X DOESN’T MARK THE SPOT

How to say a proper “so long for now” at the Canyon’s West Exit.

The map below, courtesy of Google, shows the west end of the Greater Grand Canyon. The big dark plateau is the Shivwits, with its several southward-aiming points left by the Canyon’s cutting into it.  

The Colorado and its gorge run up from the center bottom and head northwest to a final turn at the exit, after 277 miles, at the northside butte, temporarily being called, She Waves: Goodbye For Now. 

On the north side, above the inner gorge, is the quite flat Sanup Plateau, with its own collection of smaller side canyons. The red dot marks Snap Point. This Point, while not in or part of the topographic Canyon, was chosen as a guide marker for the location of the Grand Canyon National Park boundary in the 1975 Enlargement Act. Im sorry to say Snap was chosen due to an error made in ignorance. A few years before we in the Sierra Club were trying to define what we thought would be the best “complete Park”  boundary. This Park was offered as a counter to the national  campaign then being waged (1965-8) to build a huge concrete dam in the stretch of the canyon close to where the river goes off the bottom of the map. 

Due west of Snap is what I am fancying as the big X (sort of tilted over) of Pearce Canyon. Pearce almost looks like it might be a good marker for the Grand Canyon’s end. However, it is not part of the topographic Grand Canyon, being integral to the Grand Wash Cliffs, the major north-south drainage flowing into the west. That escarpment defines the western drop of the Colorado Plateau, falling off into the Basin and Range country containing Lake Mead. 

As a way down from the Sanup Plateau and thus out of the Grand Canyon, Pearce apparently has been more tempting than going across the Sanup and down the 3000’ of the somewhat chaotic jumble of the Canyon’s last gullies. However, for the Grand Canyon purist, here is a map of what Grand Canyon hiking expert Tom Martin suggests might be a good route to try for the hiker wishing to stay entirely within the Grand Canyon. The ? marks a take-off point at Sanup Plateau level: 

Once on the river shore, a walk downstream (map below) brings one to a campsite marked by the blue triangle, and to the Canyon exit’s northside butte, just under the red dotted line at river level: 

The black dashed line, amended by Tom’s red one, is my attempt to mark the drainage divide between Pearce Canyon and the Grand Canyon’s finale. That is, where the Park boundary ought to have been placed back in 1975 in order to have maps better reflect the Grand Canyon's topographic extent.