Four Lincoln County-area men recently traveled to the Grand Canyon with two other men for an incredible outdoors experience.

Brookhavenite Dave Griffin said his lifelong friend Chad Lofton called him in January and asked him to come along on a summer trip Lofton had planned with his 74-year-old father Bobby and 22-year-old son Jacob, of West Lincoln. Two of Lofton’s hunting buddies — Brian Gennings and Scott McCarver — were also going. Lofton and Griffin are both 52. The 54-year-old Gennings is from Texarkana, and the 49-year-old McCarver is from Nashville.

The plan was to visit the Grand Canyon and make not one, but two, rim-to-rim hikes through the canyon. Always up for an adventure, Griffin was in. 

“Chad was the common denominator in the group. He knew everybody,” said Griffin. “Chad and I were childhood friends. We’d ride our bikes in the country, go to the swim hole together.”

He trained for six weeks before the trip — though he said it probably should have been longer, like the youngest, who trained for six months — and looked forward to it. 

“My best friend and I have always done crazy stuff like 12-hour adventure races, traveling, tri-athlons, trail runs, for the last 15-20 years. That’s just kind of our thing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t go with me, but Chad has a very adventurous personality, as well. He and his dad, and those guys, go out west just about every year on a 2-week backpacking, camping, hunting and fishing trip. It’s just something they wanted to do, and wanted somebody else to go with them.”

The four Mississippi men flew out of New Orleans and met the other guys in Las Vegas on Thursday, June 13, before driving up to St. George, Utah. They spent Friday further east in Buckskin Gulch, one of the longest continuous slot canyons in the world. 

“That was super neat,” Griffin said of their 4-mile-long hike in the gulch between unique formations and undulating sandstone walls. Afterward, the group drove about 75 miles south to the North Kaibab Trailhead at the Grand Canyon, in North Rim, Arizona, where they spent the night in Kaibab Lodge.

Then Saturday morning, the group set out on the North Kaibab Trail at 4:30 a.m., trekking down to Phantom Ranch at the Colorado River, the midway point of the canyon. The temperature was 34 degrees when they left that morning, at 116 at 10:30 a.m., when they reached Phan-tom Ranch.

“Phantom Ranch just off the Colorado River was a welcome sight. Ice cold lemonade! Best thing I’ve ever had at the time,” Griffin said. “The heat can’t be explained. It was like being in an oven all day.”

This trail is the only maintained trail in the canyon from the North Rim, according to Grand Canyon Lodge. 

“This trail gives hikers an appreciation for the beauty and immense size of the canyon. It is one of the least-visited trails at the North Rim, but is one of the most difficult, so please plan accordingly,” the Lodge’s website cautions. “Do not attempt to hike from the Rim to the River and back in one day.” On Day 2, they took the South Kaibab Trail, beginning at the South Rim. 

“We finished the first day in just over 13 hours, just shy of 25 miles,” Griffin said. “Out of 4.6 million visitors annually, less than one percent go below the rim of the canyon.” 

“The trip is roughly 25 miles one way, with lots of elevation gain and loss. To do it twice is tough, to say the least, but the amazing thing is our oldest in the group was 74 years young. He did this with his son and grandson! We started calling it the Three Generations Trip, and it stuck.”

That weekend, another visitor to the Canyon died from heat exhaustion. 

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” said Griffin of the hike he called beautiful, amazing and rugged.

The two-day 50-mile hike was just the second trek of the trip. The six-man team also tackled Angels Landing on Monday Zion National Park in southwestern Utah. The 4.3-mile hike is one of the top-5 most dangerous hikes in the U.S. 

“We’re just two old country boys who grew up there on the edge of Lincoln County, but after seeing just how difficult what we did was, I think it was pretty impressive,” Griffin said. “To me it’s meant the world because I’ve done something that not a lot of people have done. It just took a little more grit. Doing it with Chad and his dad and son is just super impressive. [His dad] has done this kind of stuff his whole life. We’re all just normal people with normal jobs. I think my longest walk before this was 10 miles. It’s just something that I love to do. I love to do anything that’s a little difficult.”

At one point in the hike, Chad said something that Griffin wanted to be sure to remember, so he wrote it in his journal. It summed up the beauty, the difficulty, and the whole experience: “There’s no prettier place to be miserable.”

“The beauty of God’s creation still amazes me,” Griffin said.