Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon:

Still the Colorado Plateau, still countless layers of sedimentary rock, still the same forces of nature (water, gravity, ice and wind) at work sculpting the landscape, still the same brilliant colours, so you may be thinking, “What’s so special about the Grand Canyon?”

1        1. There is the scale. WOW! The Canyon is so absolutely breathtakingly HUGE that we            find it impossible to fully comprehend its true dimensions. Can that puny little strip of             brown way down there really be the mighty Colorado River?

2          2. There is the geological history exposed in the terraced sides, sheer cliff-faces, steep             shale slopes and pyramid-like towers of the Canyon walls. Over the last six million years       the river has exposed much of the past almost two BILLION years of the geological               history of the plateau.

3     3. There is the ever-present evidence of the power of moving water, not only in the mighty        Colorado River itself, but also in the multitude of side canyons which join the river in              times of summer thunderstorms to create the fantastic shapes of the canyon walls.

During our visit the river is its traditional, true-to-name red-brown colour due to flash flooding of the Little Colorado, but these days it is usually clear and green as most of the sediment settles behind Glen Canyon Dam, the flow is regulated and so the character and ecology of the river has changed.

(More information relating to the geology and history of the canyon is appended below)

From our rather cool overnight stop at Jacob Lake (no lake to be seen) some 60 kilometres

outside the park we first visit the North Rim.  Being around 300 metres higher than the South Rim, it attracts far greater precipitation and so the Kaibab Plateau, where the visitor centre is located, is clad in dense pine, fir, aspen and spruce forest interspersed with large, grassy meadows. A light dusting of snow is a reminder that winter is on the way.

While it attracts far fewer visitors, many believe this side of the Canyon to be more impressive than its counterpart. We, of course, are in no position to judge, but suffice to say we are mightily impressed. The spectacular views from such vantage points as the narrow, precipitous Bright Angel Point and Cape Royal – at 2,700 metres the highest point on either Canyon Rim – defy description. We’ll leave that to the pictures. Other highlights include the Puebloan ruins on the Walhalla Plateau and our first glimpses of the Colorado looking quite tiny 1600 metres below – especially the quirky view through Angels Window.

Another special moment is the chance sighting at our campsite of two quite rare Kaibab squirrel found only in the stands of Ponderosa pines on this plateau. For an hour we watch intrigued as they cavort around high in the treetops gathering pinecones, flashing their pure white bushy tails and skilfully avoiding being photographed before the cold drives us into the warmth of the RV.

While it is ‘only’ seventeen kilometres “as the raven flies” across the Canyon to the South Rim, it is over two hundred by road. The forests and meadows soon give way to harsh desert as the road descends steeply to the renowned Vermillion Cliffs at the foot of which is the Pipe Spring National Monument.  For centuries this spring was a vital source of water for Ancestral Puebloans and Kaibab Paiutes (whose descendants still live in the area) but it now lies beneath the floor of a fortified ranch, nicknamed ‘Winsor Castle’ after the first ranch manager, Anson Winsor.  Built by pioneer Mormons, it was at first a stronghold against Navajo Indians who were raiding the Mormon ‘tithing herds’ and later as a hideout for polygamous wives, following the passing of federal laws in the mid 1880s making polygamy a felony. Men would hide their ‘plural’ wives here to avoid detection. A watch tower in the roof gave forewarning of approaching law enforcement agencies.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints tithed (gave 10% of their income) to the Church, often in the form of cattle, hence the term ‘tithing herds.’

Our route then crosses a rather placid looking Colorado via the wonderfully engineered Navajo Bridge – we are now on a Navajo Reserve – and a much livelier Little Colorado before climbing once more through a parched landscape to a much drier South Rim at Desert View. It is from here that we enjoy the most extensive view of the Colorado as it snakes its way along the Canyon floor far below.

The effect of the lower rainfall on this Rim of the Canyon is reflected in the vegetation, with only a few scattered stands of Ponderosa Pines in more favoured locations. These stands, however, do support a population of the distinctive Aberts squirrel, a close but long separated cousin of the Kaibab squirrel of the North Rim. We are both intrigued and anxious to discover what is so different about the nonnative elk mentioned in the brochure until we realise that the only difference is a missing hyphen!

We are soon once again enjoying the great company of our personal tour guides, Audrey and Ken, who we meet up with again at the South Rim Trailer Village. We also use the free shuttle bus service as we explore sections of the Rim trail and visit many of the viewpoints, each offering different but equally spectacular vistas across the Canyon. Once again we will leave it to the photos to tell the story. 

Like some other Parks, visitation here is now such that traffic needs to be regulated with some roads only available to shuttles.

John:  A highlight for me was the descent of the Bright Angel Trail – a 19 kilometre round trip below the Rim – first to Indian Gardens (the location of a backpacker campsite) and then to Plateau Point. Indian Gardens surrounds a natural spring and provides a splash of green, largely provided by a stand of very large cottonwoods, in an otherwise arid landscape. Plateau Point, a couple of kilometres further on, provides a birds-eye view of the Colorado almost directly below, but as it is still some 600 metres below it still looks quite small. However, the turbulence created by the rapids and eddies still manage to convey an image of immense power.

Having enjoyed the spectacle and solitude for 20 minutes or so it’s time to confront the 1000 metre climb back to the Rim. The trail is actually very well graded and allows for a steady rhythm but it still doesn’t pay to look up too often. Elaine’s offer of a coffee and snack at a posh café is gratefully accepted after a hot six-and-a-half hours on the track.

Facts and Figures

The Grand Canyon is officially 446 kilometres in length, up to 29 kilometres in width and 1.6 kilometres deep. While the river has exposed around 1600 metres of the geological history of the plateau, this represents only about two thirds of the total 1.8 billion years. Erosive forces long before the river began its work have removed many tiers between periods of deposition. If all of the original sedimentary rock strata were still present, the Canyon walls would be around 4.6 kilometres, three times, as high!

Below the sedimentary capping of the Kaibab Formation – formed under shallow, warm seas some 270 million years ago – the strata becomes progressively older until, at about 900 metres down, the igneous and metamorphic Vishnu Basement rocks – granite, schists and gneisses – are exposed. These date back to around 1.8 billion years and, being more resistant, form the sheer cliffs of the Inner Canyon.

Difficult to spot from above, the Colorado looks quite puny – much smaller even than the Barwon as it passes through Geelong – but it is around 90 metres wide and deep, cold and deceptively fast flowing. Even these days, with its flow restricted by Glen Canyon Dam above and Hoover Dam below, it transports large quantities of silt, sand and rock which continue to erode the Canyon floor, but prior to the dams, annual floods would have carried hundreds of thousands of tons of sediment through the Canyon daily. Although at times in the past it could have carried ten times the volume of water, mystery still surrounds how the river managed in just six million years to carve its way so deeply into the plateau. With catchments of predominantly bare rock, side canyons become raging torrents during summer thunderstorms, moving with a force that tumbles huge boulders down into the river, frequently in such volume as to create entirely new sets of rapids.

With most of the sediment now settling behind Glen Canyon Dam, most of the traditional sandbars have been swept away and not replaced, and the clear water is colder and admits more light causing significant ecological issues for both plant and animal communities – another of man’s unintended consequences.  

Signs of human occupation of the Canyon can be found both on the Rims and on small alluvial fans beside the river. Earliest evidence is of Paleo-Indian hunters from around 12,000 years ago through to ancestral Puebloans who cultivated crops of corn, beans and squash on the Rim in summer and in the warmer conditions by the river in winter. Led by Hopi guides, the first Europeans to visit were Spanish explorers in 1540, while the first to undertake the treacherous descent of the Colorado Canyon was an expedition led by John Wesley Powell in 1869.

It is a difficult and dangerous enough challenge even these days in large, tough, purpose built inflatable rafts and wearing wetsuits and lifejackets. One can only imagine the apprehension of these brave (perhaps foolhardy) adventurers as they set off into the terrifying unknown of the canyon in tiny, decked-in, clinker-built dinghies in regular clothing of the day and no lifejackets!!

The completion of the Union Pacific Railroad to the South Rim in 1901 greatly boosted tourism (these days around 5,000,000 visitors annually) while its proclamation as a National Park in 1919 has ensured its protection for future generations.