Walking after Midnight
My time at Grand Canyon National Park was full of adventure. After a few weeks on the job my supervisor sent me on a week-long trip down the Colorado River. The voyage by oar-powered raft was part of the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies program, measuring the impacts of the Glen Canyon Dam on the downstream environment. The trip was in November and it snowed one day while we were on the water, but despite the frigid conditions it was a tremendous way to experience the Canyon.
I spent much of my free time hiking the Canyon’s many trails, or walking along the rim, searching for a new vantage point from which to watch sunrise or sunset. Beyond a doubt one of the most exciting things I did was to hike into the canyon under a full moon.
I did this three times; the first two sojourns were down the Bright Angel Trail – the canyon’s main thoroughfare on the South Rim – to the Tonto Plateau and then on to Indian Garden and Plateau Point. From there I was able to watch the sun rise over the defile of the Colorado River where it cuts through ancient Vishnu Schist to create the Marble Gorge. That’s a pretty good way to start the day.
For my third moonlight stroll I woke at 2 AM and made my way through the sleeping village to the trail-head and silently dropped below the rim. There is no easy way in or out of the Grand Canyon. Even the popular trails like Bright Angel and the South Kaibab are steep, with precipitous drops. When I was working at Grand Canyon there was little water to be found along the trails, so you carried your own, or you went without. In the summer months that could, and sometimes did, mean you died hiking the canyon. I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach starting this hike: it was so much into the dark unknown.
I started work at Grand Canyon in October, and my first night hikes where during the full moons of that month and November. My third was during the week between Christmas and New Years. The South Rim, though a thousand feet lower than the North Rim, still gets its fare share of snow, so for the first couple of miles I wore my in-step crampons. Unlike those worn for mountaineering, these crampons only cover about a third of the sole of your book, and are perfect for such conditions. The trail was icy, especially near the top where tourists had taken a few tentative steps into the gorge and packed the snow hard. A slip could mean a very rapid decent over cliffs that dropped hundreds of feet straight down.
I adjusted the headlamp on my head as I made my way down a series of steep switchbacks. I wanted to use it as little as possible, but on the upper icy sections it was just too much of a risk. By the time I got to Indian Garden, where there is a Ranger Station, I was able to stow my crampons in my pack and rely on the moon to light my way.
There is a stillness in the Grand Canyon at night that is mesmerizing. The canyon walls glow with a silvery-blue light; the sky, smeared with stars, is hemmed in between these ramparts. In the middle of winter there is also a silence: many of the Canyon’s nocturnal creatures are hibernating. Off in the distance, however, you can always hear the murmur of the Colorado River.
From Indian Graves I struck out on a trail I’d never walked, in daylight or night, that followed the rolling plateau two-thirds of the way into the grotto. This path, unlike so many in the canyon that go straight up and down, followed the rolling contours of the Tonto Plateau. It was here I was able to stride out, marching long at a brisk pace, the moon hovering above like a spotlight.
I recall getting turned around once or twice, but never for long. The hard packed track stood in stark relief against the red sand and scattered vegetation found along the plateau. Most of the way I walked without the aid of my headlamp, confident in my own route finding and comfortable and at home in the canyon environment.
By six in the morning I’d reached the intersection of the South Kaibab Trail and had started the long, grueling climb up three thousand feet of steep, winding trail. That’s about when the sun came up.
Everything stops for sunrise. I sat down on the rocks at Skeleton Point and waited. This is always a time of anticipation at the Grand Canyon. Every single morning I lived there I got up and walked to some random point along the South Rim to wait for the sun before reporting for duty at the Visitor Centre. These mornings, deep in the canyon, were the most precious sunrise experiences I had. Alone with the wheeling ravens and my thoughts, I began to develop a deep appreciation for what makes this place so grand. Its not just what is there: its what is not.
There is nothing that compares, in my experience, to the marvelous space that is the Grand Canyon. Watching the light adorn the Canyon walls in every conceivable shade of red and orange from several thousand feet below the rim that morning, and others, was the highlight of my time there.
After an hour the show was over, for the time being, so I hiked up the trail and at the payphone in the parking lot called my boss and asked for a lift back to the village from Yaki Point.
The second book in the Red Rock Canyon Mystery series is called Black Sun Descending. It’s set, in part, at the Grand Canyon. The Black Sun in question refers to Edward Abbey’s book of that name. On those moon-lit walked through the Grand Canyon I think I imprinted some of what Abbey must have felt when he said this of the place:
“It is an honor to be a visitor in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, as it is an honor and a privilege to be alive, however briefly, on this marvelous planet we call Earth.”
I worked at Grand Canyon for about four months, and after some circling in the Southwest came back for another week later that winter before heading north to Canada. In that time I began to learn what another famous canyoneer did about the place:
“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.”
Major John Wesley Powell wrote that when he, and his half-starved and more-than-half crazed expedition rowed their way through the Grand Canyon in 1869.
I wouldn’t say I ever toiled through its labyrinths, but I spent many joyous days hiking in, and sitting on the rim of that extraordinary spectacle, and when I left it had dug an impression in my head and in my heart as deep and wide as the canyon itself. Telling the stories of Silas Pearson in the Red Rock Canyon series is an excuse to impart some of what I felt while exploring this amazing landscape.
The Slickrock Paradox is now available from fine book sellers near you, and online. You can follow these and other adventures on twitter @stephenlegault.
