Exploring the Grand Canyon's West End

 EXPLORING THE GRAND CANYON’S WEST END

Finally, after a number of tries, I was enabled by friends and favorable circumstances to travel to the Grand Canyon’s far west end and visit its Westernmost High Point (WHP).

The WHP is a thin,well-shaped projection (point, peninsula) that is the last piece of the Canyon’s upper rim plateaus. It is on the right here, marked WHP. Its high point is at the southern-pointing end, with the red arrow running down, and marked vividly by the red Hermit Formation below. Due west, and sitting on the big bend of the Colorado, River Mile 277 marks the defined and topographic end of the Grand Canyon. Here is a striking view of the southern piece of the WHP vividly set amidst the Hermit shale:

[The boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) is another story, since at about R.M. 277 (see next map), it (pink) turns north to Pearce Canyon, and then goes east to Snap Point -- both of these features are north of the Grand Canyon.] 

BACK UP; GET CONTEXT!

The great plateaus around much of the 277-mile-long Canyon provide the viewing platforms for the overwhelming majority of visitors. Here is a regional view from the always-useful AAA Indian Country map. Our trip's starting point, Flagstaff, is off the map at the lower right. 

Driving north to go over upper Marble Gorge, then along the state line, then south from Utah on unpaved roads took us down across the Arizona Strip to the Canyon's Western High Point (X). It is about 3 miles south of Snap Point, which marks GCNP's legal boundary but is not itself in the Grand Canyon. 

 

As a point most remote to get to, the WHP is hardly one of the normal views. Seeing into the Canyon from it required, in addition to that day’s long drive, 2-3 miles of brushy, near-wild walk south from the road. This month, October 2023, the CIMR WHP exploration expedition achieved that goal, including the photos shown in part 2, the next blog entry.* 

*CIMR group comprised these I will be ever grateful to: Hazel Clark and Tom Martin, Missy Rigg.

From the WHP, a trekker can find a route off the rim to clamber down and go west, across the flattish plateau of the Sanup  -- pronounced SUE-nupp and referring to pinyon sap (thanks to Daniel Bulletts of the Southern Paiute Kaibab band), though here, "cursed blackbrush" might be more fitting. The goal is the 277 topographic end of the Canyon as recognized by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Staying south near the rim of the main gorge across the Sanup over to its west edge will keep the traveler within the physical, topographic Grand Canyon all  the way. Finding a route down to river level from the Sanup rim appears (on the Googlemap above -- I have only been able to do map-play) a nice piece of route-finding. However, the Googlemap and on the rclark geologic map indicate a more dramatic end-of-Canyon detail, nicely found and emphasized by two heights on north and south sides, connected here by my blue line.

 

 Fittingly, these buttes are Muav Limestone above Bright Angel Shale slopes:

Also fitting would be to denominate the two buttes as, maybe, "Paiute Persons Waving Goodbye" -- in Kaivavich (do I have that right?) of course. And I want to repeat what I urged in an earlier blog entry -- that the WHP be given an honorable, respectful Southern Paiute name as a significant topographic and geologic marker. Today the WHP bears a near-insulting label "Fort Garrett Point". This refers to a stone-piled-on-stone low ruin of a shack down in Pearce Canyon, not even in the Grand Canyon. The military suggestion is totally inappropriate; Garrett was a sometime cowboy/prospector, not at all unusual for the rootless of the West. The name first appeared on a USGS 7-1/2' quad dated 1971. Grazing was ended in this area in the 1980's; prospecting by GCNP enlargement.

Of course, the end-of-Canyon landmark itself deserves more emphasis than it gets now. It is not even clear that the feat of walking the Canyon beginning-to-end follows the Canyon itself in this, remote, western finale. River trippers have to; They might wish to have a spot to wave goodbye --and Thanks! -- themselves.

BACK UP AGAIN: SOME CLARIFICATIONS

Some of my definitions: 

There is the Grand Canyon, period, stop.  Or as I will often say: the Canyon.

Then there is Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP), pink on the AAA map above. 

And its cousin, Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument (GCPNM); orange, northwest of the Park, though only the southeastern half is in the Grand Canyon. the upper part drains out west to the Basin and Range, into Lake Mead.

More relations: the Kanab Creek Wilderness, the brand-new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument, the plain old North Kaibab Ranger District -- damaged yet worth recovering, the Navajo Tribal Parks for the Little Colorado and Marble Canyon, and lands in the Hualapai, Havasupai, and Southern Paiute Kaibab Band Reservations.

Is a list of such political designations clarifying? Truly, it points to a big, complicated chunk of the history of the western United States. Fortunately, the proclamation of our newest Monument, Baaj  Nwaavjo, — its three pieces outlined in red on the official map— 

brings all these pieces of history into focus in its English translation: "where indigenous peoples roam" and "our ancestral  footprints" and then beyond in its promise that these footprints  lead into the, a better, future for those peoples with ties into "the Grand Canyon, period, stop”, i.e.,the Associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon. 

That is: The Grand Canyon is the physical, topographic, geological place bounded by the divides of the drainages that flow into the Colorado between the Canyon’s beginning (junction with the Paria River) and end, “River Mile 277” near the exit line drawn between the two "Buttes Waving Goodbye”. 

That physical (and conceptual and emotional) entity was, by the proclamation of Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument, enlarged and embraced in spirt, by being nestled within and enhanced by the Associated Tribes, shown here. 

Altogether, though seemingly political designations, this confluence of entities and peoples have created what we can now recognize as the Greater Grand Canyon.