From the moment Fletcher began researching his project, it was clear that the goal he’d set suffered from too much ambition and not nearly enough pragmatism. After making inquiries about the basic topography and badgering park officials on the feasibility of feeling one’s way along the cliffs and ledges, he wasn’t sure he even understood where such a route might start, or how it should finish. “No two people,” he later grumbled, “seemed able to agree about where the canyon began and ended.”II
