Unseasonably fun

The visitors' center looked like a ghost town. Bus shelters which, in the summer months, teem with thousands of tourists a day, were starkly empty. But the sun beat down – and if the handful of travelers poring over maps and guidebooks were wearing a few more layers of clothing than usual, it was a small price to pay to have the Grand Canyon almost to ourselves.

Last month, I was a winter camping skeptic as I arrived for my first visit to Grand Canyon National Park. Shivering in my sleeping bag the first night there, I wasn't sold on the idea. But after three days of backpacking with Kris, a college friend well-versed in the off-season outdoors, I came home a true fan of winter expeditions – especially after my feet thawed out.

Neither Kris nor I had ever seen the canyon before, so we started out where everybody does: with the gorgeous view at the rim. We oohed and aahed as you're supposed to, but the view from the top was hard to believe. So we headed in.

Although 5 million people descend on the Grand Canyon National Park every year, fewer than 5 percent ever venture below the overlooks at the top. Even fewer choose to make their forays into the canyon between December and March.

Those who do, get a quieter view of the place than tourists can in the raucous summer season. America's national parks attract a quarter as many visitors between November and April as they do between May and October. That small percentage who throw late-night parties in the tent next to yours and leave trash on hiking trails, must also hibernate. They were nowhere in evidence as we set off into the canyon, down the Bright Angel trail.

Summer visitors to the Grand Canyon can access hiking trails and campgrounds from both its north and south rims. Reservations are required to camp, and even distant back-country sites fill up months in advance.

Crowding is compounded by blazing sun: Temperatures inside the canyon regularly top 110 degrees. Mike Buchheit, director of the Grand Canyon Field Institute, calls summer a terrible time to backpack there. "There's probably many a July hiker who thinks to himself, 'I should be here in December,' " he says.

Mr. Buchheit believes that December brings a different type of visitor to the canyon. From November through March, snow and rainfall at the rim often mean icy trails for the first couple of miles. The ice "scares away the half-hearted," he says. This leaves the canyon primarily to contemplative types drawn less by home-video opportunities than by the promise of solitude.

Kris and I strapped crampons over our boots, layered on all the clothes we'd brought, and headed down the trail. Some of those we passed heading the opposite way used walking sticks for balance, some had managed the trail in sneakers, and one intrepid older man was even crunching over the ice in shorts.

By the time we reached the Indian Gardens campground, four miles down the trail, it was warm enough that we wished we'd brought shorts of our own. At a nearby overlook, the Colorado River wound greenly below us. The canyon seemed to fold in on itself like cloth as the sun set. It was just as stunning as everybody says.

Suddenly, neither of us was coveting shorts: We spooned up our dinner of vegetable curry numb-fingered and quickly retreated to our tent with bottles full of boiling water, encased in wool socks, to keep us warm.

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