Hiking down to phantom ranch: A cluster of century-old stone cabins

When a friend first mentioned the Grand Canyon’s Phantom Ranch, I couldn’t believe my ears. It’s America’s most elusive hotel reservation, she said, the only lodging within the canyon itself, all 277 miles of it.

A cluster of century-old stone cabins tucked along a stream, reachable only by mule ride or by trudging down nearly a mile into the crust of the earth. “Rustic, amazing, gorgeous” were some of her words. But you must plan well in advance.

“They do reservations by lottery a year out,” she warned. I dashed home and jumped online. When I was lucky enough to secure a cabin for my family for 13 months later, in November 2019, I felt like I was throwing a pebble into an unknowable future. My family of four arrived on our appointed day, just after sunrise at the top of the South Kaibab Trail, laughing at the idea that Phantom Ranch is, truly, the ultimate destination hotel.

The entire point of the place is the experience involved in getting there. “The Lowest Down Ranch in the World,” wrote the Coconino Sun newspaper when the lodgings opened in 1922. Mary Jane Colter, the pioneering architect for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, had turned a rustic out- post where Teddy Roosevelt once camped into an oasis for the smart set. Her cabins and dining hall are all built of the native stone.

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Now owned by the National Park Service and run by a private contractor, Phantom Ranch usually sleeps around 90, in 11 private cabins and four dorms that are di- vided by gender. But since our two-night stay, the pandemic has changed much of the experience.

Under the current rules, the dorms are closed and several of the cabins are being used by staff, reducing the number of nightly guests to 52. Instead of the traditional family-style meals in the dining hall, campers must now fetch meals from a window to eat outside or in their cabins. A far bigger interruption is set for next year when the park service will embark on an upgrade of the ranch’s wastewater treatment plant. Starting in May, the fabled lodge will be shuttered for months as workers shuttle new pipes and pumps down by helicopter.

The day of our descent, we sent our single shared duffel down by mule train and set out with day- packs stuffed only with water and lunch. We could see the measure of our hiking across the canyon in the bands of white, yellow, red and gray stone, each marking geologic strata of billions of days. We walked into Phantom Ranch along Bright Angel Creek, beneath cottonwoods, alders and acacias.

Our home for the next two nights, Cabin 7, was a small stone structure with an elegant roofline painted green and brown, two bunks inside, a sink, and a small bathroom. No TV, no mint on the pillow. We could hear the creek rushing past and see the cottonwoods out the window.

The resident ranger advised us not miss the wee hours when the Milky Way had the moonless sky to itself, so that night, I sneaked out around 4am to absorb the spectacle and see the day arrive. Sitting on the riverbank, I was dazzled as a bluish glow crept ever so slowly along the eastward rim until it erased the froth of the most distant stars and left only the brightest constellations.

I walked back for breakfast thinking how we could all use more days that start like that. Stuffed with pancakes and coffee, we had before us a full day to do as we pleased. That meant heading out on achy legs to the winding North Kaibab Trail that runs along Bright Angel Creek to the North Rim.

We sneaked up the narrow but marvellous canyon carved by Phantom Creek, one of the thousands of such crevasses that have formed the whole of the Grand Canyon. Water is the scarcest commodity here but also the artist of all you see. Perched on rocks along the creek, we ate bag lunches.

On our last day, we set out well before sunrise for a return hike nearly 10 miles (about 16km) in distance and close to a mile in elevation up the Bright Angel Trail. Our sore legs soon loosened, and for the next five hours, we loped up through the layers of stone.

Many times, looking up, we laughed to see the cliff face we’d need to ascend, switchback by switchback, to get to the canyon’s rim.

Written by Neil King