He Found Out At 45 That He Liked Doing Hard Things

Steve Martin did not set out to become a Grand Canyon endurance hiker. Then a local mountain, a few hard people, and one brutal night below the rim changed what he thought was possible.

By Brian Speciale
The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show Podcast

Steve Martin did not look like someone trying to reinvent himself.

That is part of what made it so interesting.

He was not dramatically out of shape. He was not chasing a before-and-after photo. He was not trying to prove something to the internet. When he first started showing up on Black Mountain in Cave Creek, Arizona, he looked like another fit guy using a hard local trail to get ready for something else.

At first, that something else was a hunting trip to New Zealand.

"We wanted to go after Himalayan tahr in the Southern Alps," Steve said on this week's episode of The Grand Canyon Hiker Dude Show. "A lot of people take helicopters up. We wanted to do it on foot."

So he trained.

Black Mountain made that easy to measure and hard to fake. The trail climbs roughly 1,200 vertical feet in less than a mile, over loose black rock that punishes sloppy feet and tired legs. It is short enough to repeat and steep enough to expose you. Around Cave Creek, it has become a kind of unofficial proving ground for hikers and canyon people who like their workouts honest.

At first, Steve just wanted to get up it.

Then he wanted to get up it without stopping.

Then one lap became two.

Then two became something else.

"It started out as training," Steve said. "Then it evolved. I started seeing you guys up there. I started talking with you and Coach Arnie. And then I really just started training for life."

That was the line that stayed with me.

Not training for a race. Not training for a single trip. Not training to beat someone else's time.

Training for life.

Training For Life

Steve was in his mid-40s when the switch flipped.

He had always loved the outdoors. Hunting had put him in wild places, often away from trails, reading maps and moving through difficult terrain. But hiking as its own pursuit had somehow never taken hold.

"I always had that drive for exploration and adventure," he said. "I just never really got into the hiking aspect. I don't know how I missed that."

Then the people around him started changing the scale of what sounded reasonable.

One friend was training for a Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim, the 40-plus-mile double crossing that sends hikers from the South Rim to the North Rim and back again. Coach Arnie Fonseca Jr. was already part of the Black Mountain orbit, the kind of person who can make a ridiculous idea sound both dangerous and weirdly practical. And Steve kept noticing that when he spent time around people doing harder things, the line moved.

"You start surrounding yourself with people who are better than you and doing more," he said. "It opens your eyes. You think, I never thought about that. And that sounds kind of cool."

There is a particular kind of person who hears about a long, miserable day and leans forward instead of away.

Steve had become one.

"I'd never had a desire to do anything crazy like that," he said. "Who wants to hike 45 miles? That doesn't sound great. But then you start getting into it. You start facing those challenges. You start challenging yourself."

The physical change mattered. As Steve got stronger, more things became possible.

But the deeper motivation was not a number on a watch.

It was Larry.

Larry is Steve's stepfather. At 79, Steve said, Larry still travels, hunts, rides horseback into Wyoming, and puts in the work that makes those things possible.

"I've always admired that," Steve said. "But I've also seen that he puts in the work. When they come to visit, he's up doing crunches in the morning. He's stretching. It takes work to stay fit like that."

Steve looked at that and saw a future worth training for.

"I want to live that life," he said. "You see people in their fifties who kind of give up on that aspect. But there is a lot of life left to live. There's a lot to do. And you can do it."

He was 45 when he started.

"I've always been in decent shape," he said. "But I wasn't in great physical fitness shape. I wasn't fit for life."

That phrase kept coming back.

Fit for life.

Not merely fit enough to survive a hard day. Fit enough to say yes when life offers one.

The First Bad Idea

Steve's first real Grand Canyon hike was supposed to be a rim-to-river.

That would have been ambitious enough. Down South Kaibab, across the river, back up Bright Angel or South Kaibab. A serious day for a first hike below the rim, but still a known thing.

Then he got on the shuttle bus.

Another hiker was talking about a rim-to-rim-to-rim he had finished the night before. Steve listened. The seed went in.

"I was thinking, well, hey," Steve said.

That is often how trouble starts in the canyon.

By the time he reached Phantom Ranch, he felt good. The weather was still cool. He had food. He had water. The North Rim was closed, which meant there was no easy bailout once he committed to the far side.

He kept going.

"It was one of those, I'm going to go a ways and see how I feel," he said. "Then once you get to a certain point, it's all or nothing. I'm either going to turn around here or I'm going to keep going. And I was in it."

He made the North Rim in daylight.

Then he started down in the dark.

That is when the canyon collected the bill.

His feet had already started to blister. He had pushed through too long before dealing with them. Then an unfamiliar pain hit near his hip, likely his IT band, and he began to understand the difference between fitness and readiness.

"I played too much of the mental toughness game," he said. "A lot of things are mental, and you need to push through. But there are physical things you absolutely need to take care of."

He hobbled down from the North Rim and across the canyon through the night.

At one point, exhausted and hurting, he went about a mile the wrong way.

"Talk about something that deflates you," he said. "You're hobbling out of the canyon. You're struggling."

He was carrying close to 30 pounds, the mark of someone who was experienced in the wilderness but not yet fluent in the specific demands of big canyon miles.

He was not panicked.

But he was learning.

By the end, the first rim-to-rim-to-rim had become exactly the kind of experience that changes a person. It hurt. It humbled him. It gave him mistakes to correct.

And it did something else.

It showed him that he could keep going.

"Life is going to kick you in the teeth at different times," Steve said. "I'd been kicked in the teeth a couple times that year. It was one of those things where I thought, I'm going to start fighting back. I'm going to get strong. I'm going to do more. I'm going to challenge myself."

That first double crossing was not clean.

But it counted.

The People Who Move The Line

Black Mountain has a way of turning strangers into familiar figures.

You see the same people in the same suffering. You learn their rhythms. You learn who is steady, who is fast, who is just getting started, and who is quietly becoming dangerous.

Steve became one of those people.

He also became close with Coach Arnie, our resident exercise physiologist, Grand Canyon coach, and one of the great evangelists for doing hard things intelligently.

"He's a coach, and he takes it to heart," Steve said. "He's trying to make everybody better. You have to have the drive, and I think he sees that in people. Then he'll steer you in the right direction."

It did not take long for Steve and Coach Arnie to start feeding each other's bad ideas.

When the North Rim was closed, Steve looked for another test. Cactus to Clouds came into view.

The route begins in Palm Springs, near the desert floor, and climbs more than 10,000 feet to San Jacinto Peak. Steve described starting in cactus, moving through scrub, then pine, then high alpine terrain. Most hikers who complete Cactus to Clouds descend by tram.

Steve wanted the full out-and-back.

Cactus to Clouds to Cactus.

Before the first attempt, he trained by seeing how many repeats he could do on Black Mountain. Eight would have been absurd. Ten became necessary when Coach Arnie reminded him that he had done ten.

"I thought eight was pretty great," Steve said. "Then Coach was like, 'I did ten.' And I thought, okay, I can do two more."

That is the danger of kinship with hard people.

They do not shame you into more.

They make more feel possible.

Unfinished Business

Steve's first Cactus to Clouds attempt ended at the tram.

Not because he was done physically. Because he forgot the charging cable for his phone. The route is not marked like a standard trail, and he needed navigation for the descent in the dark. A ranger strongly encouraged him not to go down.

This time, Steve listened.

It bothered him anyway.

"It was crushing," he said. "I did all the uphill. I was still feeling good physically."

A couple weeks later, Coach Arnie gave him the opening.

Steve had unfinished business. Arnie had unfinished business of his own. The plan formed quickly: drive from the Phoenix area to Palm Springs in the evening, skip the hotel, start around 1 a.m., climb from the desert floor to San Jacinto Peak, then descend all the way back.

I remember hearing this plan before they left and thinking it sounded like trouble.

They had been up all day. They were going to drive three and a half to four hours. Then they were going to begin what many hikers consider one of the hardest day hikes in North America, without sleeping first.

To Steve, that was not a dealbreaker.

It was just the plan.

"We stopped at a gas station around midnight, had some coffee, got our packs geared up, and hit the trail," he said.

The hike took close to 18 hours.

The descent was long enough for Palm Springs to become a kind of visual taunt. They could see it far below, but it never seemed to get closer quickly enough.

"There is a little mental toughness there," Steve said. "You just keep going down and think, are we ever going to get there?"

Eventually, they did.

Cactus to Clouds to Cactus was finished.

Then, roughly a week later, Steve went back to the Grand Canyon and did another rim-to-rim-to-rim.

Over a stretch of about a month, he had done Cactus to Clouds, Cactus to Clouds to Cactus, and a Grand Canyon double crossing.

It is a ridiculous sentence.

But the point is not that everyone should do that.

The point is that Steve had become the kind of person who could hear about something hard and no longer dismiss it as impossible.

"If somebody says, 'I want to go do something hard, an R3 or whatever it is,' then I'm like, okay, I can do it," he said. "Maybe you need to rest. Maybe you need to train a little. But it's not out of the question. Let's go do some hard things."

The Pack And The Patches

At Steve's house, before the Cactus to Clouds to Cactus trip, I saw his hiKin Canyon Elite pack getting ready for the job.

Later, after the interview, he texted me because he wished he had talked more about the pack on the show. I appreciated that, of course. But what struck me more was what he had done to it.

The front of the pack had become a record.

R2R2R.

Cactus to Clouds to Cactus.

And above them, a patch with a question that says a lot about the spirit of this whole thing:

"But did you die?"

It is funny because it is a little reckless.

It works because the story behind it is not reckless at all.

The pack is not the point. The patches are not the point. The point is that Steve had started collecting proof that he was becoming the person he wanted to be.

Hard things had become part of his identity.

Not in a performative way.

In a practical way.

He wanted to be strong enough for life. Strong enough to hunt with Larry. Strong enough to travel. Strong enough to keep saying yes. Strong enough to pick up future grandkids, as he put it, and keep enjoying the world instead of slowly shrinking from it.

"You need to tap your why," Steve said. "Why do you want to do it? Do you want to be like Larry when you get older and be able to travel the world and continue to do things? Whatever it is, what's your why?"

Then he said the thing every hiker eventually learns, whether on Black Mountain, below the rim, or somewhere far from both.

"It's one step at a time," he said. "One foot in front of the other. That slow progress builds quicker than you think."

What Steve Really Found

There is a temptation with stories like Steve's to turn them into inspiration.

That is too easy.

The better lesson is more useful and less shiny.

Steve did not discover that he was special. He discovered that he was willing.

Willing to start.

Willing to look awkward at first.

Willing to be passed, then to get faster.

Willing to suffer, then to learn why he suffered.

Willing to take advice from people who knew more.

Willing to find the line, step over it, get humbled, and come back smarter.

That is different from generic motivation. It is more durable.

By the end of our conversation, Steve was not selling anyone on giant canyon hikes or 18-hour desert-to-alpine sufferfests. He was talking about possibility.

"There is more out there," he said. "I never thought of the canyon. Never thought of hiking the canyon until you guys started talking about it. There is more stuff. It's just, what's next?"

That question is the whole thing.

Not because everyone needs to do what Steve did.

Most people do not.

But somewhere in the middle of life, a person can still find a harder, better version of himself waiting on a trail he has not tried yet.

Steve found his on Black Mountain.

Then below the rim.

Then on a mountain above Palm Springs, walking out of the desert toward the clouds, then turning around and walking all the way back down.