Not Until My 90's -- A Long-Delayed Walk On The West Side

  Our Hike To The Grand Canyon's West Exit

A splendid, sunny Saturday, October 18, 2025, a few days after I entered my nineties.

Hiking with me: fellow lovers of the Grand Canyon and my essential support, Mrill Ingram (relation) and Missy Rigg (both hiking companions over decades). 

Our goal: the spot on the south (left) bank of the Colorado River where 1) the topographic western ending of the Grand Canyon is defined by the Board on Geographic Names; 2) River Mile 277 (+or-) is now located; 3) the Grand Canyon National Park boundary crosses the River; 4) there is a handsome landmark butte composed of the last outcrops of Canyon rocks: A pyramid of Muav limestone on top of a base of Bright Angel layers.

Just upstream from Pearce Ferry river trip take-out, this butte is a natural to be recognized as a river trip's end ... my hope is that it will be granted a name from the Southern Paiute, something like She Says So Long, or Farewell- Come Back, or You Go We Stand...

We started our walk by parking at the river trip take-out lot, and hiking east.

We tried to stay near the river at first. However, the silt flats between the river and the red line (our return route) have been colonized by tamarisk, so the open spaces between the live ones are usually covered by the long branches of those dead and fallen. My and the Canyon's friend, Tom Martin (of River Runners for Wilderness), says theres a trail through the wilds of tamarisk and little pits of eroded silt, but not for me this day.

We couldnt get down to the river in this stretch, either. So we wound our way among the tamarisk; the land flat, but still treacherous footing. Nicer if it had all been like this:

The sun in front of us, the western ridges of the Canyon were still dark-shadowed.

We did not forget, even in this most empyrean of canyons, that we were hiking on No Kings Day (Mrill, me, Missy):                        

By the way, walking back, I was content to be a follower, and on the map above the red line shows where the tamarisk runs out as the  ridges that climb southward to become the Grand Wash Cliffs, come down into the silt flats.

Back to the morning bashing along through the tamarisk flats, I finally arrived (~3 miles) where I could sit facing toward the hidden Colorado.

 I stayed for a while on that Park boundary, the west end and Canyon exit; contemplating our Farewell Butte -- Her Who Stands Tall--, satisfied to achieve this goal (a physical and human landmark of the Grand Canyon) after several years.

Later, I moved and my view, the sun also having moved, brought full illumination on the West-end cliffs to the east of me. I realized I was getting an unlooked-for revelation about those cliffs, the tops of which form the 3600'-higher Sanup Plateau rim:

From above, here is the high-flying googlemap view of those cliffs and whats above and behind them: 

I am standing at 3. 1 is between the Westernmost High Point (Chuarumpeak Point*, or the dragonhead) and Dry Canyon running down to the Colorado at River Mile 265. 2 sits on that Sanup Plateau rim just above the pictured cliffs.

 South of the river, the Hualapai lands are on the right of the north-south green boundary, the Park on the left. The east-west upper green line is the Park boundary, at She Who Waves Farewell after crossing the river above 3.

*A digression, but here is F. Dellenbaugh (1908, 250) on why Chuarumpeak is a Paiute name worthy of recognition: Dependent on Paiute guides to get him across the Strip, on one trip the Major (John Wesley Powell) came accompanied by several Pai Ute, among whom was Chuarooumpeak, the young chief of the Kaibab...a remarkably good man, constantly devoted to (people's) safety and welfare. A most fluent speaker, he would address his people with long flights of uninterrupted rhetorical skill.

Unseen from 3 on the map above, the Sanup Plateau spreads beyond 2, 3600' above the river. It mostly drains north on this near-flat Esplanade-like stretch, pushing the Grand Canyon drainage itself south to very nearly along the inner gorge rim above the unnamed little canyons west of Dry, where it then turns north, becoming the cliffs and jumble that descend from Sanup rim to river.

So what we do see from 3, and impressive it was in full sun, I think we could call the Sanup Escarpment, here in an up-close mapped view:

This geologic map (a piece of the magnificent work of George Billingsley and Peter Huntoon, 1981) shows clearly the edge at 2 where the Sanup drops precipitately 3600' (though no longer of course to the bottom of the inner gorge now buried by Lake Mead silt), continuing north in curves, a saddle, and the small platform of Pe, Esplanade Sandstone. 

Those features' edges can be picked out in the photos, although with all the ins and outs, and then its sharp drop into a jumble of 3 drainages to the river, the escarpment is hard to take in as a single sweep of cliff; yet it is the final Grand Canyon drop to the current water level.

And here is a another from-above-the-rim view: imagine standing on that sanup rim looking down the 3600' drop to the river--what is the best route to reach the shore and the purple blob marking the Park and the Grand Canyon end?

Down below, reaching the 277 mile point, the Park boundary, that last and friendly farewell butte, I had reached my limit. Mrill and Missy went on around the corner, upriver a bit. I moseyed along, above the tamarisk on the return, wondering if I would ever get a chance to return, and what the view is like standing on top of that higher step of the Sanup Escarpment.