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Ranger William Reese

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“The North Rim has great hikes through rolling hills and forests of ponderosa pines, firs and spruce. Sometimes you’ll even see a few Rocky Mountain maples, which turn a bright fuschia color in the fall, and the aspens turning golden. That’s my favorite time here – mid- to late-September, when you have long sunny days, and there’s a hard-to-describe sort of magical feeling here,” says Reese.

When you arrive back at the lodge, make a reservation at the mule desk for a ride into the canyon the next day with Canyon Trail Rides, then cross the room and line up a dinner reservation at the Grand Canyon Lodge Dining Room. Pair your buttery wild salmon with one of the organic wines on the list, or just let the killer views from the high-ceilinged room enhance the flavors of your meal. After dinner, walk back out along the rim and look across the dark canyon at the twinkling lights of Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim. Then fall into sweet sleep in a cabin at Grand Canyon Lodge or your site at the North Rim Campground.

On your second day, saddle up for a mule ride down the North Kaibab Trail; the full-day trek goes all the way to Roaring Springs, 5 miles down and the main source of water for both the North and South Rims. But if you’re here to hike, hoof down on your own feet to see this wealth of water in the desert. With a backcountry permit, you can camp at Cottonwood Campground, 2.2 miles further down from the Roaring Springs trail junction, and hike back out the next day. The trail begins with steep switchbacks through aspen and fir, and on your ascent, you’ll want to avoid this last, 3-mile section of the hike during the heat of the day. Passing through Supai Tunnel and crossing the Redwall Bridge, the canyon walls rise steeply as you descend. Though the trail has some steep dropoffs, it’s wide and well-maintained, and you’ll marvel at how the trail passes from conifer forest to limestone cliff to scrubby desert as you hike.

Either way you do it, treat yourself on your return with a cocktail from the Roughrider Saloon – take your glass out to the lodge terrace and put your feet up to drink in the view. Now that you’ve been below the North Rim, you’ll have a deeper appreciation of this massive, complex gorge.

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DETOUR

“There’s lots of human history at Swamp Ridge: Teddy’s Cabin, the North Bass Trail. And it offers easy access to Powell Plateau, a living lab – a few different schools actually study there. It’s never been mined, never logged, so there’s never been a road there. The huge eco-question is: what would a natural eco-logical ponderosa forest look like? And this is the answer. You could do a day hike to the rim, or spend several days exploring.

Ranger William Reese

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You’ll need to wake early the next morning for the full-day hike out to Point Imperial, along the Ken Patrick Trail. Point Imperial is one of the highest places on the North Rim, at 8800ft, with a terrific view of what explorer John Wesley Powell considered the start of the Grand Canyon. From here you can see Nankoweap, the Vermilion Cliffs, Marble Canyon and the Painted Desert. It’s a superb locale for viewing the sunrise, and you can camp here without a backcountry permit as it’s in Kaibab National Forest.

If you don’t have two days to hike out and back (one day if you can park a vehicle at each end), you can just drive out for a look – the road goes right out to the point. Continue along the road to Cape Royal, and enjoy an easy ramble to stupendous views of the canyon. There’s even a designated wedding site here on a jutting precipice for romantics seeking an appropriately dramatic backdrop to their big day.

With similarly stunning 270-degree views of the Painted Desert, San Francisco Peaks, and good views of where the river has cut into the Kaibab Plateau, Cape Final is “one of the best places imaginable to watch the sunset,” Reese says. “If you’re interested in geology, you’ll see some really