BY LARRY HENDRICKS
He described a brutal slog.
With just enough energy to blow up his inflatable mattress, Flagstaff writer and journalist Kevin Fedarko said he sat with a 1,000-yard stare and reflected on that “apocalyptically awful” first day of hiking.
Fedarko planned to take the Canyon, piece by piece, along the 650-mile journey from Lees Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs. His purpose focused on getting to know, in the fullest of detail, the perils that face the Big Dog of National Parks so he could write about them in a story for National Geographic magazine.
As he sat there, exhausted and reduced to “a puddle of pain,” he said his partner in the journey, photographer Pete McBride, asked him, “Dude, you all right? You want me to heat up some food?”
Fedarko looked at him and said, “My body’s so traumatized right now, I can’t even think about eating.”