The Grand Canyon - A photo feature

Water can be a devastating agent of erosion. This is what I have been learning while teaching my daughter a chapter called 'Fluvial agents & processes' in Geography. The best example of the Fluvial process is 'The Grand Canyon.' We visited the West rim of the Grand Canyon in June this year. 

This harmless looking Colorado river once started cutting these rocks while flowing down. For thousands of years all it did was cut and cut the rocks. It got helped by winds and ice. It does not rain often in this region but when it does, it pours, and all the water goes into the Colorado river. This causes flooding and the river becomes wider as it cuts the rocks laterally. The upper portions of the cliffs collapse. As a result of all this erosion 'The Grand Canyon stretches 250 miles. It is a mile deep. In some places it is 20 miles wide. 

On the way to The Grand Canyon you can take a tour to the Hoover Dam. It had been built at a great expense and loss of many lives in 1930's. The idea was to tame the flooding of Colorado river and for irrigation water and for the hydroelectricity. A concrete structure of this size and magnitude had never been built before and much of the technology had been untested till then. 

The journey to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon takes you through the dry desert areas. The wind directions and velocity at times can cause typhoons. They start innocently enough as in above picture but can become a swirling car flying powerful windy factors as the wind gains strength.

This photograph is of the part of West rim which appears like Eagle with its wings open ready to pounce on prey. I could only manage this picture from an angle as the correct angle of eagles wings could only be taken from the moving bus which I could not manage.The bus drops you at the Eagle point which gives you this view and some others like that of a lying dog's image.

Notice the descending helicopter in the image above. It takes you all the way down to the Colorado river. You need to be brave to do this descending journey through these narrow crevasses.

The sky walk is a technological marvel. We did go over it and looked down at the depth of the Grand Canyon through its glass flooring. It is scary. You could lie down on your tummy to get a feel . Cameras are not allowed on sky walk but professional photographer is there if you do feel like spending money and get your photographs taken on the sky walk. People who did choose this option were lying down and posing in funny manner so that they could do justice to the money spent. Each photograph I think costs $30. The cost of going on to the skywalk is also around $ 40.00 My brother in law by mistake left the tickets to the sky walk on the Company bus. Tickets were never found but he managed to fight his way and get us access to the skywalk as payment had been made by credit card and there was proof of it.
As mentioned earlier, this skywalk is an engineering marvel and one needs to read about the story of its creation.

The Bus then takes you to Guano Point. Most of the images have been taken at this point. It would have nice if we had stayed on till dusk as the setting sun gives you spectacular colors in the sky. But west Rim shuts before it gets dark.

It is the Hualapai tribe which dominates this region of the grand Canyon as they are part of the reservation given to them. The reservation encompasses about one million acres along 108 miles of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River. The Hualapai tribe has an amphitheater built near the sky walk and there you can go and learn about them and the way they live. This entire area is known as Hualapai area.

You can just look at these images and imagine what all erosion can do. Imagine this as blocks of rocks without any canyon part. It will seem so dull.

Lovely colors and textures of different kinds of stones are found. Limestone and sandstone are most common.

This is a dangerous act by my daughter. Many tourists do perish each year as the depth of the Canyon swallows them while they are attempting silly things.

Many people go to the South Rim at the Grand Canyon National Park and spend a few days there. South Rim and North Rim have places to stay, adventure sports, river rafting and many other activities. Rock climbing is a very common sport.

At the North Rim and the South Rim the photographers are up early to catch the sun rise and they are back again in the evening to catch the setting sun. West rim does not have much activity but for touristy buses which come for the day trips.

The sun was setting when we drove back. The colors of sky were extraordinary. I managed this from a moving car which was going at more than 80 miles an hour !

This image of tiny looking river doing all the work stays in mind for a long long time.

It takes around 3 hours from Las Vegas to get to West Rim. We took the directions from the hotel who gave us a map as well. Otherwise the GPS would have taken us to South Rim which was around 6-7 hours away. The kids were already cribbing about sitting in the car that long.
Once at the Grand Canyon, it had become cool by the time we reached. At around 2 PM, the temperature was 42 deg C but at 4 PM it was a pleasant 32 deg C with wind blowing. We had reached around 4 PM at Eagle Point and with each hour it became cooler and cooler.
The food at West Rim was very ordinary so we had a hot dog each to sustain ourselves.

The next trip of mine should be at the Grand Canyon national park at the South Rim where I would love to do my photography and try and be a bit adventurist. I need to go closer to River Colorado and need to explore the ravines of The Grand Canyon !