Walking On The Western Side

 INTRODUCING THE FAR WEST

HIKING THE GRAND CANYON'S NEGLECTED BOUNDARY

As previous posts described, rectifying the Grand Canyon’s eastern boundaries led us into the tangles of governmental and legal actions. Cutting through that thicket, however, we found the physical legal boundary between the Park and Navajo Reservation is easy to navigate: down the left/south bank of the Colorado from the Paria River junction to the Little Colorado, then up that one a bit. 

The Park boundary in the Canyon’s west end, an area much less known and visited, apparently offers no legal tangles since the land is all under NPS administration -- the Park or Lake Mead NRA. Sad to say, the current western boundary ignores the Canyon’s topography and geology, using straight lines that fail to emphasize the true significance of the Canyon’s western finale.

Therefore, if we are to adhere to the idea of using the Grand Canyon drainage to figure out what to protect and proclaim within a complete National Park while not infringing on Navajo, Havasupai, or Hualapai land, then for the western end, there are new questions to answer. Pleasant surprise, that challenge invites us to scout out a newly defined line, one we can follow on foot — a hikable, likable, line. 

Let’s take a look at what we have now, starting north of the Colorado. This is what NPS mapped for the 1975 Park Enlargement Act. I don't know why there are two parallel lines; perhaps NPS was experimenting:

And here, in glorious technicolor, is a geologic map, the best I have found on the internet, a wonderful ride to wander the Canyon on. 

The full map can be found here  (https://rclark.github.io/grand-canyon-geology). Website by Ryan Clark, 2013. He says: "This work-in-progress represents a spectacular set of data generated by George Billingsley and others at the USGS. The geologic data shown here was taken from the following USGS publications:

• Geologic map of the Mount Trumbull 30 x 60 quadrangle
• Geologic map of the Grand Canyon 30' x 60' quadrangle
• Geologic map of the Valle 30' x 60' quadrangle
• Geologic Map of the Cameron 30' x 60' Quadrangle
• Geologic Map of the Peach Springs 30' x 60' Quadrangle
• Geologic map of the Tuba City 30' x 60' quadrangle". 

On the relevant piece of that map, I have put red dots to indicate a zone where I think the boundary could lie, starting at the base of the Grand Canyon WHP, it Westernmost High Point.

Here, I must digress to a major topic, that of names and the lack of them. The WHP, with its striking raptor or dragon head shape, is burdened with an embarrassing name, being labelled “fort garrett”, a non- and un-military ruin of a shack located not on the WHP or even in the Grand Canyon, but some distance down in Pearce Canyon. Properly, the WHP would bear the name of a Southern Paiute notable, for example, Chuarumpeak, who provided information for John Wesley Powell. Indeed there are many spots out in this western area that could be given names associated with the Paiute, the very longtime inhabitants. For example, one boundary terminus on the right bank comes to the River at a butte of Muav Limestone over Bright Angel Shale (circled in red). The old USGS topo map shows on the butte the word “Granite”, part of “Lower Granite Gorge”, a feature now buried under silt. We can do better than that (see below). 

The red dot on the west side of the WHP (northeast map corner) is very near where dirt road access conveniently comes close to the rim. The light blue on the top is Kaibab formation; under it a medium blue strip of the Toroweap layer. It appears, at least on the Google Map, that there are “very likely” routes through those strata to get down onto the Hermit and then the Esplanade Sandstone/Pakoon Limestone cover of the Sanup Plateau, the equivalent out here of the Esplanade. 

The Sanup is pretty flat, with drainage tilted toward the north and Pearce Canyon. The drainage into the Grand Canyon itself is down very close to the Sanup rim overlooking the river. So there is a little discussion to be had whether to run the boundary as it can actually be traced along the Canyon's very low-relief drainage divide, or whether to place it farther north as I have planted my red dots, thus including most of the Sanup, even though the tilt is toward Pearce Canyon. No really big divide exists— just like it looks, the Sanup here is a spread-out plateau. For the hiker, the most straight-forward way west is the northern red-dot route. For the purist who wants to march along a hard-to-find divide, the route goes south to the Sanup rim and along the River overlooks. The little side canyons below, by the way, are nameless, giving 4 or 5 more opportunities for appropriate names, another sign of how little known this west end, this wind-down of the Canyon, is. 

Whichever way the boundary walk reaches the west side of the Sanup, the trekker’s view beyond is out over a near-chaos of little drainages. I was able to trace out four hikable, exploratory routes using the 1971 (i.e., pre- the enlarged Park) USGS 7.5 quad, Snap Canyon West. These routes all end between River Miles 277 (putative end to the Canyon) and 278. Walking them out, working out which is the best route to the river, and which the best boundary line (they may not be the same thing), would be a fine climax for the Canyon hiker of this west side story.

Once at the riverside, the traveler could sit on that bump just above River Mile 277 and, one could hope, read a little plaque distinguishing the butte with a name from the Southern Paiute, maybe Wovoka, the founder in the 1880’s of the Ghost Dance. A good seat, too, to contemplate the length of the Canyon, as well as a good location for the boundary crossing to:

SOUTH OF THE RIVER

Where the south-side west-facing line in the “wattle” * offers an accessible challenge to a hiker seeking a feel for a Canyon boundary. When you look south from river level at Mile 277, you see or can envision the Grand Canyon’s last ridge steeply rising from your elevation at about 1200’. I have traced the top of that ridge route in red on the USGS National map: 

At R.M. 277 on the south shore, you can look up-Canyon back along the left bank cliffs into the small (and last) side canyon above which the (in)famous Rampart Cave is located. Just a tick upstream Cave Canyon enters, with Columbine Falls. As the cliffs (and the hiker) rise up, the westernmost ridge, going ten miles and more southward, forms the wall of Cave and Grand Canyons, while on the west, the land drops with many a swoop down the slope into the Basin & Range, Lake Mead country, to Grapevine Canyon in which the new Pearce Ferry take-out ramp is located. You can drive to this ramp, do a three-mile hike and reach that 277-mile mark of Grand Canyon’s conclusion, turn south, and ascend the boundary ridge on foot.

The views must be impressive, as more and more of the two geological provinces, Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range, come into view, east and west. The National Map above has  the ridge top route in red along which, with some hops and twists, you can travel above Cave Canyon all the way to the green National Park line and beyond. Outside the Park, the topography is just rumpled, though it is still within the Grand Canyon’s drainage.   

About 5600’ is as high as you can get around here. That is about a mile above the old river level, not a bad day’s work. From here a turn right and drop west will get you to the Pearce road.  For more Grand Canyon, the overnight-prepared could explore Cave Canyon and so back to the rivershore.

For an overnight, since Cave Canyon down is all in the Park, that’s where you would get  a permit — The Hualapai do not want you to hike on their reservation anyway…

Having established the physical western boundary of the Canyon itself — marking, mapping, maybe naming it, above all walking it — does it make sense to re-draw the Park line? I would say so. Using the ridgetops would give a more topographic feel than hard-to-find legal lines (or horrors, fencing) to connect up to the line chosen to do the stroll from the Sanup Plateau to the water at the 277-mile butte on the north shore.

The red line approximates my suggested route for the boundary. For the traveler, perhaps there could be a sign or marker here and there, nothing more. The green lines are the current NPS boundaries. 

Please note, my suggested red line is not a “pure” drainage boundary. Going from the north end of the Westernmost High Point the line swings west across the Sanup Plateau to include most of it in the Park, while most of Pearce Canyon would be returned to the Lake Mead NRA. The Basin & Range and the south tip of the southern “wattle” could go to Lake Mead or BLM jurisdiction as appropriate.

*A word about the history of the wattle:

In the 1930’s, with Lake Mead filling, the Park Service took on a major new role regulating recreation in special areas. For 30 years, NPS and Reclamation cooperated in LMNRA’s administration. Since “everybody” believed that soon there would be a new (Bridge Canyon) dam just upstream from Mead, this arrangement was extended up onto the Colorado Plateau and along the river to Grand Canyon National Monument. 

As the boundaries settled down in the 1950’s, NPS got even larger eyes for the country, and when legislation for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area was passed in 1964, not only was a magnificent chunk of the western Grand Canyon, high- and river-level, put into that Area (allowing all kinds of resource exploitation: grazing, mining, roads, dams and power lines, resorts, etc.), a swathe of the Hualapai Reservation was also included. The remnant of that futile land grab — the Hualapai turned down flat the idea of yielding any of their Reservation — is what I call the “wattle”, that piece from the river to the curved southern line west of the Hualapai Reservation. In its 1964 pipe-dream legislation that curved line was extended in a big arc sweeping well south of the Hualapai northern line, first going southeast then northeast to take in almost a third of the Reservation. (This fantasy line still shows up on some maps, in spite of the Hualapai saying “NO!”. It is the same case as with the Navajo land on the east side of the Grand Canyon along its first 60+ miles, where again the Tribal Government would have to concur were the land to be taken into the National Park — and it didn't, hasn’t, and won’t.)  

Anyway, in 1967-8, when Senator Case (R, NJ) was helping Canyon advocates stiff the dam-builders and wanted to submit a bill for a complete Grand Canyon National Park, a la the Sierra Club proposal, the Park Service provided him a map showing a Park boundary that included that southern bit of LMNRA, the wattle. 

At the same time, the proposal, on the north side, drew a straight line east up Pearce Canyon (it isn’t in the Grand Canyon) to Snap Point, then wiggled over to the Westernmost High Point — which I am glad to say did get into, and belongs in, the National Park. 

It is this old history that gives rise to the need to rectify, and more importantly recognize, the Canyon’s real, physical, topographic, and walkable, western boundary and then align the Park boundary with it. Had we known more and better a half-century ago, we could have fixed it in the 1975 Park Enlargement Act. 

Next time.