A good second day, although I suspect it is a harbinger of two themes that will predominate: lack of water and landscapes that offer little drama or change.
I filled up 6 liters at the cistern at mile 4, enough to last me until the next reliable water at mile 32. That’s a lot of water weight to be carrying and it won’t be the last time.
The Kaibab Plateau is very flat. It slopes gently up to the North Rim at an unvarying rate of 100 feet per mile. I don’t think that any gully or hill I crossed had more than 100 feet of relief, and most were much shallower.
That makes for an easy hike but also a dull one. There were occasional views back to Boulder Mountain in Utah, but the only other feature of note was the slow steady replacement of sage and pinyon and juniper by ponderosa and jack pines. Interesting and educational, but hardly dramatic.
This pattern is likely to hold until the Grand Canyon, and may well resume directly thereafter.
I did run into a few hikers today, all northbound, all just doing a section or two. Not likely to meet any through hikers on this trip.
So it’s not going to be a drama scenery hike, or a social hike. Maybe it will turn out to be Zen hike and I will return home enlightened. That would be good. I could definitely use some enlightenment.