Alarm off at 5am again, breakfast at 6am and on the bus at 6:45am again. We were in Kings Canyon by 7am. Today’s activity was a walk at the canyon and there were two options. One was a walk around the canyon’s rim and the other was a walk on the canyon’s floor into the canyon. There was some difference of opinion about just how hard the rim walk was. The head guide was talking of a Mt Everest like assent requiring triathlete levels of fitness whereas his assistant was a tad more optimistic. As Jeanette was currently struggling with a cold, I talked her into the easier canyon floor walk.
Basic problem was that the rim walk took three hours and the floor walk took one hour so the floor walkers would have to wait in the car park for two hours for the other group to finish. After we had finished our floor walk, our guide suggested we might like to try a walk up to the rim on what she said was the easiest side to climb and come back that way so that’s what we did.
The walk into the canyon was very pretty with the recent rain filling the stream
The ascent however, was a fair way vertically up and was moderately challenging in places. It had fabulous views of the surrounding countryside and we finally made it to the top of the canyon rim where we turned around and came back down.
Given my ageing knees and diminished balance, going down was a bit more challenging and I must confess to a couple of heart pounding moments as I negotiated around the edge of boulders and rockfalls with a rather scary drop on one side, but we all descended safely and felt a great sense of accomplishment .
Back at the resort by 11am we walked to the local pub for lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing in our cabin.
Hardys’ Travels 