While some students spent their spring break sporting swimsuits and sipping cocktails, nine City College Geology Club students spent their vacation in Arizona where they backpacked around the Grand Canyon.

Geology professor Jeff Meyer, along with Kevin McNichol, the Earth & Planetary Sciences lab/field technician for the earth sciences department, led nine students to the bottom of the canyon. They spent four days and three nights exploring, fishing, hiking and learning about the geological formations around them. The total cost of the trip was around $140.

Meyer was delighted to give students the chance to hike into the canyon’s depths.

“They get a taste of what it’s like to go into the canyon, but they always wanted to go all the way down and never had the chance,” Meyer said. ” … Geologically, [the Grand Canyon] has everything … If you like geology, or even if you don’t, you can’t help but get interested in it there.”

Every year, the geology club takes a two-week field trip to northern Arizona and southern Utah to go camping. On this trip, the students get to hike one hour down the Grand Canyon and back up. This year, the students received a much more comprehensive, hands-on experience of what the Grand Canyon has to offer.

The group left Santa Barbara on Thursday, March 21 and spent the first night at Meyer’s mother’s cabin in Bullhead, Arizona. The next day, they drove to the rim of the canyon, where they went on a late afternoon hike to watch the sunset and camped.

“The first night was cool,” said geology major Nikki Arnush. “You see pictures and stuff, and you don’t really know, but then when you go see it in person and see how big it is, it’s insane.”

The group began their hike down the canyon at 8 a.m. on Saturday. It took about five hours to get to bottom, and was about seven miles round-trip.

The students spent the next four days hiking to different sections of the canyon, testing their geological knowledge and fishing for their dinner.

“The best part was seeing all of this for the first time,” Arnush explained. “And taking what I’ve learned in classes, and actually putting it into a practical application.”

On the final night of the trip, the group hiked to the Indian Gardens campground, where they spent the evening on a moonlit hike to a scenic viewpoint overlooking the canyon.

“We were in the inner canyon for most of the time,” Meyer said. “But when we took the moonlit hike, we were where the canyon is really open, and you get the feeling of, ‘You’re in the middle of the Grand Canyon,’ and it was really neat.”

Meyer has been trying to obtain a group hiking permit to the Grand Canyon for about six years. He had problems getting priority when applying for permits from Santa Barbara, whereas commercial tour guides who applied in-person had no problem.

“You have a public resource, and commercial companies are using it,” said Meyer, “and that’s okay, but they’re getting an advantage over other people. So they changed the way they did reservations, and when I applied this year, I got it.”