Early morning off the Toroweap Overlook. Ran up the Vulcans Throne volcano and then down to the Lava Falls trail down the North Rim. Only cairn marked, and a steep 1,700 feet per mile for most of it, this is the hardest trail I've ran yet. Like running a 40 degree slope on cinder ball bearings. From 5,200 feet to the river at 1,600 I think it was about 3 miles. Threw on the shorty wetsuit and swam the river just above Lava Rapids. Air temp was about 62 and water was 47 so I had to keep moving fast after getting out. Headed up the South Rim through Prospect Canyon. No trails exist for this side. Also a bit worried about permission to be running on the Indian Reservation lands. After hitting the South Rim just a few hundred feet higher than the North, I could see several sections that were higher than the rim elevation I had climbed. I'm going to have to run this again with permission of the tribe and hit some of these high points. Headed back down nailing two water pools perfectly and saw a white, wild canyon horse for the first time in the canyon ever. Swam the river and sat in the sun drying out. A raft group beached above the rapids and I was able to get some video of them running Lava Rapids and talk to them for a few minutes about their trip. The run up the North Rim was now warm and I could easily see the NPS warning about this trail being the worst in the canyon for heat. I was running Dec 10 at 50 degree and feeling it. This would be a motha at 110 degrees. This may be the first R2R2R here, excepting the ancients who ran all over the thing. It's like taking a corridor R2R2R and smashing it together so the climbs are only a mile apart. The Rims are as the crow flies only two miles apart. Ran this with no water using Sawyer filter tubes again, an advantage of late season cold temperatures. ~8,000 vertical feet.
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