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When packing for her full-time job this summer, Marissa-Bell Johnson ’26 can take as much as she can carry — and an additional 30 pounds to send by mule.

Johnson will be among a handful of staffers working at a lodging area at Phantom Ranch, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. She will wear many hats, from working at the restaurant, to helping prepare the hotel rooms, to selling items in the convenience store for campers and hikers.

Johnson is already familiar with her summer home. She first hiked in the Grand Canyon when she was 10 years old, and she returned there the summer after she graduated from high school, road tripping with a friend from their Ohio town, a 24-hour car ride. She’s been every summer since.

“The hike is always awful,” she said. “But coming back to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it’s just so incredible down there. It’s like a completely different world. You’re cut off from everybody else. It’s such a great experience.”

Johnson learned of the opportunity to work at Phantom Ranch after speaking to one of the employees during a summer visit. 

“I had just been kind of thinking about it ever since,” Johnson said.

Initially, she was contracted to work at the ranch for a year; however, she was accepted into graduate school for English in the fall in Wisconsin, so she will be at the ranch only until August.

Until then, she’s looking forward to a couple of things. She plans to re-read the Hunger Games series because she reads it every year she goes to the Grand Canyon, from the first time when she was 10. “It’s like my tradition,” she said. She’s also eager to jump in the water at the bottom of the canyon in Bright Angel Creek.

“It's the most fantastic thing. Once you've gotten off that awful hike, it’s like 100 degrees outside. So, it’s so fantastic to get in the creek,” she said. “If I could do the Grand Canyon without the hike, I would absolutely,” Johnson laughed, noting that her passion is the location, not the journey to get there.

She has something making this year’s trek a little heavier, too: an LSAT prep book, as she will take the law school test this summer.