While indulging in a long weekend in Las Vegas during spring break, Janet and I spent an amazing few hours at Grand Canyon National Park. When we signed up for this "luxury motor coach tour," I had no idea that it involved a wicked-long 4.5-hour bus ride. But I must say, despite the very bad food they served us and the really annoying humor of the bus driver, it was totally worth it. The Grand Canyon is astounding. Breathtaking. Enormous. Majestic. Actually none of those words even begin to describe it. It's like nothing I've ever seen. I need to go back there some day and backpack the switchback trail down to the canyon floor.
So. The bus drops us off at the south rim and gives us some time (not nearly enough) to hike around. First thing we see is a lovely little lookout point — crammed, of course, with hordes of sunburned, camera-toting tourists, because it's the closest viewing area to the parking lot. We shuffle through the crowd, waiting our turn to look over the edge. When we make it up to the front, we're gazing out at the canyon from the safety of the lookout point — which, by the way, features a comforting, solid metal railing all the way around the edge — and Janet spies a distant, unguarded precipice much further down the trail. In a serious, determined tone, she says, "We're going over there."
As she starts hoofing it down the trail, I follow her line of vision to the gigantic column of rock about a quarter-mile away. It's a peninsular cliff that is alarmingly narrow at the top, forming a teeny-tiny little flat part — what I would call a mere sliver of a rock table, actually. There is absolutely no railing around any of it, and there are 5,000-foot dropoffs on all three sides. This is not a place you'd find those little binocular viewers on metal stands that give you a close-up of the vista for 25 cents. "Uh... I don't know... do you think they really let people climb out there...?" I call weakly after her, wincing. "I mean, it doesn't really look like an official lookout..." But she's already twenty paces ahead of me, chirping merrily, "Hey, it can't be worse than when when we hiked to the top of Angel's Landing!" Before I have a chance to reason with her, I'm scrambling after her over the rocky trail, trying to catch up while glancing longingly back at the guard rail.
Ten minutes later, I'm at what feels like the edge of the earth. I'm pretty sure I've blocked out most of what it took to get there, but I vaguely recall crawling in a rather undignified manner on all fours for some distance, until reaching Janet at the point where the photo above was snapped. What this shot doesn't reveal (thankfully) is that my heart is racing at about 250 beats per minute and I'm about to hyperventilate. And believe me, there's a reason why I'm crouching — I was pretty sure that if I stood fully up, a swift gust would sweep me neatly over the edge, affording me what some call "the one-minute Grand Canyon tour." And that would be the end of me.
This next shot, though it looks nearly as scary as the one above, was actually much less death-defying. See, just off to my right (but out of the view of the camera) is a large, flat, secure space that I could easily throw myself onto should I feel a surge of vertigo coming on. Trust me, I wouldn't have hesitated to do it.
By the time we made our way back to the real trail — I mean the one that normal people walk on — I was so hopped up on adrenaline that I felt like I had just run a 10k. Can I count that as a workout, I wonder?
So. The bus drops us off at the south rim and gives us some time (not nearly enough) to hike around. First thing we see is a lovely little lookout point — crammed, of course, with hordes of sunburned, camera-toting tourists, because it's the closest viewing area to the parking lot. We shuffle through the crowd, waiting our turn to look over the edge. When we make it up to the front, we're gazing out at the canyon from the safety of the lookout point — which, by the way, features a comforting, solid metal railing all the way around the edge — and Janet spies a distant, unguarded precipice much further down the trail. In a serious, determined tone, she says, "We're going over there."
As she starts hoofing it down the trail, I follow her line of vision to the gigantic column of rock about a quarter-mile away. It's a peninsular cliff that is alarmingly narrow at the top, forming a teeny-tiny little flat part — what I would call a mere sliver of a rock table, actually. There is absolutely no railing around any of it, and there are 5,000-foot dropoffs on all three sides. This is not a place you'd find those little binocular viewers on metal stands that give you a close-up of the vista for 25 cents. "Uh... I don't know... do you think they really let people climb out there...?" I call weakly after her, wincing. "I mean, it doesn't really look like an official lookout..." But she's already twenty paces ahead of me, chirping merrily, "Hey, it can't be worse than when when we hiked to the top of Angel's Landing!" Before I have a chance to reason with her, I'm scrambling after her over the rocky trail, trying to catch up while glancing longingly back at the guard rail.
Ten minutes later, I'm at what feels like the edge of the earth. I'm pretty sure I've blocked out most of what it took to get there, but I vaguely recall crawling in a rather undignified manner on all fours for some distance, until reaching Janet at the point where the photo above was snapped. What this shot doesn't reveal (thankfully) is that my heart is racing at about 250 beats per minute and I'm about to hyperventilate. And believe me, there's a reason why I'm crouching — I was pretty sure that if I stood fully up, a swift gust would sweep me neatly over the edge, affording me what some call "the one-minute Grand Canyon tour." And that would be the end of me.
This next shot, though it looks nearly as scary as the one above, was actually much less death-defying. See, just off to my right (but out of the view of the camera) is a large, flat, secure space that I could easily throw myself onto should I feel a surge of vertigo coming on. Trust me, I wouldn't have hesitated to do it.By the time we made our way back to the real trail — I mean the one that normal people walk on — I was so hopped up on adrenaline that I felt like I had just run a 10k. Can I count that as a workout, I wonder?
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