The shuttle ride, the arrival, and a tribute to a lodge lost to fire.
This post is part of the travel series "Grand Canyon 4-day Rim-to-Rim Hike".
Getting to the North Rim
Our Grand Canyon adventure technically started a day before the first step on the trail. On the morning of May 26, we parked our car at Parking Lot D on the South Rim, grabbed our packs, and walked over to the Bright Angel Lodge to catch the Trans-Canyon Shuttle.
The shuttle left at 8:00 AM and pulled into the North Rim about four and a half hours later. It's a long ride, but it's a good one. The route takes you east out of the park, across the Navajo Nation, and around the canyon's eastern edge before climbing back up to the North Rim from the north.
There are two rest stops along the way. The first is a gas station in Cameron, AZ — a quick stretch-your-legs kind of stop. The second is at the Navajo Bridge Interpretive Center, where you can walk out onto the historic bridge and look straight down at the Colorado River slicing through Marble Canyon far below. It's a solid preview of what's waiting inside the Grand Canyon itself.
Once the shuttle reaches the North Rim area, it makes a stop at the North Kaibab Trailhead — which we'd be seeing again very early the next morning — before the final drop-off at the Grand Canyon Lodge.
The North Rim
The North Rim is the quieter, less-visited side of the Grand Canyon. It sits about 1,000 feet higher than the South Rim, which means cooler temperatures, thicker forests, and a completely different feel. Where the South Rim buzzes with day-trippers and tour buses, the North Rim moves at a slower pace. It felt like we had the place more to ourselves.
We checked into one of the cabins at the Grand Canyon Lodge — a rustic but comfortable spot tucked among the ponderosa pines. After settling in, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing exactly what you should do when you're standing on the edge of one of the planet's most impressive holes in the ground: looking at it.
The rim trail on the North Rim offers several viewpoints, and we hit as many as we could before sunset. The canyon views from the North Rim are different from the South — you're looking across a wider expanse, and the depth and layering of the rock formations feel more pronounced. As the sun dropped lower, the colors shifted through shades of orange, red, and deep purple. It was the kind of sunset that made us stop talking and just watch.
After sunset, we headed back to the lodge for dinner and then to our cabins for an early night. The alarm was set for well before dawn — the trail was calling.
A Tribute to the Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim
In 2025, the Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim was destroyed by fire. The lodge, originally built in 1937 and a designated National Historic Landmark, had been a fixture of the North Rim experience for nearly a century. Its stone-and-timber architecture blended into the landscape like it had always been there, and the sunroom — with its massive windows framing the canyon — was one of those rare places where the building and the view felt like they belonged together.
We were lucky to have stayed there in 2022, before it was gone. The memory of sitting on that porch, watching the canyon turn gold in the late afternoon light, is one that stays with you.
For anyone planning a North Rim trip going forward, the campground remains an alternative for lodging. It's a different experience — you're in a tent instead of a cabin — but the views and the quiet of the North Rim are still very much there.
The lodge may be gone until it is rebuilt, but the rim isn't going anywhere.
The North Rim is worth the visit on its own, even if you never set foot on a trail. But for us, it was the calm before the storm — one last comfortable night before we traded cabins for tents and pavement for dirt.
Next: The Hike — Day 1: North Rim to Cottonwood
Photos by Rodrigo Senra, Nascif Abousah, Alexandre Da Silva, and Luciano Silva — fellow hikers and accidental photographers.
