Most hikers drive to trail heads with little thought. You park yards away, hike, return and drive away. But that is not possible for the South Kaibab Trail at Grand Canyon.

There are four primary ways to get to the South Kaibab Trail:
● Drive and find limited parking at a distance
● Take a bus with a limited schedule
● Walk, or
● Take a taxi

● You can park at a distance of about 3/4 of a mile and walk to the trailhead, but the Park is currently taking expensive steps to limit remote parking for South Kaibab Trail.

● There are some designated parking spaces at Pipe Creek Beach overlook and a small lot along Rim Drive where parking is still allowed. There are currently no time limits on how long you can park, but observing the Park services choking off access to the trail, I would not be surprised to see further limitations on parking soon.

● The one dirt parking lot can accommodate about 10 cars, and it fills up quickly.

● On the day I hiked South Kaibab Trail, I found only four cars in the small dirt lot at 5:30am, and parked there, taking 16 minutes to get to the trail head walking along the access road.

● The option the Park recommends is the shuttle bus. The buses are free, but there is a problem. I used to be impressed that the buses started like clockwork at 5am year round. But this year, the Park decided to start the Winter buses at 8am and terminate service at 6pm. It takes 9 or more minutes to get from the Visitor’s Center Parking lot to South Kaibab Trail head, so the earliest you could be on the trail is 8:09 am, and the latest you could return and catch a bus is 6pm. If you get back after 6, you will end up walking or calling a taxi to return to your car or lodging.

● To get from the Grand Canyon Village or any of the in-park hotels to SK, you have to take two buses, which complicates things considerably.

● There is a “Hiker’s Express” bus that runs from the village and hotels to the trail head. I have only ridden it once, and my thought was “express” was a misnomer. I did not time it, but I would guess it took more than 30 minutes to get to the trailhead with its multiple stops.

● Plus, the Hikers Express does not leave until 8am in the Winter, getting you to the trail head at 8:30 or later, AND it only runs in the morning, to get back to your lodge or location, you will have to take two different buses, and get on that bus by 6pm.

● Walking or running is an alternative some hikers use. I have walked from the trail head to the village at least 3 times, and walking along the rim walk in daylight is a pleasant experience. The walk from the trial head to Maswik Lodge is about 5 miles on the rim trail or 5miles on the greenway trail, a route I have never taken.

● A variation on the walking theme is to park in the Visitor’s Center Parking lot and to walk either to or back from the trail head. That option takes about 2.2 miles.

● The final option is to take a taxi, something I have never done. The taxi is supposed to cost $15 plus tip for two passengers and is theoretically available 24 hours a day. I have heard reports that sometimes the taxi does not come, but I have no personal experience with the taxi.

● Finally, you might wonder why the Park is making it so hard for hikers to get to SK trail. It is purposeful. A few decades back, as part of a strategy to reduce rescues, they decided to make it more difficult to get to the trailhead, along with a number of other strategies, such as putting four rangers plus a cadre of volunteers on the trail to evaluate and advise hikers, and putting up signs discouraging expansive hikes like rim to river to rim. My guess is that they feel the parking strategy works, and will continue to choke access to the trial. From my perspective, a little more scientific inquiry would be in order, who says restricting parking reduced rescues? It could well be the active staffing of the trail or the signage. It would be easy enough to evaluate the number of rescues on the two trails with easy parking (Bright Angel and North Kaibab) to establish a usage adjusted rescue statistic. But I doubt they will do that, I expect they will continue to limit access to South Kaibab Trailhead and will purposely make it more difficult to hike the only corridor trail that is currently open to give access to the River, Phantom Ranch, and Bright Angel Campground.

● So there you go, you now know the 4 ways to access South Kaibab Trail and have a little perspective on the justification the Park uses for making it so difficult to get there.

If you are displeased with this situation, you might want to let the Superintendent know:

Edward Keable, Esq,
Superintendent
Grand Canyon National Park
P.O. Box 129
Grand Canyon, AZ 86023

His boss is:

Secretary Deb Haaland, Secretary of The Interior
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

or you can find their email contact online

Thank you for watching!

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