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| The magnificent Grand Canyon |
I have been to the Grand Canyon so many times I
can't even count my visits.
I even blogged about my history with this magnificent park.
I posted about the Grand Canyon in May 2017 and November 2013.
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| South Rim views |
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| Areas of the Grand Canyon accessible by road |
Plus, I did a whole series last May when Scott and I rafted through the Canyon and went to the North Rim.
This time, Caty and I went to the South Rim in Grand Canyon
National Park.
It is the most accessible and most visited part of the Park and,
even though it can get snow, is open year-round.
The North Rim, which is far
more remote (215 miles by road from the South Rim) and has far more brutal
weather, is open only from late spring to early fall.
Geology
The Grand Canyon National Park, which is roughly the size of
Delaware, is 277 miles long. It ranges in width from four to 18 miles wide and from
600 to 6,093 feet deep. The Colorado River, which snakes through the bottom,
ranges from 15 to 76 feet wide.
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| The Colorado River continues to carve the Canyon |
The Grand Canyon was formed by two competing forces – a
river carving down and tectonic forces pushing the Colorado Plateau up – exposing
nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history.
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| Grand Canyon panorama |
Because the Colorado Plateau is about 1,000 feet higher on
the north, almost all runoff from the
North Rim (which gets more rain and snow) flows toward the Grand Canyon, while
much of the runoff on the plateau behind the South Rim flows away from the Canyon
(following the general tilt). The result is deeper and longer washes and
canyons on the north and shorter and steeper side canyons on the south.
The Canyon’s geologic
layers range from the 2-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the
Inner Gorge to 230-million-year-old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim.
There is a gap
of about a billion years between the 500-million-year-old stratum and the level
below it, which dates to about 1.5 billion years ago, indicating a long period
for which no deposits were made.
Many of the formations were deposited in warm shallow seas,
beaches and swamps as the waters repeatedly advanced and retreated. There are
also preserved sand dunes. and layers that indicate that the area was not always beside an ocean.
The major uplift occurred 5 to 6 million years ago, followed
by gentle erosion. When the Gulf of California opened 5.3 million years ago,
the base level of the Colorado River dropped and the rate of erosion accelerated.
Most of the Canyon's current depth had been achieved by 1.2 million years ago. The terraced walls of the canyon were created – and continue to be created – by
additional erosion.
But that wasn’t enough. Volcanoes erupting between 3 million
and 100,000 years ago, deposited ash and lava, intermittently damming the river
until the force of the river could re-cut a channel.
The Park
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| Centennial stamp |
This year is the 100th anniversary of Grand
Canyon National Park, which, among other things, means that we got a special
stamp for our National Park Passports.
The Grand Canyon was a National Monument for 11 years
before receiving Park status in 1919. (a President can establish a National Monument; Congress must establish National Parks).
It is the second-most visited National Park (after Great
Smoky Mountains), with 6.3 million visitors in 2018.
The South Rim of the Park has about 60 miles of road and
numerous overlooks along the Rim from Desert View to the east to Hermit's Rest
in the west. The eastern portion can be visited by car, but the western portion
can be visited only by Park shuttle bus. This has greatly reduced the
congestion on the narrow, winding road and makes it very easy to see the Canyon
without having to find a parking space.
History
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| Havasupai women, 1899; Photo: George Wharton James |
For thousands of years, the area has been inhabited by Native Americans. Among the Peoples living there were Ancestral Puebloans, the Cohonina (ancestors
of the Yuman, Havasupai and Walapai peoples who inhabit the area today) and the
Sinagua (possibly ancestors of present-day Hopis).
The first European to view the Canyon was
García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540. Then, no more Europeans visited for more than 200 years.
In 1776, Spanish Catholic Priests Francisco Atanasio
Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante traveled with Spanish soldiers along
the North Rim in Glen and Marble Canyons in search of a route from Santa Fe to
California. They eventually found a crossing, formerly known as the
"Crossing of the Fathers," that today lies under Lake Powell. The
same year, Fray Francisco Garces, a Franciscan missionary, spent a week near
Havasupai, unsuccessfully attempting to convert a band of Native Americans to
Christianity.
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| Park History from the National Park Service |
In the early 1820s, Americans, including trappers and
Mormons traveling to Utah, began to visit the Canyon. A number of expeditions
were conducted in the mid-1800s
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| People from all over visit |
In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran and avid explorer, led the first expedition
down the present day Grand Canyon.
With nine men, four boats and food for 10 months, he traveled
from Green River, Wyoming, to the Colorado River, near present-day Moab, Utah,
and then began his trip through the Canyon.
One man quit after the first month
and three more left at Separation Canyon in the third month just two days
before the group reached the mouth of the Virgin River. The latter three
disappeared; perhaps killed by Native Americans in the Canyon or by
Mormons in the town of Toquerville.
In 1871, Powell first used the term
"Grand Canyon;" previously it had been called the "Big
Canyon."
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| Henry C. Pitz painting of John Wesley Powell and his party going through the Grand Canyon |
Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903 and established
the Grand Canyon Game Preserve in 1906. Livestock grazing was reduced, but
predators such as mountain lions, eagles and wolves were eradicated. Back then, they just didn't realize the impact of removing animals they considered pests.
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| Teddy Roosevelt in the Grand Canyon |
Once the
Antiquities Act of 1906 was passed, Roosevelt added adjacent national forest
lands and redesignated the preserve a U.S. National Monument in 1908.
Opponents, including land and mining claim holders, blocked efforts to
reclassify the monument as a U.S. National Park until 1919.
There are several historic buildings located along the South
Rim near Grand Canyon Village. The Kolb Studio, which was very close to our
room, was built in 1904 by brothers Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, who made a living
photographing visitors walking down the Bright Angel Trail. In 1911, the Kolb
brothers filmed their journey down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Emery Kolb
showed this movie regularly in his studio until 1976, when he died at the age
of 95. Today the building is an art gallery and exhibit.
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| Displays inside the Kolb Studio |
Bright Angel Lodge, where we stayed, was built of logs and
stone in 1935. Mary Colter designed the lodge and it was built by the Fred
Harvey Company.
Animals
There are 52 mammal species in the Grand Canyon, including
Desert Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Lions, Elk, Mule Deer, Raccoons, Coyotes,
Ringtails and lots of bats and rodents.
I saw a couple of Mule Deer coming out of the Canyon in the early morning. We saw a few Elk far off in the distance, but no Bighorn Sheep.
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| Early morning Mule Deer |
There are about 48 species of birds, but we saw only Common
Ravens and Juncos.
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| A Common Raven soars over the Canyon |
We may have seen a Peregrine Falcon far, far below the rim,
but it was too far away and too fast for us to be sure.
We did, however, get one rare treat: Javelinas. Two crossed
the road right in front of our car on the east side of the park! We had to stop
suddenly and we were lucky the guy behind us didn’t hit us. Multiple cars sped
by while we were taking pictures and then trying to find the Javelinas after they
disappeared in the bushes.
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| Javelina crossing |
I just can’t understand people who visit National parks and
then are not interested in the wildlife.
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| Javelinas, which are NOT pigs, are also called Collared Peccaries |
Accommodations
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| Our cabin was like this |
Caty and I stayed one night at the Thunderbird Lodge and one
night at the Bright Angel Lodge. Both have been updated recently and now have
TVs and WiFi! Both were lovely. Our Bright Angel Lodge cabin was just steps
from the Rim.
It is very tough to get reservations at the Grand Canyon,
which is why we had to switch rooms. However, we were very lucky and our second
night's room was ready in the morning.
The only downside to Grand Canyon lodging is parking. It's
very tight because there is no parking reserved for hotel guests. So, you grab
whatever slot you can and then try to move closer in the late afternoon/early
evening when things thin out a little. The first night, we had to schlep luggage a long way in the dark. But, the next night it worked out. We had a space
right across from our room.
Of course, I forgot to photograph our room!!!
Our Trip
We didn’t do much special, except that every minute spent at
the Grand Canyon is special. In the morning, we took the shuttle to Hermit’s
Rest, the farthest easily accessible overlook on the west side of the Park.
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| Hermit's Rest has a nice photo op |
This area is closed to automobile traffic the majority of the year. But, the
buses are frequent and comfortable, so that is the best way to go. The outbound
buses stop at all nine overlooks; the inbound at only three. So, we stopped at
most going out, opting to walk the last mile to Hermit’s Rest along the paved
Rim Trail. Then, we just made one stop coming back.
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| On the rim |
Then, we got in the car to explore the east part of the
Park, driving the 19-mile road out to Desert View. We stopped multiple times
along the way to get Passport stamps ...
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| Just a few of our stamps |
... visit the Tusayan Ruins ...
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| Tusayan kiva and house |
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| Nice shot of the distant San Fransisco Peaks from Tusayan Ruins |
... and visit the Desert View Watchtower (which I wrote about in 2015).
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| Desert View Watchtower |
Desert View
Watchtower
Also known as the Indian Watchtower at Desert View, this 70-foot-high
stone building is east of the main developed area at Grand
Canyon Village near the east entrance to the Park.
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| Desert View Watchtower |
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| Colter is on the right |
The four-story structure,
completed in 1932, was designed by American architect Mary Colter, an employee
of the Fred Harvey Company. She created and designed many other Grand Canyon buildings, including Hermit's Rest and the Lookout Studio. Desert View Watchtower was the last of Mary Colter-designed visitor concession structures at the Grand Canyon until she renovated the Bright Angel Lodge in 1935. The tower was designed to
resemble an Ancient Pueblo Peoples watchtower, but its size dwarfs any known
Pueblan-built tower.
The closest prototypes for such a structure may be found at Canyons of the Ancients and at Hovenweep National Monument in Colorado and Utah.
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| Towers at Canyons of the Ancients, left, and Hovenweep, right |
The structure is composed of a circular coursed masonry
tower rising from a rubble base. The base was intentionally designed to convey
a partly ruinous appearance, perhaps of an older structure on which the
watchtower was later built. The base is arranged within a large circle with the
tower to the north. Tiny windows are irregularly disposed, some of which are
themselves irregular in shape.
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| Caty looks down from the balcony |
The main space is the Kiva Room in the base structure, roofed with logs salvaged from the old Grandview Hotel. The false ceiling conceals a structure that supports an observation deck. The Kiva Room has a fireplace with a picture window above where the chimney would ordinarily go.
The tower rises as an open shaft lined by circular interior balconies
overlooking the central space.
Access from balcony to balcony is provided by
small stairways (too bad Mary didn’t envision two staircases – one up and one
down!). At the top the space is decked over, creating an enclosed observation
level with large glazed windows that were a bit fogged on the cold day we went
up.
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| Kabootie and Greer wall decorations |
The tower is decorated by bold murals by Fred Kabotie, with
other, petroglyph-style decorations by Fred Greer.
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| Kabootie, right, with his work in the Desert View Watchtower |
In 2008, two tourists were banned from all American National Parks for a year after using white-out and permanent marker to
correct the punctuation on a sign on the Desert View Watchtower, which had been
painted by Colter. Although I sympathize with their motives of improving
grammar, I do see the historical issue here.
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| Desert View Watchtower |
Sunset
We decide to photograph sunset on the east side of the park.
Most people flock to the west, but there you get just a red orb and a
completely black canyon.
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| To the west, you see the sun (looks like two through the clouds), but not the Canyon |
On the east, you can get the red glow of sunset
illuminating the Canyon.
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| Sunset illumination |
The night we were there was a rather mundane sunset,
probably because of some haze in the Canyon. Still, there were some pretty
moments.
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| Haze in the Canyon |
Of course, the good moments were spoiled by idiots who feel
that rules don’t apply to them. The Grand Canyon had many overlooks with
railings to protect people from falling. If you stand at the railing you get an
unobstructed view.
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| My family has a long history of staying behind the rails: 1987, 2017, 1975 |
Except, of course, if your view is obstructed by people who
climb over the railings and place themselves closer to the edge. This means
that they are front and center in your photos. This night two guys were way out
on a big rock and two women were down below on a smaller promontory. By the time
the sun set, at least a dozen people were on the lower shelf.
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| Selfish idiots |
An average of 12 people die each year at the Grand Canyon,
including from natural causes, medical problems, suicide, heat, drowning and
traffic crashes. Two to three deaths per year are from falls over
the rim, generally from places you are not supposed to be. I
wonder how many deaths are from being assaulted by a photographer after you screwed
up a perfect landscape shot with your selfish disregard of rules?
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| Sunset shot minus people; Thank goodness for Photoshop! |
Oh, and although I just seethed about the people climbing
over the railings (I knew they wouldn’t care that they were ruining the view
for everyone else if I spoke up), I did yell at an idiot who started throwing rocks over the edge.
Some people!
Night Sky
The Grand Canyon generally has exceptionally clear skies,
which makes for excellent night photos. We had four factors working against us
on our trip: it was cold, it was very windy, recent rains had increased humidity making the sky a bit hazy and the Moon was almost full. Still, we got a few shots.
It is amazing how much the Moon lights the Canyon and you just can’t go wrong with the Big Dipper …
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| Night sky photos |
It was just a quick trip, but lots of fun, even with an 11-hour
drive home the next day!
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| Caty and me |
Trip date: March 20-23, 2019
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