.
But since R3 isn’t a formal race, the group went at its own pace, stopping to chat with fellow runners, take pictures and gawk at the wildlife. Stark, to her own embarrassment, turned into the archetype of the gawking tourist all Jasperites are familiar with, when she saw a bighorn sheep, creeping as close as she could to the creature to shove her camera in its face.
“I was such a tourist, oh my God,” she remembered with a laugh.
With the heat and the grueling climbs, it took the Jasperites all day to complete the run. Even though she said it was the hardest trail she’s ever run, Copp managed to edge out the final 16-kilometre climb up Bright Angel Trail just before darkness fell.
D’Antonio and Stark didn’t quite make it before sundown, and Stark remembered climbing those final switchbacks, peering up at the lights at the top of the canyon.
“You look up and you see these lights way up ahead, and you’re like, are you joking me, I have to climb that much higher still?”
When it was all said and done, Copp finished the run in about 12 hours, while D’Antonio and Stark romped through in around 14.
Copp said it was an absolutely worthwhile experience, and one she’d do again if another Jasperite was willing to come along.
Stark agreed.
“It is what you want to take out of it; and it is an amazing experience,” she said.
Trevor Nichols
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