Exploring the Depths of the Grand Canyon...By Car?

The Grand Canyon is one of the great spectacles of the Earth. Millions of people every year stand on the edge of the abyss and peer in, taking in the vivid colors and hidden depths. Tens of thousands venture down some of the few trails that reach into the incredible gorge, and several thousand raft the river. But how many drive the canyon? Did you even know you could?

And no, I'm not talking about visiting the canyon "Thelma and Louise" style...

For more than two hundred river miles, no road crosses the Grand Canyon (plus another hundred miles to Lake Mead). Navajo Bridge near Lee's Ferry is at one end, and Pat Tilman Bridge near Lake Mead is at the other. In between in the depths of Grand Canyon there is a single road that reaches the river. It's called Diamond Creek Road, and it starts on Hualapai Nation lands at Peach Springs. It's a marvelous adventure.

Without even considering the philosophical objections to building roads through the wilderness world of the Grand Canyon (objections I completely agree with), there are staggering engineering barriers. There are a series of formations, including the Redwall Limestone and the Coconino Sandstone that form sheer cliffs. The locations of trails in the Grand Canyon are controlled almost entirely by the few locations where they can surmount the cliffs of these two layers.

At Diamond Creek, the Hurricane Fault has offset the formations in just such a way that the cliffs can be avoided entirely. For the entire twenty mile length of the road, there is nary a cliff to worry about, as the road follows the bottoms of desert arroyos and washes. The biggest worry is flash floods and mudflows, which can easily shut down the road in July and August during the monsoons (and badly inconvenience river rafters who plan to take out at Diamond Creek).

One can certainly discuss the idea that it's "cheating" to drive to the bottom of the canyon, and there is a certain validity that scenery that hasn't been "earned" by completing a stiff hike might end up being less appreciated. But many people can't handle the very strenuous hiking and many simply don't have the time. Driving down into the canyon is a unique opportunity to study the oldest rocks of the canyon, the ones that are the very hardest to access in any other situation.

Diamond Creek cuts through to the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite, which is the oldest group of rocks found in the American Southwest, dating to as early as 1.8 billion years ago. At roadside there are marvelous exposures of schist, gneiss, and pegmatite granite with bright shiny crystals of muscovite mica and quartz.

A bit farther up the canyon one can see the layers of the Tonto Group, a series of three formations called the Tapeats Sandstone, the Bright Angel Shale, and the Muav Limestone. The three layers formed as the Pacific Ocean transgressed and covered much of the western North American continent in Cambrian time, just over 500 million years ago. The Tapeats Sandstone sits atop the rocks of the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite.

That last sentence needs a bit more explanation. The boundary between the Tapeats and the Granite Gorge rocks is a profound unconformity representing a gap of more than a billion years. This unconformity is actually called the "Great Unconformity", and is an erosional surface that was witness to not one, but two major mountain-building events. The metamorphic rocks were once the core of a vast mountain range that formed 1.7 billion years ago when the North American continent collided with a set of two exotic terranes, the Yavapai block and the Mazatzal block. Imagine an island the size of California or New Zealand grinding into the edge of a continent along a subduction zone and you will get the picture. This massive mountain range eroded to a flat low-relief surface over the next few hundred million years.

Later on, about a billion years ago, the continent stretched and broke apart, forming a series of fault-block mountain ranges that reached heights similar to the mountains in and around Death Valley National Park today. The rocks of these mountains are exposed in the easternmost part of the Grand Canyon, but they too were eventually eroded down to a low-relief surface as well, although small  ridges a few hundred feet high persisted. Along the lower reaches of Diamond Creek Road, you can lay your hand on a boundary between two rock sequences with a gap of more than a billion years between them. The unconformity can be seen in the photo above where a conglomerate rests on contorted metamorphic rocks in the bit of shadowed ledge. The "Diamond" of Diamond Creek is the uniquely shaped peak on the left side of the photograph. It is actually a sliver of rock caught between two branches of the Hurricane fault system.

Another layer that is prominently exposed along Diamond Creek Road is Devonian-aged Temple Butte Limestone. Most park visitors never see it because in the eastern section of Grand Canyon National Park the Temple Butte is a discontinuous thin layer that is pretty well invisible from the rim. In western Grand Canyon it is more than 700 feet thick. It formed as a tidal estuary and tidal flats along the edge of the continent about 385 million years ago.

The most "mysterious" aspect of Diamond Creek and Peach Springs Canyon is that the tributary canyons to this creek are older than the Grand Canyon itself. It's an odd problem. Along the upper reaches of Peach Springs Canyon, there are a series of Paleocene to Miocene-aged rocks clinging to the canyon walls. They once filled the canyon, meaning the canyon was carved prior to sixty million years ago, and the rivers that carved it flowed northeast, opposite of the Colorado River today. Apparently the land subsided so that the canyons were filled with sediment, and then they were exhumed when the modern Grand Canyon was carved, most likely within the last four or five million years.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

Diamond Creek is a fascinating excursion. It is entirely on Hualapai lands, and they charge a fee of around $25 per person for permission to drive the road. I never mind paying the fee, because the tribe doesn't have many sources of income or all that many jobs on the reservation. The town of Peach Springs where the road starts has a very nice motel and restaurant (and not much else), and if you are a train lover, you'll be able to listen to them all night long. The rails are amongst the busiest you'll ever see.The town is on one of the last remaining stretches of the original Route 66.

Into the Great Unknown: The Last Day...An Elegy for a Journey, and for a River

Elegy (from the Greek word for "lament") is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.

How many ways can I describe the last day of our trip? The word "elegy" came to mind. It was the end of a long but incredible rafting trip down the Colorado River, and I was feeling sad. Sure, I was anxious to hear the news from the family and the outside world, but it was also the ending of one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was the ending of a personal journey, which ventured sometimes into terrifying darkness, but mostly it was a world of sublime beauty, even glory. And... the story was about the abuse and destruction of a river.

We packed at a leisurely pace. We only had a few miles to go, and the Hualapai Nation requested that no take-outs happen before 10 AM.

We set out down the river. We turned a corner and I saw something I hadn't seen in more than a week: a familiar sight. I've been down Diamond Creek several times, and Diamond Peak has an unmistakeable shape, even from the opposite side. To offer a sense of scale, Diamond Peak is only about 200 feet higher than the beach at the beginning of our trip in Lee's Ferry. It stands out in part because it is a fault block that has risen between two fault zones. Erosion along these faults has led to the trick of the topography that allowed a road to be constructed down to the river.

At mile 224 we passed the final rapid, a little riffle that didn't even merit a name. But it was the last one...

And then we entered the last mile or so of river, and it nearly broke my heart. It was perfect. In that moment I wanted to simply float on and on into eternity. Pete stopped rowing and we simply drifted. The river was quiet. A swallowtail butterfly landed briefly on my hand, confused by the bright colors of our clothing and luggage. Pete pulled out his harmonica and played a few tunes.

I wrote in my journal...

I was suddenly wistful, wishing to float down a serene river, at peace, but knowing that it is never truly serene. There are those perfect moments that make everything worthwhile but around the bend there can be excitement, action, and even terror. But peace returns, and we recover our sense of well being.

Such beauty in such a savage land. Without the river, life would be barely possible for a person. Too far between water sources when it is so god-awful hot. The hike yesterday across the Tapeats ledges could have been unbearable without soaking in the cold water first.

But along the string of life-giving water, the beauty is overwhelming. Every side canyon would be worthy of a national park all its own. I found myself thinking 30 Yosemite Valleys strung in a line would equal the Grand Canyon.

I don't know that I will be back. I faced the big waters twice and made it through, one time in terror, and the other less so. But I enjoyed the rapids a bit less afterwards...

...but nothing can take the place of drifting down the placid parts of the river; seeing the herons and bighorns, and I'll never forget the sounds of the canyon wrens. I would do it for that...those parts will always live on in my memories.

The cliffs would glow red in the pre-morning hours after the stars disappear. The red fades into shadow, and then the sun lights up the cliffs in blazing orange. The river was always brown but in the shadows of evening and morning, it reflected the lights of the cliffs above...wonderful moments.

I took one last video as we drifted...

 

And then, a strange sight, a big orange ball and a cable strung across the river. It was the gaging station at Diamond Creek. It was a reminder that this was a heavily utilized river that had to be measured and controlled. There was a feeling on the entire trip that the river we were traveling on was not "right". It was far too cold for a desert summer, and it ran too high for any snow-fed river in August. The disappearing beaches demonstrated that the river rarely flooded anymore.

It's hard to imagine the difference between this river and the river that was experienced by John Wesley Powell and his courageous men. And it was almost entirely due to the construction in 1963 of the monstrosity that flooded a precious gorge called Glen Canyon. And the sewage lagoon that formed behind the dam was named for Powell. I don't think he would have been pleased. He recognized sooner than most the problems that would lie ahead for the millions who would come to depend on an inherently undependable river. The lake that bears Powell's name may never again fill if the predictions of the climate scientists come to pass.

The river will return. And it probably won't take as long as it did when lava flows temporarily stopped the flows of the river. The dam is built in unstable porous rock, and it almost failed catastrophically in 1983, due in part to the arrogance of the dam engineers. It ultimately must fail, probably within a few years of being abandoned by the society that maintains it. Ultimately the river will return to something of its former self. Time is all it needs.

The gaging station also meant that our time was almost up...

A beach came into view, with trucks and giant pontoon boats. We waited until the other boats left on their journey to Lake Mead and pulled off the river for the last time.

Rigging the boats at the beginning of our trip took parts of two days. The de-rigging took an hour or less. No one wanted to hang out on the river in the growing heat of the day.

All of the material we began the trip with came off the river, although some of it had been, um, "transformed". A few items, most notably my hat, gloves and a guidebook were still in the river somewhere. Oh and a tent that blew away several days earlier.

I finally had a look at the unadorned raft that had been my home for the last two weeks. We developed a luggage line and got all our gear onto the truck; we would unscramble it in much more comfortable weather in Flagstaff at an elevation of 7,000 feet. We piled into the truck and a van and set out on the bumpy 20 mile drive to Peach Springs where we would rediscover ice cream and flush toilets. A 90 mile drive to Flagstaff followed...

...our trip was over.

I hope you have enjoyed following our journey. Thanks to all those who traveled with me, and especially my brother and his family who invited me to come along. Thanks to Pete, who was a wonderful boatman and traveling companion. They were wonderful people to travel with! Thanks to Barry, Bev and Jeff, who pulled me from the river, sometimes more than once.  And thanks to all the river runners who have clearly worked to keep the river clean and wild.

Look for one more post in this series, a compilation of all the posts on the journey, and maybe a few final thoughts.