A Friendly Look at Grand Canyon's Northern Neighbor

The Grand Canyon's West End is defined and confused along its northwest boundary because the map drawers of 1968 wanted a straight line rather than one wandering along the contours of the Canyon's drainage. Maybe one day, that lazy line will be corrected. If so, then the dramatic features of Pearce Canyon could be highlighted for their own charm.

AND, the delights of exploring the West End could come into their own.

This map of Pearce from Google is an aerial depiction of the ground, but with odd coloring. Lake Mead is to the left; Snap Point's vegetated "arrowhead" is right top center.

A second brings out the ups and downs of the topography:

Together, they suggest esthetic unity for the corner of the Grand Wash Cliffs with the drainage of Pearce Canyon running north of the Grand Canyon and west into Lake Mead. These maps show how Pearce is cutting eastward into the arc formed by Snap Point on the north and the cliffs of Chuarumpeak (Grand Canyon's Westernmost High Point).

Isolated by these screen shots, the Pearce drainage has its own formal grandeur, and need not be slaved by a man-made line into the Grand Canyon's depictions. My blue line roughly provides the Canyon's drainage north limit, thus emphasizing Pearce as a separate sub-entity of the Grand Wash Cliffs: 

This line helps highlight the broad swath of the Sanup Plateau draining north into Pearce, and Snap (Sanup, too?) Point as its overlook. Tucked down in the southwest bend, the blue line curves about the Grand Pipe showing that name or not, Pearce claims it. Too bad, it is a significant marker for the Canyon  tourist strolling from Westernmost High Point (Chuarumpeak; Dragon's Head ?) west to the drop from the Sanup to the Colorado and the west exit of the Canyon at the butte She Waves Goodbye (but come back...).

For Grand Canyon transectors, this drainage topography emphasizes the matter of purity: to go out Sanup-into-Pearce is to avoid the jumbled chaos of the Canyon's actual final drop to river level along so far unblazed gullies or their ridges. A version of Zeno's Paradox: the closer the walker gets to the Canyon West Exit, the harder it is to stretch out one's legs to complete the 3600-foot drop of the last couple of miles. 

And then there is the possibility of updating the designation Pearce Ferry into a reality; what better way to end a 300-mile-plus trek than a little boat ride -- so long as the boatman is not named Charon.

Or, better yet, a completist could add on another day, climbing up the Grand Canyon's final southern natural boundary, the ridge that divides its Cave Canyon from the westward sloping Grand Wash Cliffs?

And maybe the Park Service could grace the West Exit with a sign -- provided it's immovable.