Every year, more than 5 million people trek to Grand Canyon National Park for a spectacular view. But once you venture down one of its steep trails, you start to enter another world. And like anywhere that’s hard to reach, the Grand Canyon’s backcountry is rich with stories. In Below The Rim, we tell you a few of them.

Below The Rim Life inside the Grand Canyon. ↓ Jackie Hai/KJZZ Tweet

Every year, more than 5 million people trek to Grand Canyon National Park for a spectacular view, one that’s almost too dazzling to comprehend. From the top, the canyon’s maze of cliffs and mesas can look like a painting, hard to describe in words or capture in a photograph. But once you venture down one of its steep trails, you start enter another world. The farther you get from the crowded overlooks and gift shops, the more personal and intimate the canyon becomes. And like anywhere that’s hard to reach, the Grand Canyon’s backcountry is rich with stories. In this series, we tell you a few of them.

One.

Phantom Ranchers For many, hiking into the humbling expanse of the Grand Canyon is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. But for a hearty few, it’s a commute. At Phantom Ranch, the bunkhouse and restaurant on the canyon floor, employees have been helping people feel at home between these ancient rock walls for nearly a century. It doesn’t matter what day it is. Or even what year. Every evening down here, it’s the same siren song. The dinner bell. Designed by famed architect Mary Colter, Phantom Ranch opened in 1922. Over the years, it’s been staffed by countless “ranchers,” as they call themselves, who live and eat together, only spending a few days above the rim each month. Stina Sieg/KJZZ “Good evening, people of stew dinner!” bellowed a 30-something bearded guy, with a ponytail and a knack for engaging the eager crowd. Before everyone filed into the small stone canteen, he gave a speech familiar to anyone who’s eaten here. Make sure to pass that salad and stew to your neighbors, he announced, and keep those forks for the chocolate cake. Since Phantom opened in 1922, many people have said those words and inhabited this role, serving the meals one night, cooking them another. Employees rotate through making beds, cleaning toilets, selling lemonade and all those other necessary tasks at this collection of cabins and shaded walking paths, surrounded on every side by the remote wilderness. “Only a certain type of person could probably work down here,” said 27-year-old KT Dockery, her long hair tucked under a colorful bandana. “Not everyone could handle this, I guess.” You’ve got be patient, she said, open to whatever’s thrown at you. That could mean dehydrated hikers or a credit card machine on the fritz. And that’s not to mention sharing a dorm with your coworkers for weeks on end. Luckily, “everybody’s super cool and gets along,” she said. “I mean, you have to get along down here because you live together and work together.” For Dockery, her year and a half at Phantom has been full of surprises, including meeting her new husband, who lives on the South Rim. She’s also found a confidence she had no idea existed. “Because when you’re evening waiter, you have to speak and do, like, a speech and stuff like that,” she said. “I’m a pretty shy person, I guess, so that was pretty intimidating when I first started working here. But now I’m pretty comfortable with it and can corral people pretty well, I think.”

Phantom Ranchers don’t just have one job, but several, which they rotate through. Sometimes, they’re cooking breakfast in the wee morning hours, while other days they’re on the “maid trail,” cleaning bathrooms and making beds. Stina Sieg/KJZZ

Building a life that’s several hours of intense hiking from a town or even cell service seems to go hand-in-hand with self-discovery. LeeAnn Dodde, 33, wanted to throw herself into pottery for years, but never really did – until she moved to Phantom six years back. It often shocks visitors that she has a pottery wheel down here and that mules pack out her fragile unfired cups and bowls. “You know, I lose maybe 10 to 20 percent of the pieces sometimes,” she said, taking a break from evening dinner prep. “Sometimes I get them all out. Yeah, I just bubble wrap them and take them to my home in Prescott and glaze and fire them on the weekend.” Dodde hopes to do ceramics full-time someday. She already has a built-in fan base down here. But the Phantom community runs a lot deeper than that for her. “Developing this network of people has been more than I would have dreamed of,” she said. So many of the people Dodde knows above the rim are connected to Phantom in some way. When she was in the hospital a while ago, a man she’d never met who had worked here in the ’70s came to visit her. Dodde knows that even after she leaves this place someday, she’ll always have a place to sleep down here.

1/12 LeeAnn Dodde, who’s worked at Phantom six years, has her own pottery wheel down here – and even a collection of fans of her work. She feels that Phantom has set the tone for the rest of her life, and hopes to do ceramics full-time someday. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 2/12 Phantom is completely full almost every single night of the year, with visitors making reservations 13 months in advance through a lottery system. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 3/12 Joseph Kendall, Phantom’s maintenance man, gets some luggage ready to be “muled out” of the canyon. Just about everything you see at Phantom Ranch was brought in by mules. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 4/12 Employees and guests alike will tell you that it’s impossible to really explain the feeling at Phantom Ranch. It’s a vibe you have to experience to get. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 5/12 KT Dockery has been here a year and a half and feels the canyon has transformed her into a more confident person. But she does love her life above the rim, as well, where she can have beer on tap – and see her husband. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 6/12 The kitchen at Phantom Ranch is constantly humming, with breakfast cooks coming in during the wee morning hours, and evening cooks grilling up steaks and ladling seemingly unending pots of stew. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 7/12 PJ O’Malley works the cash register at Phantom Ranch’s canteen, one of his many roles for the week. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 8/12 With its shade, benches and canteen, Phantom Ranch is a resting spot for many, even folks not spending the night in one of its dorms or cabins. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 9/12 Sometimes people ask Brian Couch, 57, when he’ll stop working at Phantom. He just smiles and says he doesn’t know, because he’s never left a job he loves. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 10/12 Hikers on Bright Angel Trail know that once they reach the Silver Bridge (yes, really its name), they’re not far from the shade, bunks and beer of Phantom Ranch. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 11/12 The Bright Angel Trail, 10 miles each way, is one of the many heavy-hiked paths that lead to the Phantom Ranch. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 12/12 Bright Angel Campground borders Phantom Ranch, with many campers stopping by the lodge for a beer or a postcard that will be mailed out of the canyon by mule. Stina Sieg/KJZZ ❮ ❯

It seems everyone uses the same word to describe the crew: family. As Brian Couch put it, “I think once you become a Phantom Rancher, you’re a Phantom Rancher forever.” He’s been one for seven years, since he was 50 – Phantom’s self-described “old guy.” “I guess, instead of getting a sports car and a young girlfriend, I moved to the Grand Canyon,” he said, with a bit of a laugh. It’s a far cry from his last life, working in aluminum factories. After years of spending his vacations in backcountry around here, Couch begged for this job. Wearing a faded Phantom baseball cap over his graying hair, he smiled as he gestured to his manager, sitting a few feet away. “Bless Joni there, she hired me, and I’m forever thankful. I’m forever thankful for her. She changed my life,” he said. “And this place, definitely, will change your life.” And you’ll never know how until you become a Phantom Rancher yourself.

Jackie Hai/KJZZ

Two.

The Mules That Fuel The Grand Canyon Thousands of years ago, in what’s now the country of Turkey, historians say someone decided to breed a horse with a donkey. The mule was born. The sturdy hybrids were soon used all over the world. Cars and trucks have mostly replaced them by now, but the beasts of burden still reign supreme at the Grand Canyon. This is especially true on the South Kaibab trail, where you’ll see young mule packers leading a lumbering line of the creatures, all carrying full bags. Every day, supplies and souvenirs go down the South Rim. Trash comes up. But that’s not the only cargo the mules carry.

On a recent afternoon, a group of smiling tourists, each riding their own mule, whooped as they crested the trail, returning from a one-night trip to Phantom Ranch, the bunkhouse at the bottom of the canyon. John Berry was there to greet them. “How was it?” he asked. “It was wonderful!” yelled one woman, as another woman hollered loudly, like a coyote yipping at the moon. “Now there’s a bunch of happy people,” Berry said. With his bushy mustache and cowboy hat, Berry looks the part of a livery manager, who works with the mules for the company Xanterra. He gives a lot of credit to the wranglers who guide these trips, but he knows who truly makes the rides possible. “I kind of think of a mule as a four-wheel-drive pickup truck,” he said, “where a horse would be more like a Cadillac.” Wrangler Yvonne Parsons saddles up a mule on the South Rim, before leading a group of visitors to Phantom Ranch. Jackie Hai/KJZZ Mules are sure-footed and tough, Berry said, and they don’t spook easily. They’ve carried an estimated one million people in and out of the canyon since the late 1800s. The rides are daily, stopped pretty much only by dangerous weather and government shutdowns. Berry was here when the government stopped running for two weeks in 2013. “And these mules were so bored, out here in the corral,” he said. “They were fighting each other and kicking each other. They were just bored. I truly believe that they love to work.” And lots of people in the canyon love to work with them, like Josiah Dryer, a packer. He grew up around horses and donkeys, as well, but describes himself as a “mule guy.” As he strapped bags onto his mules behind Phantom Ranch, Dryer said he likes how intelligent the animals are. They don’t freak out on the trail, he said. They also don’t forget. “If you do something to a mule, that mule will get you back seven years later, and you will know why it did that,” he said. And he didn’t seem to be kidding. Phantom maintenance man Joseph Kendall can also vouch for their smarts. He’s befriended a giant mule named Kaibab Bob, who’s convalescing right now at the bottom of the canyon. “Make sure you eat all that, all right?” he said, handing carrots and lettuce to the big mule, with its brown body and white around its mouth. Kendall brings him veggies every day – and also brushes him. Kendall said the mule was a little shy at first, but loving. “I don’t know, he’s just a good guy,” he said, smiling.

1/10 Xanterra, the company that also operates lodges on the South Rim, has about 150 mules that transport produce, people and basically everything else Phantom Ranch needs to function. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 2/10 Joseph Kendall, who does maintenance at Phantom Ranch, checks the progress of Kaibab Bob’s injured leg. Bob, a pack mule, recently hurt himself and is recovering at the bottom of the canyon until he’s able to summit it once more. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 3/10 Mules pack in everything Phantom Ranch, the lodging on the canyon’s floor, needs to function. And they pack out duffle bags and garbage. Above is packer Katie McFarren. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 4/10 The mules head down the canyon every morning before dawn. Packers grab a quick breakfast at Phantom Ranch before heading back up the South Kaibab Trail – the shortest, steepest route to the top. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 5/10 Mules have been the preferred draft animal at the canyon since prospectors, then tourists, started coming here in the late 1880s. Mule fans say the creatures are smarter and stronger than a horse, with a better sense of self-preservation. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 6/10 Joseph Kendall gives 10-year-old Bostonian Anna Davidson a chance to pet Kaibab Bob, an injured mule hanging out at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 7/10 Mule packers Katie McFarren and Devin Morrow water their mules before heading out of the canyon. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 8/10 Devin Morrow and the other packers get up long before sunrise, often arriving down at Phantom Ranch by 8 a.m. – or even earlier in the summer. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 9/10 Packer Josiah Dryer says the mules are the “super stars” of the canyon. He gets questions from visitors about them all day long. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 10/10 Mules have been integral to Grand Canyon life since prospectors first brought them in the late 1800s. Canyon mules these days come from Tennessee, where they’re specially bred for the job. Jackie Hai/KJZZ ❮ ❯

Kaibab Bob stumbled off the trail – and every once in a blue moon, a pack mule will. That’s not true, however, for the mules that carry people. Every morning, John Berry tells a fresh crop of riders the same thing, that in more than 100 years, these tourist rides have never lost a visitor due to a mule. During a recent safety talk, held right before the group headed down the trail, he was often funny, but also frank. “This is no pony ride at the county fair,” he told the crowd, huddled against the wind and cold of a snow flurry. “This is a tough, hard ride.” He went over how to get the mule “to brake” and how to keep your cool by not looking down into the intimidating vastness of the canyon. By the end, a little girl from Boston was in tears. Visitors ride mules down Bright Angel Trail. Typically, wranglers take guests down this longer, less steep trail. When they ascend the next day, they’ll take the South Kaibab – the only trail the packers usually use. Stina Sieg/KJZZ “She’s really scared now,” said her mom, before trying to give the kid a pep talk. Magically, within minutes, the girl summoned her courage. As Berry helped her onto her mule, her eyes were still wet, but she was trying to smile. “Now, you take care of John S for me, okay?” Berry said, and she responded with a barely audible “Okay.” A few minutes after the group disappeared below the rim, Berry radioed one of the wranglers, who was riding just in front of her. “How’s she doing, Cindy?” Berry said into the walkie-talkie. “She’s good,” a calm voice said over the receiver. “We’re talking about cats.” Berry chuckled, looking relieved. “Well, good,” he replied. A few hours of riding later, the little girl declared that someday, she wants to be a wrangler, too.

Stina Sieg/KJZZ

Three.

The People You Meet At The Bottom

For the vast majority of those who peer over the edge at Grand Canyon National Park, it’s the only view of the canyon they’ll ever get. Of the more than 5 million people who come to the park every year, far fewer explore it on one of the canyon’s well-worn trails — and only about 1 percent spend a night at the bottom. They’re called the "1 percenters.” Becoming one is no small deal. From the South Rim, you can either hike a rough-and-tumble 10-mile trail or a steeper, gnarlier 7-mile route, with no drinking water available. Either way, you get hours of intense beauty, aggressive switchbacks, and — finally — a bridge leading across the Colorado River. Where you land next, as described by hiker Natalie Lambert, is “such a little oasis” in a “very dry, hot place.” Steve and Kathy Moates are on their fourth trip into the Grand Canyon, and fell in love with Phantom Ranch nearly 15 years ago, when they visited with their young kids. Stina Sieg/KJZZ Like almost everyone who takes this journey, she was cooling her heels at a shaded picnic table at Phantom Ranch, the only lodging within the canyon. She was camping nearby. Lambert, who’s from Montreal, said it was her first time down here. “But yeah, it doesn’t feel like you’re in a canyon, really,” she said. That’s because you’re tucked too far in to see the top, nearly 5,000 feet above. It feels more like a serene, rocky valley down here, with shimmering trees and a creek running through. There’s also a canteen that sells postcards and lemonade. For 63-year-old Kathy Moates, it’s a place to just be. “People come in and out, and you can just watch humanity go by, and then you get to meet some of them,” she said. “And everyone has such an interesting story.” Moates felt that way since she visited in 2004 with her young kids and husband, who was already an experienced backcountry hiker. Stephen Moates, now 71, admits he was skeptical then about the crowds and amenities. “I was a pretty arrogant purist about the whole thing,” he said. But once he got down here, he was charmed. “And to have the experience with an 8-year-old and coming-up-12-year-old children, and seeing how they reacted and how they grew into it, and what took place, was a thrill,” he said. When they got home to Indiana, they couldn’t stop talking about it. They’re now on their fourth trip. This place has a way of collecting regulars. Before Chris Hupman, 59, left her home in Mesa for this trip, she heard the same thing from a few friends.

1/4 Two main routes lead from the South Rim to the bottom of the canyon. This is a view of the Bright Angel Trail near Indian Garden, around the halfway point on the 10-mile route. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 2/4 Chris Hupman thought she’d have to cancel this canyon trip, her third, because she was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer. But she’s here, in remission, just a few months after a total hysterectomy. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 3/4 Jeni Sue Wilburn (left) and Raven have been friends for 40 years. Though they were both river guides on the Colorado, they’d never spent a night at Phantom. This is their chance to check it off their bucket list. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 4/4 People who love to hike into the Grand Canyon say it never gets old. The trails and the canyon walls are always changing – as is our experience of them. Stina Sieg/KJZZ ❮ ❯

“I’ve had people ask, you know, ‘Why are you going for the third time?’” she said. But Hupman has a question for them, too. “As soon as you step onto the trail and see that vast expanse ahead of you, it’s, like, why wouldn’t everyone want to do this?” she said. The canyon doesn’t get old. It stays incredible, she said — and actually gets more so. And this time, there was a little more a sense of being alive added in. Hupman was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer. She underwent a hysterectomy January and is now in remission. “And so this is sort of a victory lap for me,” she said, "being able to say, ‘OK, cancer, take that!'" There are always so many fascinating folks down here. On this afternoon, they included a young woman who just goes by Lia. She had a giant bag of potato chips strapped to the top of her pack. She and her buddies had been hiking for months on a route that links national parks across the West. “It’s a weird thing that happens when you’re out for so long: people, you can smell them from a mile away, like, the scent of clean people,” she said, before breaking into a small chuckle. “Yeah, it’s really weird. I wonder if they can smell us. I hope they can’t.” Not too far away, two former female river guides in their 60s — friends for decades — were contentedly reading their books by the creek. A hiker who just goes by Lia takes a break outside the Phantom Ranch canteen. She’s at Mile 640 of 800 on the Hayduke trail, a backcountry route that zigzags through national parks across the West. Stina SiegKJZZ Being here, said Jeni Sue Willburn, is a chance to get back to the basics, “of your basic, raw emotions.” After a few nights in the dorms, which were great, Wilburn said, she and her friend Raven were offered to spend their final night in their own cabin, because of a cancellation. They were ecstatic. “Where else would somebody saying something like that make you so completely happy?” Wilburn said. “And it lasted all day!” The simplicity here seems to impact almost everyone. Steve Moates said people tend not to talk about politics or their jobs. Or even other national parks. They talk about the canyon. “And as I’ve told people, I say you’ll have one of two reactions when you come out of the canyon,” he said. “It will be ‘never again’ or ‘I can’t wait to get back.’” Moates knows what his answer will always be, for as long as he’s able.

Jackie Hai/KJZZ

Four.

Rim To Rim, And Back Again

After hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, most people are ready for a big meal and a deep sleep. But for an elite few, that’s just a warm up. Increasingly, the canyon is becoming a destination for trail runners wanting to push their limits. Cool your heels at the bottom of the canyon, and you’ll spot them. Tiny packs on their backs, water bottles strapped to their chests, focused looks on their faces. Jocelyn Briggs traveled all the way from the Toronto area to run rim-to-rim-to-rim with friends. It was a quiet day in the canyon, and she joked that it was a bit lonely during the hours of running and power hiking. Stina Sieg/KJZZ The rim-to-rim-to-rim uniform. Jocelyn Briggs ran down the South Rim early one morning, then ran across the canyon floor, up the North Rim, then back down. It’s been “tough! Really tough!” she said, taking a walking break. “Yeah, that was a tough climb. Yeah, it beat us up pretty bad.” When Briggs reaches the top of canyon again in a few hours, she’ll have tackled almost two marathons worth of steep, rugged trail. And why? “That’s a good question,” she said, laughing. “A friend of mine wanted to do it, and I said that I would do it with her.” Since it doesn’t require a permit, there’s no official data on how many people take this challenge — which ranges between 42 and 48 miles, depending on which trails you choose. But what’s clear is that its popularity has exploded in the past five or so years, with countless articles and Facebook groups highlighting its beauty and pain. In 2014, it hooked now-famed trail runner Cat Bradley. “It’s so humbling,” she said, speaking from Boulder, where she lives. “You know, the canyon never ends, and so you, you know, you have no choice but to feel small.” The route was 25 miles longer than she had ever run, but still, she beat her buddies up the trail. “I just had this totally new understanding what my body was capable of,” she said. That jump-started Bradley’s trail-running hunger. In 2017, she won the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run. And a few months later, on her eighth rim-to-rim-to-rim run, she smashed the women’s record by more than 20 minutes. But Bradley says her favorite canyon memory was actually a few years before, when her headlamp went out somewhere between the two rims, and she had to navigate the empty trail by the full moon. “I just felt so connected to where I was,” she said, “and I felt so lucky to be experiencing that moment, you know, completely alone in this vast, vast place.”

1/5 Cat Bradley broke the women’s rim-to-rim-to-rim fastest known time in just over 7:52 in 2017, but she says she’s not done with the canyon. She wants to see how much faster she could go on a “perfect day” in the Grand Canyon. Photo courtesy of Cat Bradley 2/5 Bradley was just 22 when she first did a rim-to-rim-to-rim. She ended up beating everyone else in the group. She says the experience gave her a confidence she could have never gotten otherwise. Photo courtesy of Cat Bradley 3/5 Jack Gaskill (left), 65, and Toby Estler, 53, are less than 10 miles away from completing their second rim-to-rim-to-rim run together. Gaskill says their first one three years ago was the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he felt a “tremendous sense of joy and accomplishment” at the end. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 4/5 Halfway down the Bright Angel Trail, a character dubbed “Victor Vomit” warns visitors of the dangers of hiking to the river and back in one day. Trail runners, in particular, are susceptible to losing too much sodium, which can cause vomiting – and even death. Stina Sieg/KJZZ 5/5 Doing a rim-to-rim-to-rim (R2R2R) run or hike can take anywhere from 42 to 48 miles, depending on whether you take the Bright Angel or South Kaibab Trail down the South Rim. Either way, you’ll have major descents and ascents bookending your journey. Stina Sieg/KJZZ ❮ ❯