In the fall of the year my brother and I began a long trek through Grand Canyon. Our plan was to take twenty-four days, crossing twelve major side canyons and dozens of nameless rifts. John and I worked below the rim cliffs and down talus slopes to reach the end of a promontory. The two of us stood there longer than needed, absorbing the immensities of rock and sky befoe pushing on.
The Redwall, a massive limestone cliff 600-feet thick, formed a solid barrier below except for a single break. Side-stepping down the steep chute, we left the fall weather behind and dropped into late summer. It felt good to be moving, the physical push a release after weeks of sporadic preparations.
The route I'd plotted on the map stayed high in the canyons cutting back into the North Rim. This meant gaining and losing considerable elevation each day as we crossed dividing ridges between drainages. During the planning stage, I had met with Harvey Butchart, the most knowledgeable authority on the backcountry. He advised us to stay closer to the river. He thought our intended route would prove more difficult, drier, and less certain of success. But the Redwall route flowed in such a graceful curve across the grain of the canyons I decided to take it anyway.
As the days unfolded, we came to know the Redwall well as we searched for ways through its angular geometries. Reaching for handholds at times, I found fossils embedded in the rock – shells, plant stems, and sponges turned to chert nodules. This was searock, formed in a still ocean then buried beneath thick sediments, uplifted, and finally wrenched into the hard light of the desert, 340 million years later and a mile higher than where it started. On some days we passed through the Redwall several times.
Each morning we began moving when it was light enough to see and pushed until dark. We moved fast and light without a stove, without shelter, and with only one food cache. We walked for miles beneath formations with names like Vishnu Temple, Wotans Throne, and Angels Gate. We walked all day, doing nothing else, sometimes walking for hours without a thought to show for it.
One morning we climbed the head of Phantom Canyon in a gray light, thickened by rain. The route led up tiered cliffs on the worn face of the Redwall. Heavy clouds spilled over the rim, dissolving as they fell into frayed patches and tendrils of smoky mist. Taking great care we climbed the rock, exposed and crumbling, then crossed over to Dragon Creek.
Rain fell all day, and a flash flood came down at night. By dawn we found ourselves on the wrong side of a creek in full flood. Mud-thick water churned through the gorge. Boulders rolled unseen below the surface, crashing together with a hollow clacking. Scouting upstream we found where the creek funneled through a slot allowing us to make a tricky crossing. We slogged on, climbing the cliffs above and continuing west.
Days later we switchbacked up the head of Crazy Jug Canyon, reaching the North Rim and the wide light of the plateau. The trip from Nankoweap to Tapeats had taken twelve days, half the expected time. By now our packs had become so much a part of us, we didn't bother to take them off to rest. The two of us stood on the canyon rim looking back, gazing into a place of improbable beauty. Cliff walls fell away one after the other, dropping into the haze, falling into deeper canyons, disappearing into the farther distance. No end to it.
