One Best Hike: Grand Canyon. Elizabeth Wenk
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of the Inner Gorge when midday temperatures exceed 85°F?
However, as rangers rattled off the number of rescues and fatalities suffered by people attempting a dayhike to the river, even in spring and fall, it became clear that a blanket recommendation was a pragmatic approach. Indeed, there are more deaths resulting from environmental conditions in May and June than in July and August, presumably because visitors don’t appreciate how hot temperatures are during late spring, especially in the Inner Gorge where there is little shade during these near-solstice months. Many people do not know their physical limits and do not know when they are approaching their limit, leading to severe cases of hyponatremia and heatstroke (see page). Moreover, the enormous number of midsummer rescues endangers the lives of rescuers and costs the park—and the hikers being rescued—a lot. The information in this book is of course still accurate if you wish to dayhike, but I dissuade you from doing it.
Inner Gorge refers to the steep gorge of Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite below the Tonto Platform. Inner Canyon is anywhere below the canyon rim.
Leaving national park policy aside, there are many more good reasons to take multiple days: Completing the hike as a dayhike accentuates the endurance aspects of the hike and takes away from the magic of the canyon and the natural history, because you have much less time to sit and absorb your surroundings. Plus you miss the beautiful morning and evening light from its depth. Many people probably attempt a dayhike because they did not reserve a wilderness permit. Others are people who do not enjoy the extra weight of an overnight pack or simply do not enjoy camping. If you fall into these categories, consider returning for a second trip when you have a backpacking reservation and can travel very light, when nighttime temperatures are warm or you have made a reservation to spend the night at Phantom Ranch.
Human History
NATIVE PEOPLES
The Colorado Plateau, although not the Grand Canyon, has been inhabited for at least 13,000 years, as evidenced by spearheads found in the region. The first of the southwestern Paleo-Indians, the Clovis culture, preferred the open plains areas to canyon country and are thought to have entered the Grand Canyon region rarely. More artifacts have been found from the ensuing Folsom culture, but their population densities on the Colorado Plateau would also have been low. The people of both cultures hunted the large mammal species that went extinct at the end of the ice age—possibly in part because of the hunting pressure. (It makes sense that these groups spent little time along the Colorado River. Can you imagine wooly mammoths and giant sloths descending into contorted canyons?)
The Archaic culture began by definition 8,500 years ago, and by 8,000 years ago people of this culture inhabited the Grand Canyon area. They too were a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture and had no permanent habitations. Over the subsequent six millennia, the distribution of people and especially their population densities fluctuated greatly, dictated largely by natural climatic fluctuations. During dry periods there were fewer predictable water sources and probably fewer game animals to hunt.
The descendants of the Archaic culture are the people of the Basketmaker culture, distinguished by the beautiful baskets they made. The Basketmaker culture began around A.D. 1, and by A.D. 500, at the latest, the people of this culture were farming corn, squash, and beans. This change in food source meant that the people were no longer nomadic, instead building more permanent habitations: pithouses as living quarters and shelters for food storage. However, even after they began to farm, the Basketmaker people living in the Grand Canyon continued to depend partially on wild game and wild plants. This flexibility gave them an advantage over tribes to the south that relied more heavily on farming; because of their use of wild food sources they maintained a more balanced—and healthier—diet than the tribes relying mostly on corn did.
Around A.D. 700 the Basketmaker culture transitioned to the Puebloan culture, designated by its aboveground rock and clay living quarters and its creation of ceramics. Pithouses were no longer used as houses, but in some regions, including the Grand Canyon, similar-shaped ceremonial kivas were central to the culture. The several centuries from A.D. 700 until A.D. 1140 were a period of cultural expansion and population growth across the Colorado Plateau and also a time of sufficient rainfall. The Puebloan villages from this era dot the entire Colorado Plateau—see page for possible locations to visit after your Grand Canyon hike.
Particularly during the period from A.D. 1050 to A.D. 1100 settlements were established at many locations deep within the Grand Canyon. The small deltas that exist where side tributaries merge with the Colorado River were ideal for farming, including the mouth of Bright Angel Creek (see sidebar). River terraces, which are built up during periods of abundant runoff, were also used for farming. Many of the people had a second farm site on the canyon rim, allowing them to grow crops across more months of the year.
Then, a 50-year drought from A.D. 1100 until A.D. 1150 coincided with a period of mass exodus from the Grand Canyon to the south. In the Grand Canyon an extended drought meant many springs dried up and the Colorado River terraces eroded. However, anthropologists do not believe that the climatic shift was solely responsible for their departure. The Kachina religion, practiced to the south, also enticed the Puebloan people southward. Despite the various pressures to move southward, some artifacts indicate a few Puebloans stayed in pockets of the Grand Canyon for many years after most people disappeared. (The Basketmakers and the Puebloan people are also known as the Anasazi, a frequently used term for the prehistoric people of the Colorado Plateau region. The Hopi, their descendants, prefer that this term not be used, as it is a derogatory Navajo term, meaning “enemy ancestor.”)
A second group of people, the Cerbat/Pai, migrated from the Mojave Desert to the Grand Canyon region close to the time of the collapse of the Puebloan culture and settled the plateau country and fertile tributary valleys to the south of the Colorado River. The only Native Americans in the Grand Canyon region today are descendants of these people: the Havasupai tribe inhabiting Havasu Canyon to the west (downstream) of the corridor trails and the Hualapai tribe living on a reservation west of Grand Canyon National Park. While the tribes now live farther west, the Havasupai once farmed Indian Garden on the Bright Angel Trail.
The Southern Paiute also inhabited the Grand Canyon region for approximately six centuries until the arrival of white men, predominantly living on the north side of the Colorado River. The Paiute were not farmers; they lived solely on what they hunted and gathered.
PUEBLO AT BRIGHT ANGEL CREEK
The ruins of a pueblo are visible at the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, between the Bright Angel Creek Campground and the mule bridge. The kiva was built when the site was first occupied, around A.D. 1050, while the living area dates to A.D. 1100. By A.D. 1140 this site, like most habitations along the Colorado River, was abandoned because of increasing drought. Major John Wesley Powell recorded this site during his first descent of the Colorado River.
PIONEERS
The first view of the Grand Canyon by a nonnative person was in 1540 by a Spanish party led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. They were unimpressed with the difficult landscape, and Native Americans continued to be the only inhabitants of the area for many years. Only in 1826 did a party of fur trappers reach the rim; they were likewise disappointed by the steep, deep, contorted canyon and large river—and didn’t recruit others to the location.
Explorers and settlers were first drawn to the area in larger numbers after Major John Wesley Powell explored the length of the Grand Canyon by boat in 1869 and 1871. He too discovered that the country was rough and dangerous, but viewed the difficulties as an adventure and the Grand Canyon as a place of scientific interest, rather than somewhere to avoid. Indeed, just two years after his first, rather disastrous trip, he returned to descend the river a second time and continue his scientific explorations. Following the 1871 excursion he began to promote the Grand Canyon as a tourist venue. However, it was initially the possibility of mineral riches that drew people, with hundreds arriving at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1872 for a short-lived gold rush. No mineral riches were found in the vicinity