After our rest stop we continued hiking along the O'Neil Butte toward the end where Skeleton Point marks a transition in the trail. The vistas along this section are wonderful.
We quickly got out of the way of this woman who was RUNNING DOWN the South Kaibab trail. A few hours later she was on her way back up. Apparently she didn't have much time but wanted to attend a birthday party at Phantom Ranch for one of her friends who works there. She ran down the 7.4 miles in 2.5 hours, and then ran back up. She did explain that she is at a maximum fitness level and has done this before.
We took rest stops every hour for 5-10 minutes.
As we descended, we could finally start to see the inner gorge, which is the steeper smaller canyon surrounding the Colorado River.
You can see the top of the outer gorge near the area where we started our decent behind and above Phylster's head.
Hiking the Grand Canyon is all about putting one foot in front of the other -- and enjoying the views.
Look out for falling rocks!
Finally we reached Skeleton Point. I'm not sure of the mileage but it is somewhere around 3 miles down.
From Skeleton Point we descended down a LONG series of switchbacks.
We briefly had a look at the Colorado River, which we didn't see again for an hour or two.
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