CONTEMPLATING CHUARUMPEAK:
THE WESTERNMOST GRAND CANYON
A JOURNEY OF THE IMAGINATION
As mentioned in the essays accompanying this one*, a group of the Grand Canyon’s friends did take vehicles November 2021 down the Shivwits Plateau to visit some of the southward-pointing peninsulas. Since I still have not walked or even driven across all these far-west Grand Canyon lands, I am dependent for this discussion on maps, photos, and aerial views.
*(“001. What’s In a Name?” is the first, and lists the participants.
“003. Finding a Boundary Out West” a close look at the ground.
“004. Trimming the Turkey Wattle” jumps the river to look south.)
Scanning a map of the Grand Canyon, starting mid-Canyon, the Kanab-Havasu area, then west downriver around the big southern bend at Diamond Creek, up northwest beyond the dark splotch of the Shivwits Plateau, to the end:
Topographical stand-outs are the hanging peninsulas of the Shivwits, the westernmost of the four northside plateaus into which the Canyon has dug: big guy Kaibab on the east, then flattish Kanab, volcanic Uinkarets, and Shivwits. These names were derived (it makes the best story) from conversations whiteman explorer-in-chief John Wesley Powell had with members of Southern Paiute bands, who were, of the Canyon’s original Americans, most severely negatively affected by decimation and forced removal.
The six peninsulas of the Shivwits do have names: the way longest, ending at Kelly (not a Paiute word) Point, is a magnificent finger aiming due south at Hualapailand — with unpaved access that can only be called malignant.
My 2001 trip, I remember as exciting, bumpy over the volcanics, and taking 5 hours. Now, deteriorating over 20 years, careful driving took 8 hours. Since use is not going to smooth the way, the trip would be better done with stops, camps, and walks/hikes to the east and west viewpoints like Price and Amos. Anyhow, the trek indicates that Kelly ought to be redesignated as Headbanger Point. The camping at the end is still fine, the Kaibab formation being the floor. The views south are wide, though somewhat restricted. This place, to keep the experience fine, maybe needs the driving track’s unfriendly roughness. It also needs care by visitors who carry out everything, which means bringing in a groover or other human waste apparatus. No real excuse for us to degrade this spacious pretty point. And the same, of course, goes for other similar destinations, like Twin Point.
Indeed, a westernmost Grand Canyon trip is not forced to endure the Kelly Kar Klash. A short drive west beyond Mt. Dellenbaugh and the Park Service house, we came to the third peninsula westward, and the second most prominent. It is tagged “Twin”, again for no obvious reason; there really needs to be a sustained effort to find and designate places with more appropriate and interest-inducing names. Twin, long and thin, has excellent views as you travel toward the southern end, both east and west. The dirt road is more bearable, the camping, including at the end, just as pleasant — at least if visitors continue to be conscientious about not leaving waste behind. Here’s a view southwest:
Another, toward the far west:
Now this is, as it should be, inside Grand Canyon National Park, administered by the NPS ranger over at Toroweap. However, getting there, you go through Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument (GC-PNM), abutting on the north under, believe it or not, two administrations: Arizona Strip Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and NPS again by staff from Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LMNRA). Some staff have headquarters up in St. George, Utah.
The staffs of these agencies working together is important, since this is the Grand Canyon we are talking about, and the crazy-quilt pattern of boundaries turns protection and visitation into a multiple-use affair. Even more important, it becomes tougher for the visitor to grasp a unified view. Maps can help.
By BLM, this one tells who is where. The green line is one I drew to show the divide between the Grand Canyon drainage (southeast part) and lands that drain west toward Lake Mead, the Basin and Range geologic province. A bit bewildering. Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) is the southern purple below a wandering brownish line. Purple above that line is LMNRA. The yellow is BLM and in GC-PNM, as far up as to the other brownish line at the top right of the map. Of course, the yellow GC-PNM under BLM in the upper left quadrant of the map northwest of the green line is not Grand Canyon land, so the Monument's name is not appropriate. (The map does a good job of laying out the administrative hodge-podge. I have told the story of that misfire elsewhere.)
And speaking of names, why such a lame ones for key viewpoints? “Twin” doesn’t have a very Paiute sound. Much less a Grand Canyon-y one when we consider all those buttes and temples off in the eastern Canyon, bunches of gods and royalties and what-not. Geologists borrowed freely from the Havasupai for Supai Formation strata names. If the south rim gets a Vishnu Temple, isn’t it even more appropriate that we consider re-christening these western points with labels from those who may have roamed them pre-whitefolk?
As we continue west, the same questions recur. In between “Twin” and “Kelly”, there is “Suicide” — not an invitation we want Canyon naming to give, surely. Beyond “Twin” comes “Burnt”, another irrelevant generic, particularly given that at the foot of this somewhat retiring feature stretches the arresting, vivid Hermit Shale ridge mundanely called “Red Point”, that features in the photo above. Perhaps if “Suicide” were moved over to replace “Burnt”, then that startling red ridge could be “Splat”.
“Tincanebitts” Point and Canyon seem promising, though its origin, like the feature in the photo, is obscure. However, for me the real surprise and climax in our Shivwits expedition is the view we had of the ultimate, the westernmost, piece of the upper rim of the Shivwits plateau and indeed of the Canyon itself.
Sad to say, it is misnamed with an abysmal and forgettable moniker of Garrett. Some joker put “fort” in front (never was any; just uncovered rock-pile walls). In any case, replacing such a totally inappropriate designation is badly needed for this, the last high point of the Canyon. For now, Im using Westernmost High Point (WHP). Once out on the WHP, not reached on our recent trip, a visitor could see across the remaining mid-level of the Sanup Plateau. Continuing out to the WHP’s southern end (see photo below), the drainage line — dividing flows into Grand Canyon side canyons from the washes that go west into Lake Mead — drops to the Sanup, the topographic equivalent of the Tonto Platform and the Esplanade.
Once on the Sanup, the divide wanders over close to the rim which it follows westward as the Canyon itself lowers until, just above the River Mile 277 spot, the line turns and works down a ridge to reach and cross the Colorado River. There it seeks out its mate on the south side: the west ridge line of Cave Canyon.
On the north side of the river, the photos from our trip show the WHP as a very prominent exclamation point. So it needs a Grand Canyon appropriate name; a name appropriate to those who lived longest in the region. One I came across was in “John Wesley Powell and the Anthropology of the Canyon Country” (USGS Professional paper 670: update 1/13/09, DON D. FOWLER and CATHERINE S. FOWLER) in which Powell is said to have learned many things from Chuarumpeak, of the Kaibab band of the Southern Paiute. I think this would be a splendid name to give so prominent a feature as the Canyon’s westernmost high point, elevation 6251’. The aerial above shows its most curious shape: Is there a Shivwits dragon myth —(the backbone, wing, ears, long elegant snout…)?
Regardless, the westernmost high point’s location, elevation, shape, with the topographical divide down its high, west side;-- all urge us to find and bestow on it an appropriate name, so its importance can stand out among the Canyon’s landforms as significant as the more famous seen from, say, Mather Point. Education and presentation to the public is everything here; an opportunity to let the world comprehend the full extent and reach of the Canyon.
THE END:
A DETAILED CONSIDERATION
Pearce Canyon, the well-defined drainage west of Chuarumpeak, is run through by the 1972 GCNP boundary. However, it is not in the Grand Canyon. It was included in the Park due to our ignorance in the late 1960’s of the land details, as I tell in "004. Trimming the Turkey's Wattle”.
The Pearce drainage runs due west into Lake Mead beyond the base of the Grand Wash Cliffs, the first wash to do so, and opposite the old ferry location and the ramp used by today’s boaters. An upper branch of Pearce is the location of the so-called ruins of the not-fort Garett. It is not otherwise of interest in Grand Canyon affairs.
We can work upriver from Pearce to find the real last Grand Canyon sub-drainage, the last ridge with Grand Canyon on one side and not the other. This involves a close bit of map work in these scrambled hills on the right bank around River Mile 277 (the defined end in the river for the Canyon).
If we go up on the Sanup, on its rim above the river, we can find, depending on your eye, 5 or six unnamed indentations between Pearce and Dry Canyons. The last-named carries the drainage from the eastern side of our Westernmost High Point (WHP, or Chuarumpeak?, Dragonhead?, …), solidly within the Canyon’s confines.
Lets use a USGS topo map to see that point and how the drainage divide carries us west to the Canyon’s river endpoint.
The rim of the Canyon itself is on the west edge of the head (WHP) running south to the high tip at 6521’ elevation. Then, using the green line roughly indicating the divide between the Canyon on the south and Pearce Canyon, make your way down carefully (it is Hermit shale and alluvium) almost due west, with Grand Canyon on your left, and Pearce on your right, to a tiny point and then out to a higher bump at 5035’ — here you are on the Sanup Plateau. The flattish terrain ahead has to be searched carefully to find the divide. For the next two miles, the Sanup seems evenly split: Canyon, Pearce.
The divide curves south at 4827’, to go over Bump 4892’ on the right end of the green line. From there, heading southwest, the Canyon heads down to the mainstream rim, leaving almost all of the rest of the Sanup to Pearce: in the Park, but not in the Canyon.
Switching to the map continuation below,— a bad photo of the topographic map,— the Sanup (white area) here fully drains into Pearce, the canyon area above the yellow line and beyond the map top.
Where green touches yellow, the Canyon divide meets the Pearce line, and the Grand Canyon leaves the Sanup Plateau and takes its final scramble down a ridge line to the red dot in the Colorado River, meant to mark about River Mile 277. We can see that the last unnamed side canyons upstream of 277 ARE part of the Canyon, while the Sanup above is now more obvious as the flatter “upper” drainage for Pearce Canyon draining away from the Canyon country, ending up downstream of RM277.
It is a near thing, this question of the Canyon’s end. The Grand Canyon has been making a gradual, even graceful descent from the WHP, traveling over the Sanup to reach that point where it scrambles down a ridge to easily match at the Colorado with the ridge that has been coming down on the south side along the west ridge of Cave Canyon. Had we had such topo maps, and done some on-the-ground looking in 1968-9, this hands-across-the-water meshing of the north and south final ridges at RM277 would have been obvious.
Looking hard, can we see if there might be more? What about the topographic jumble marked by the X between the green and yellow lines? At first glance, it might be another downstream stretch of the Canyon. Maps do show the “Lower Granite Gorge” as continuing for a mile or so in this stretch. Perhaps the river maps used in the 1920’s for scouting dam sites might strengthen this connection. However, today’s geologic maps (Huntoon/Billingsley) tell us different: Cambrian Muav & Bright Angel sit on the surface in this “Granite” Gorge, while the pre-Cambrian is buried under Mead reservoir’s silts.
For me, therefore, turning and looking uphill from the river back to the Sanup, I would suggest this extra slice is not within the Grand Canyon, based on the area being a drainage cutting up toward the saddle between the Sanup and a triangular outlier to its north. That saddle, lower than the point where the Canyon leaves the Sanup for the river, when crossed brings one into another branch of Pearce. Anyway, the Canyon doesn’t need a few more jumbled acres.
The Grand Canyon, defined here by an almost elegant meeting of features from north side and south, a juxtaposition of River Mile 277, Cave Canyon ridge with Rampart Cave, and the well-marked if unnamed staircase down from the Sanup to the water, once understood and publicized, is suitable and satisfactory as the Canyon-end. An exit with style in concord with its emergence and 277-mile-run from the junction of the Colorado with the Paria.
All we need now are some names appropriate to its earlier inhabitants to mark and salute this too-little-known Canyon finale.
Next: 003. Finding a Boundary Out West
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