I wanted to go on a weekday to avoid any possible crowds, and to get there as early as possible. I was informed on Facebook that sunrise was a great time to see the canyon. Greg had called me from Memphis and told me that the canyon walls would be glistening right after a snowstorm. Everything was aligned for a perfect day.
With the idea of getting up there before dawn, I set my alarm for 0430 and prepared the car the night before by brushing off all the snow that had been sitting on it for three days. By ten minutes after five I was on the road, winding through the silent, empty streets of Flagstaff and then heading out into the pitch black on the two-lane highway heading north.
After a half hour I noticed how the dark sky was filled with stars, the kind of brilliant clear rich night where the galaxy is out in all its splendor and you seem to see ten time more stars than normal. Off to the right the stars were blotted out by the void of Humphreys Peak. There are things more ominously beautiful than the the dark outline of a mountain against the sky at night.
My early start paid off when I got to the gate of the park, with only a single other vehicle behind me. I asked the Native American woman ranger about a good place to watch the sunrise, and she pointed to a nearby overlook on the map. I noted the location but she didn't say the name, so I had to get out and hold the map in front of my headlights to find it.
I parked and followed a short trail to the overlook, at the very rim of the dark canyon, with a smattering of a dawn glow off to the east. There were about a dozen other already there, mostly Japanese tourists.
Even bundled up as I was in layers, I was soon freezing, standing in the snow, and had to withdraw my fingers into a fist in my gloves.
The sun seemed to take forever to come up, and when it did I quickly concluded that I had come needlessly early. "Sunrise" is a relative concept at the Grand Canyon. The official sunrise is of course only when the sun is visible from the rim. The recesses of the canyon stayed well dark for another hour or two.
By that time I had driven down the road to Hermit's Rest---the road being open to cars in the winter. The gift shop there had opened and I bought a mocha and warmed myself inside by the fire.
I had thought about doing some day hiking but decided to make it a driving day, skipping from one overlook to another along the South Rim, all the way down to Desert View and the tower there than affords one of the best views of the canyon in the mid morning.
The crowds were wonderfully sparse, both on the roads and on the overlook. At several, I was all by myself. At one, I find myself accompanied only by a young Japanese man who insisted we swap smartphones to self-portraits. Given the perfect clarity of the skies, it was probably the best possible day to visit the Canyon.
I was intrigued by how it is not just a "canyon," but a layered series of canyons. From many overlooks, it was clear that below the rim itself, there were several tiers of deeper and more narrowing "canyons with canyons," and then finally a narrow plunging gorge cut down to the river itself.
Of course it was overwhelming experience. I found myself simply trying to gather it in as a first approximation of appreciation, closing myself and taking mental photographs to burn into my memory, with a resolution to come back at a later day to hike down to the river.
No comments:
Post a Comment