The Grand Canyon (Part III)

Two hours after we left Sedona in our rearview mirror, taking the 114-mile route through Williams on I-40 and Highway 64, we finally reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

We parked in the Grand Canyon Village (elevation 6,800 feet) and began exploring the various cabins and sites made famous since the official opening of the national park in 1919.

I was not planning to hike the easy 12.8-mile Rim Trail which skirts the edge of Grand Canyon between South Kaibab Trailhead and Hermits Rest. Taking this trail would have given any hiker the opportunity to pass by more than a dozen amazing and “jaw-dropping” viewpoints.

We stopped by the Yavapai Geology Museum and Verkamp’s Visitor Center which happened to be near our parking spot.

Nothing had prepared me for what I experienced when I first laid eyes on the majestic and enormous Grand Canyon - I was absolutely speechless, breathless, afraid that if I blinked, this magnificent otherworldly beauty before my dizzy eyes might disappear. I was choking with emotion, tearing up in amazement, and experiencing absolute joy to be alive in that moment.

It was unlike anything I had ever imagined it would be! Was it really all carved by the Colorado River and fractured into 600 tributary canyons? Was it part of the Biblical Flood? Was it once an ocean?  God’s creation, volcanic activity, hardened lava, the Colorado River, water erosion, and Ancient Aliens must have been busy to create this gigantic “hole in the ground” stretching for 277 miles.

The Canyon’s South Rim extends for 1,373 miles. The North Rim stretches 1,384 miles, a total of 2,757 miles of rim. If one was to build guardrails for it all, it would need to encircle the equivalent of half the planet, according to Michael P. Ghiglieri. 

Colorado River seen through 40x optical zoom

It looked like a strange spatial gorge filled with monoliths of unfriendly and sharp rocks rising out of the mantle of the earth like pyramids and impaling torture devices. The rusty, ochre, orange, pearl, and even violet hues gave the rocks the appearance of an immense dessert that was waiting to be carved for someone’s birthday.

The closer I got to the rim, the dizzier I got. I was grasping for support from branches of small juniper trees growing here and there. The feeling of immense permanence of these rocks vis-a-vis my fleeting and tiny existence in time was overwhelming.

I really felt that, if I blinked, the huge chasm would disappear and I would find myself sitting in my chair comfortably at home, daydreaming about climbing into a caldera in which the volcanic rock had cooled into magnificent shapes. Except these rocks were not all volcanic, and it was not a caldera.

My husband standing by 1,000-year-old juniper tree on the left

We are told by geologists that the Grand Canyon is a mile-deep gorge in northern Arizona which had formed about 6 million years ago when the Colorado River started to carve a channel through layers of sedimentary and other types of rocks.

Sunset on the South Rim

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to make their way into this gorge in the 1540s. But humans have lived in the canyon since the last Ice Age. We have found evidence of such even though most of the Canyon has never been explored.

Since Cortez, and then the 26-year-old Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s exploration of the Canyon in the 1540s, the Spanish looked for the fabled seven cities of Cibola in search of gold but found nothing. Subsequent attempts to go down in the Grand Canyon such as Captain Mendosa, Juan Galeras, and one other man, also failed but they were at least able to go down one third of the way to the Red Wall Limestone cliff. That is when they realized that the tiny boulders, they saw from the rim were actually bigger than the 300-foot Tower of Seville. Trying to go down further looked like suicide so they turned back.

What miners found centuries later resulted in a sort of mineral rush by 1890: copper, uranium, arsenic, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, zinc, lead, and silver. The quantities were never very large, and it was difficult to bring them out of the canyon.

Sunset on the South Rim

We certainly owe a debt of gratitude to President Benjamin Harrison who declared the Grand Canyon protected in 1893 as a forest reserve. It became an official U.S. National Park in 1919 for endless generations to visit and marvel at God’s creations.

Located northwest of Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon is over 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and one mile deep, one-tenth the length of the continental U.S., containing the oldest exposed rock on Earth with a cross-section of the Earth’s crust dating back two billion years. What a magnificent opportunity for geologists to study evolution through time!

I walked the Trail of Time in awe. James Kaiser wrote in his book that, when walking the Trail of Time, with each meter, you are walking one million years. “So, the 1.3-mile trail, which stretches between Yavapai Geology Museum and Verkamp’s Visitor Center, represents 2.1 billion years of Earth history.”

At the west end of the Trail of Time is Verkamp’s visitor center named after John G. Verkamp, a pioneer who began selling “curious” to visitors in 1905. His family ran the bookstore, the early pioneer historical exhibits, and information desk for 103 years, the longest family-owned business in all parks. The National Park Service bought it in 2008.

Hopi House seen from El Tovar porch

The Vishnu Basement Rocks at the bottom of the Inner Gorge formed 1.7 billion years ago “when magma hardened and joined this region (once a volcanic ocean chain) to the North American continent.” Rising to 7,533 feet, the Vishnu Temple is a pyramid named by geologist Clarence Dutton after the Hindu’s four-armed Supreme Being. This geological formation can be admired from many viewpoints along Desert View Drive. (Museum Archives)

View of the South Rim from El Tovar Lodge

The Havasupai, according to their tribal history, have lived in and around the canyon for more than 800 years. The Paiute, Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi tribes, preceded by ancestral Pueblo people have one time or another inhabited the Grand Canyon. But when the Grand Canyon land was taken and turned into a reserve and later into a national park, the tribal lands became public lands.

The Havasupai received in 1975 a substantial portion of their land back from the federal government once their cause was pleaded publicly. The tribe capitalized on tourism; the cerulean blue pools and red rocks of Havasu Falls are a great attraction for 20,000 visitors each year.

Mary Colter, a famous architect, designed eight buildings at the Grand Canyon, among them the Hopi House, Bright Angel Lodge, Hermit’s Nest, Lookout Studio, Phantom Ranch, and Desert View Watchtower.

The Hopi House was built in 1904 as a concessioner facility for the historic inhabitants, the Hopis, featuring their artisan crafts. Colter designed it to resemble a traditional Hopi pueblo with its low hanging door frames. It opened on January 1, 1905, two weeks before the El Tovar Hotel across from the Hopi House.

El Tovar Hotel, “the Ritz of the Divine Abyss,” built before the area became a national park, was designed as a destination resort by the Santa Fe Railway. The tradition to name places after Spanish names resulted in this hotel being named El Tovar after Pedro de Tovar, who spread the rumors of a large river in the area, inspiring the Garcia Lopez de Cardenas expedition in 1540, the first European to have glimpsed the canyon. They used Hopi guides. The expedition did not go far when they ran out of provisions. They decided that the Colorado River was small, only six feet wide when the river is 300 feet wide in places.

During those times, a destination resort provided an elevated level of luxury and comfort at “the edge of wilderness,” twenty feet from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Other such destination resorts were later built in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The same design was used in similar parks, superficially rustic but offering quite comfortable visits. Roosevelt stayed at El Tovar in 1911 and 1913 and even authored a book about his 1913 trip.

The sunset (the Hopi Point is the most famous view, but Mather Point is the most popular due to its proximity to the visitor center) over the Grand Canyon filled our eyes with an amazing painter’s pallet of dark blue shadows over the rock formations, with hues of orange, red, purple, and pink. Our left side cheeks and bodies were illuminated at just the right moment before the sun disappeared in the west.

The Abyss’s sheer cliffs drop from the canyon’s edge almost 3,000 feet. Here you can glimpse the top six rock layers which showcase 80 million years of our planet’s history.

The Grand Canyon is a shocking abyss, its geology is millions of years old, made up of cooled lava (basalt), limestone, sandstone, shale, dolomite, quartzite, granite, and other rocks. One mile down, the Colorado River shines a beautiful green. If one falls from the top of the South Rim, one will never reach the very bottom. He/she would disappear in the rocky and sharp chasm.

I viewed the ledge, whether with a retaining wall, a metal grate, or a chicken wire barely reaching my thigh, or nothing at all, as extremely dangerous, one eye blink away from a fatal misstep, dizziness, vertigo, or fainting.

Dee Dee Johnson, a stunning fashion designer, attempted to model “pedal pushers” on September 15, 1946, on the parapet wall of the South Rim while photographers were recording the moments with blinding flashes. In a split second, she fell off the wall and disappeared into the chasm below.

How many people fall off the rim is a frequently asked question. Nobody can give an exact number, but the rangers know for sure that falling off the rim almost always equals death. Dee Dee got lucky, and her fall was arrested temporarily by debris. She was saved by a swift ranger who was able to rope her to a Pinyon Tree and stop her falling into the rocky void.

Michael P. Ghiglieri lists 67 names of people who fatally fell from the Grand Canyon rims since the establishment of the park in 1919. (Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, pp. 33-42, second edition, June 2022)

The immense vista has a magnetic pull on all visitors. Adrenaline junkies fall into a bizarre category of humans who take stupid chances for reasons that the rest of us fail to understand.

Other humans add alcohol into the mix and the results are deadly. Some commit suicide, others play foolish pranks on their families and fall over, some pass out, some have heart attacks, others die of heat stroke (it is increasingly hotter as hikers descend into the canyon, a 30 degree F temperature difference from the rim), or hypothermia, lack of water; others disappear forever, their bodies never to be found. Fatal errors inside the Grand Canyon since its opening as a park resulted in 750 known victims who perished in various parts, for similar reasons.

My husband sat on a blanket watching the sunset over the canyon one evening but I was too spooked to even sit down close to the fenceless rim. I stood the entire time, took pictures, but kept my distance from the edge. I fought hard the dizzying magnetic pull of the void.

Young couples had brought their toddlers, babies, and infants, and while holding them in their arms or by their hands, they stepped at the very edge of the void. One couple had brought their two dogs. How can they not have any sense of danger for themselves and their babies, standing unguarded and unprotected on the rim of a mile-deep gorge? Are pictures and leaning over for a better look or a better selfie worth dying for?

Through the years, hundreds of people have fallen to their deaths, some were lucky enough to survive and be rescued, and lived to talk about it.

I would never understand the fascination of being at the edge of death, toying with one’s life for the sake of a better view or a better selfie, but I left the enormous gorge with a better understanding of my justified and rational fear of the dangers of Mother Nature. I felt the magnetic pull towards the edge; I stepped on the occasional loose gravel at the edge, and experienced dizziness and vertigo, the closer I got to the South Rim. I was painfully aware that one wrong step or slip would mean the difference between survival and disaster. Like my husband aptly said, we were “canyon-ed out” and were ready to leave the fierce and dangerous Mother Nature behind. Just because you can hike down the gorge, on foot or with mules, no matter how prepared, does not mean that you should. Mother Nature always has the last word.

The ride back to Phoenix was uneventful, we were jarred by the many cracks and potholes on the highways and on the interstate and the driver’s love of speed. You would think that, given the number of close to seven million visitors per year, the roads to the Grand Canyon and their maintenance would be stellar.

Free stock photo (author unknown)

I spotted a female elk grazing at the edge of the ponderosa pine forest and a male elk further in, standing majestically between the trees, with its huge rack visible from afar.

My photo of the female elk

Miles and miles down the road, below the 3,000 elevations, the forests were replaced by low desert brush and large Saguaro cacti. Once we made it to Phoenix, the pleasant cool air and temperatures were replaced by infernal dry heat, upwards of 103 F.

Would I go back to visit the Grand Canyon? I would visit the Western Rim with its Sky Walk but I am in no hurry. I would rather hike in our local forests, 45 feet above sea level, where the only dangers are the occasional snakes and recently seen bears pushed increasingly by northern Virginia deforestation from their habitat, to make room for more ugly apartments and condominiums.

 

Copyrighted photos: Ileana Johnson, June 2024 (except the female elk stock photo)