I'll be spending this summer working for the National Park Service at Grand Canyon and would like to know any tails other than those within the canyon that are worth an overnight or weekend trip. I've done the corridor trails and the Bill Hall- Thunder River Loop and am curious of other folks experience in Northern Arizona outside of the searing inner canyon summer heat.

Thanks!

There's a lot of great hiking in that area. If you're going to do more than a few hikes, I would suggest getting the book "Flagstaff Hikes" by the Mangums. It describes almost every trail between Sedona and the Canyon. You can also check hikearizona.com, which has pretty thorough listings.

My favorites in that area for summer are:
- Inner Basin and the Humphreys Summit trail in the San Francisco Peaks
- any of the trails going up Kendrick Mountain
- West Fork of Oak Creek near Sedona (get a shuttle and do the whole thing from top to bottom, including some swimming)
- Elden Lookout Trail in Flagstaff

And if you are willing to go a bit further south, the hiking around Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona is awesome (though the lower-elevation bits can be hot in summer).

An interesting hike that only *sort of* involves the canyon would be a hike down the LCR. I found a blog by someone who did it and it looked very different. More of a "challenge yourself" hike than a scenic hike, though. The big problem is water logistics- clearly the best time to do it is when the LCR is low (April-May?) but then the creek water isn't drinkable due to the mineral content of all of the springs. You must cache. Three days or so to the confluence, then take Beamer to Tanner and out to the South Rim.

Edited by acrosome on 02/26/2013 12:40:25 MST.

Thanks for the input guys.

Canyon de Chelly. Prior arrangements will be necessary, but being NPS will help.

The Arizona Trail north of the canyon in the Kaibab Forest is excellent.

"The Arizona Trail north of the canyon in the Kaibab Forest is excellent."

On the North Kaibab National Forest map, the AzT is on their #101 trail. That is a popular single track mtn bike trail since it is in the national forest outside of the national park. Early in the season, there will be deadfall trees on the trail.

There isn't much there, just extensive solitude (antonym of the South Rim Village), big meadows lined with aspens, some Douglas fir and Ponderosa pines, spruce clusters that are excellent windbreaks for campsites, cool summer weather typical of 7000-8500' altitude, noisy turkeys and big mule deer. Brachiopods (fossil sea shells) are seen in the exposed Kaibab limestone. Those shells are now 8000 feet higher than current sea level. See what happens if you stay there too long.