North Rim Grand Canyon

Colorado River Gorge from Imperial Point

We toured the North Rim of the canyon today. The aspen are all aglow in yellows and oranges. Since there was a fire in 2000, many of the Ponderosa pine are just stumps and the aspen are taking over for a few years. We headed out to Imperial point the highest point in the park. There we got a good shot of the country we had traveled yesterday with the Colorado winding its way to the canyon. We continued on toward Cape Royal stopping at the various vistas. I keep hoping to catch a shot of aspen with the canyon, but the angles are never right. At Cape Royal, you get the only view of the Colorado river you can see from this rim. It’s almost 10 miles away and 3500 feet below us. We get a peak of it through Angel’s Window and then a better view of the rich valley bend here, where people have inhabited this area for centuries. At Walhala overlook we bump into a ranger talk about the people who lived here. Apparently, they are starting to use the term “ancient pueblo people’ rather than Anasazi, because it is an Apache term and has a meaning similar to ‘ancient enemies’. Yet the Hopi and other pueblo people are clearly the descendents of these people. They primarily stayed in the canyon, but also farmed the rims here when the population was too large. There are some ruins of their pueblos just across from the overlook.

Grand Canyon from Roosevelt Point

We returned to the lodge for a geology talk. The ranger was very expressive, demonstrating how Arizona has risen and then dropped to be a sea level at least 3 times. The Grand Canyon starting forming after the Rockies were lifted. Why here? 1) There is a lot of carving action because the Colorado drops from 3000 feet. 2) It is an arid climate, so you can see the canyon walls, rather than a lot of greenery. 3) The San Andreus fault broke an opening to the sea for the river to flow toward. 4) The layers of former sediment are a large high plain here, that is they are flat, allowing us to see all the layers down to the base rock. I ended the day hiking out to Bright Angel Point because the sun was behind the clouds the colors were quite vivid.