Howdy pardners and welcome back to Grand Canyon News, where sometimes the news isn’t what you want to hear, but it just might save your Grand Canyon vacation.
If any of you ever asked “why should we trust GrandCanyon.com be our Grand Canyon vacation planners?” it’s because all of us actually live here and work here at the Grand Canyon, and are the best equipped in our industry to give you the straight truth about it. Case in point: yours truly had the amazing privilege of spending 7 years of her life living inside the park at the South Rim, and most of those years were spent working at the Bright Angel Transportation Desk, where I actually got paid to ruin peoples’ vacations.
It’s true! I would spend the majority of my working hours telling folks that Grand Canyon mule rides are usually sold out 9 months to a year in advance and if they didn’t have reservations (and weren’t in line at 5 AM to put their names on the waiting list for the next day), probability was 99.999999999% that they were out of luck. If I had a dime for every disappointed face I saw, well…. you know.
So why are Grand Canyon mule trips so danged popular anyway? Hel-LOOOOO – ‘cause they’re fun! Actually it’s not so much a matter of popularity, but of good old “supply and demand:” on any given day, only 40 mules are permitted by the National Park Service to enter the Grand Canyon from the South Rim. 20 on the day trip to Plateau Point, 20 on the overnight trip to Phantom Ranch. We go into this in more detail on our first video in our new series, “The 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions About the Grand Canyon; and the Questions You SHOULD Be Asking” (have you subscribed?). Today, a subscriber named Peter K. asked a very good question: “why are only 40 mules a day allowed into the Grand Canyon?”
The Grand Canyon is a National Park (not counting Grand Canyon West or Grand Canyon East). Therefore it is administered by the National Park Service, who oversee matters such as how much the hotels charge, what sort of food is served in the restaurants, and how many mules can go down into the Grand Canyon. So why such a paltry number when surely thousands of people a day are clamoring to make this legendary trip? Simple: to protect the Grand Canyon.
You see, though it might look inhospitable and hence indestructible, the Grand Canyon is in fact a somewhat fragile environment. Rock walls can be easily toppled by one careless step. Vegetation can easily be killed by being trampled upon, and much of the Inner Canyon’s vegetation actually took hundreds of years to establish itself, especially cryptobiotic soils. Though most inadvertent trampling occurs mostly at the hands (or “feet” in this case) of humans, mules can and do contribute to the degradation of trails, even moreso than people by virtue of their being larger, heavier, wearing metal shoes and because they *ahem* perform their bodily functions right there on the trail. Allowing an unlimited number of mules on the trails would result in very heavy damage to the trails and surrounding environment, not to mention a foul odor constantly emanating from the canyon. The National Park Service trail crew performs regular maintenance of the main corridor trails (the Bright Angel and the South Kaibab) so they may be enjoyed by hikers and riders for many years to come.
Mules have played a very important part in Grand Canyon’s human history. A mule is a hybrid of a male donkey (a 
jackass [yes I said it]) and a female horse (a mare). They have the conformation (body shape) of a donkey, but the size and temperament of a horse. In many cases, mules outsize their equine half and many Grand Canyon mules are descended from Belgian draft horses, which are huge to begin with. In the early days of the development of the Inner Canyon, such as the construction of Phantom Ranch, and the placement of the Trans-Canyon Pipeline (which supplies water to the South Rim), mules were there, hauling the heavy supplies down the 10+ miles of rugged terrain from rim to river. They are still used for trail maintenance, transporting supplies to Phantom Ranch, even delivering mail – whenever a task calls for a heavy payload to be transported from the top of the Grand Canyon to the bottom (or vice versa), Grand Canyon mules are on the job.
The Grand Canyon Mule Ride is a tradition dating back over one hundred years. Having personally rode both horses and mules in several locations in the Southwest, I’ll take a mule over a horse anytime. Granted they are legendary for their sure-footedness, but mules have another attribute that makes them better suited for the rugged terrain of the Grand Canyon: their eyes. A mule’s eyes are set in the skull in such a manner that they can see all four feet at once. A horse can only see his front feet. Therefore a horse will “scree” (slide with their back feet) down an unfamiliar slope where a mule will deftly step down it. An advantage you definitely want to have in a place like the Grand Canyon!
A mule also has a very keen sense of self-preservation. He isn’t going to do anything to get himself hurt, 
so he sure as heck isn’t gonna do anything to get you hurt either. That’s one reason why the Grand Canyon mule ride is the absolute safest trip of its kind; the main reason why it’s so safe is because Grand Canyon mule riders must meet a certain group of requirements (4’7” tall, 200 lbs or less, English fluent, not pregnant) before they’ll even be checked in. Then, they undergo another test at the corral when they meet the wranglers: if these guys (and gals) see anyone acting too twitchy or nervous, chances are, they won’t be allowed to ride, because chances are they’d get themselves – or someone else – hurt. As Ron Clayton, longtime head Grand Canyon mule wrangler was fond of saying, “we’d rather hurt your feelings, we’d rather make you made, we’d rather spoil your vacation than get you hurt.”
Back then, we didn’t have many choices for getting to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. If you couldn’t get on a mule ride or hike, you were left on the rimside envying those that did. Not anymore. Now there are options like the Inner Canyon Jeep Tour, the Colorado River Day Float Trip or one of many Grand Canyon West tours that can get you to the bottom of the Grand Canyon – and you won’t do the Kaibab Shuffle afterwards!
‘til next time, make it a Grand one,
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- Question of the Week: “Can I Hike to the Bottom of the Grand Canyon and Ride a Mule Out?” Boy, my
- Grand Canyon Vacation Question of the Week: "How Do I Not Miss Anything?" Good day t
- Question of the Week: “I’m Terrified of Heights! How Can I Get to the Bottom of the Grand Canyon?” Good after
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April 9th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Or send them to the North Rim, where there’s a better chance of getting on a mule without reservations.
April 14th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Thank you for demystifying the legendary mules of the Grand Canyon. I first visited the canyon as a teen and of course wanted to ride the mules into the canyon. Needless to say, my parents didn’t have a reservation so we didn’t get to. Today, I have Belgian draft mules of my own, having fallen in love with the longears a few years back. I have year and years of horse experience, but the mules have probably taught me more in the few years I’ve been around them than all my horses put together. Thanks again for the nice read about the Grand Canyon mules.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
The full list of physical requirements to ride the mules can be found on the grandcanyonlodges.com website at http://www.grandcanyonlodges.com/rider-qualifications-719.html. Great article and site.