The first white explorer to descend the Colorado River through Grand Canyon published an account of his journey 150 years ago. Intrigued by a passage in it, author Scott Thybony traveled to the Vermillion Cliffs to see if he could match the view described by John Wesley Powell. He writes about it in this month’s Canyon Commentary.
On a winter morning I ease past the boat ramp at Lees Ferry. Nothing moves except the Colorado River, not even a raven drifting overhead. After parking, I take a pack and walk toward the Spencer Trail. Set on the perpendicular, it climbs 1,500 vertical feet in a single mile. The trail follows one of the few natural breaks in the Vermillion Cliffs. My plan is to hike high enough to match a description written by John Wesley Powell, who led the first scientific expedition through Grand Canyon in 1869.
Climbing a few switchbacks opens a dramatic view upstream of the river cutting through the massive escarpment. With a sweeping curve, the Colorado breaks into the open and escapes the shadows of Glen Canyon. The water runs a deep morning blue with light scaling off the surface as it pushes toward Marble Canyon. Moving up the trail I keep a steady pace, leaving tracks in the red dust until I run out of steam a hundred yards below the rim. I accept the verdict and take a water break before continuing to the top.
A large rock cairn stands at the trailhead, and another one used by the Navajo as a trail shrine marks a route on the far side of the Colorado. Travel once had its rituals. An early account describes how a Hopi was reluctant to cross the river until he had placed prayer sticks next to the swift-flowing water.
Turning back, I descend the trail while paying attention to the scene opening below. A stone cabin known as Lees Fort stands near the old ferry crossing and the US Geological Survey gaging station lies across the river. It marks Mile Zero-Zero where the count starts for downriver trips, where one canyon ends and another begins, and where the only crossing for horse-drawn wagons could be found for hundreds of miles. In the far distance the scene expands into broad benchlands divided by a deep gorge enclosing the hidden river. This closely resembles the view described by Major Powell in his account, The Grand Cañon of the Colorado.
“Stand on the Vermilion Cliffs at the head of Marble Cañon,” he wrote, “and look off down the river over a stretch of country ... and then see meandering through it to the south the gorge in which the river runs.” The summits of the walls, he continued, appear “to approach until they are merged in a black line, and you can hardly resist the thought that the river burrows into, and is lost under, the great inclined plateau.”
The trail ends back on flat ground, and I drive past the boat ramp on my way out. A flotilla of rafts, rigged and ready, waits for the passengers to arrive. Preparations for a river trip often turn into a last-minute circus. A hundred details need attention. Gear has to be unloaded from the truck, tubes inflated, frames lashed down. The ranger goes through a checklist before signing off on the inspection, and the passengers in various states of excitement and apprehension gather for a briefing.
In my years as a boatman it was always a relief to finally untie the bowline, severing our link with solid ground.
Pushing off from shore was a release of spirit as the current grabbed hold, drawing us deeper down the lost river. It was a moment suspended with everything on the verge of happening, with everything still possible.
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio and air on the last Friday of each month.
