G.A.S.P.

I spent all of the next day (11-11) in the park, this time exploring the West Rim, all of the way to Hermits Rest. Along the way, I found some statistical data for those of you (us) who like such things. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, averages 10 miles wide (rim to rim) and averages 5000 feet deep (rim to Colorado River). The rocks exposed are hundreds of millions of years old, but the canyon is "only" about six million years old. Temperatures, which are very typical in their deviation, for yesterday were 62 degrees on the South Rim, 54 degrees on the North Rim (about 1500 feet higher) and 79 degrees in the bottom of the canyon. There are five million annual visitors to Grand Canyon, making it one of the nation’s most popular National Parks. It was pretty crowded even in mid-November.

I also read about the opening of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, and the impact that it has had on the river and accordingly on the National Park. Glen Canyon Dam is upstream of the park, and was built to provide electrical generation and recreation opportunity (Lake Powell was created by the dam). The impact on the river is that most of the time the flow is significantly less than it used to be. It’s imperceptible from the rim, but at river level, there have been problems. The water is colder now, so some of the native fish are no longer in the river. Also, the dam tends to trap silt, so sandbars have disappeared along the river, and vegetation has changed as a result of lower water levels. In 1992, the Grand Canyon Protection Act was passed, and directed the Secretary of the Interior to operate Glen Canyon Dam in a manner that would protect and improve the values for which Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area were established. This has led to much better cooperation between the competing interests, including some test "floods" to help rebuild the sandbars along the river and a program to send higher level, warmer water out of the reservoir and down the river.

John Wesley Powell and a band of intrepid explorers were the first to see the canyon from end to end when they traveled down the Colorado River in wooden boats in 1869. Powell said of the canyon: "I climb up the granite to its summit, and go away over rust colored sandstones and greenish yellow shales…. I climb so high that the men and boats are lost in the black depths below, and the dashing river is a rippling brook; and still there is more canyon above me than below. All about me are interesting geological records. The book is open, and I can read as I run."

One thing is bothering me about Grand Canyon – why it took until 1919 for this to become a National Park. Yellowstone was the first National Park in 1872; Yosemite followed in 1890. Several other National Parks were created in the early 1900s before Grand Canyon. I asked a couple of Park Rangers, but did not get a plausible answer. I will try again tomorrow.