Now I can appreciate why it's called the Grand Canyon

As you might have noticed from my previous post, I was in Las Vegas for a company conference. As my golf buddy, Saday, was also going to be at the conference, we had decided to make a little trip of our own after the conference. The plan was to go to the Grand Canyon, which is a ~250 mile drive from Vegas, so that we can see one of the grandest creations of nature.

Saday's friend Ashish was going to join us in Vegas for a couple of days and then we would embark on our little road trip towards Arizona. Other than this, we had not planned on anything. While we were at the conference, we came to know about this thing called the Skywalk which had been build at the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. What these highly ingenious (and capitalistic) people had done was build a semi-circular walkway jutting over the Canyon. The most striking feature of this walkway? It's made of glass! And the view from there was reputed to be truly awesome, despite the fact that the surroundings themselves were awesome in their own right.

The conference ended on the 1oth evening and we were scheduled to leave for the Grand Canyon the next day. Thanx to Ashish, we had hotel reservations and a car already booked for us before we left. Ashish had even left in the morning for the airport to pick up the rental car. Fortunately for us, we got a FWD Subaru Outback which is a wonderful car to take out on a drive in the outdoors, especially if it's a dirt road, something that was to be expected on the way to the Skywalk.

Our itenary was to go via the Hoover Dam into Arizona, then take the Pierce Ferry road onto the West Rim. The drive would be around a hundred and twenty miles and we were hoping it would not take us more than two and a half hours. The Outback proved itself to be a stroke of good luck as it seemed to make the journey feel a lot more effortless than it was. We stopped at the Hoover Dam for a short while to admire this effort of engineering made so long ago and to marvel at the sheer size and scope of the structure. Just the flood hole of the dam was an intimidating sight. But it was not the Hoover Dam that we wanted to see. We wanted to see the Skywalk and we wanted to get there before 3:30pm which is when the last tickets get sold off. Also we didn't want to miss the sunset at the Canyon.

The last 30 miles to the West Rim is a pure dirt track and it was quite treacherous driving on the road. That was compounded by the cars ahead of me which were throwing a bunch of dirt onto our car. That was the main distraction for us which kept us from looking at the lovely Joshua Tree surroundings which littered the sides of the road. Finally when we pulled into the parking lot of the West Rim, the car was as filthy as you could imagine. But that was nowhere close to enough to dampen our spirits as we looked forward to getting to the Skywalk.

What did dampen our spirits was the fact that the Skywalk tour would cost us $81. That is a lot of money and we were not sure if the experience for the Skywalk was worth it and whether we should do it at all. Finally one of us prevailed and we bought out tickets for the tour. Boy! am I glad we did that!

As we approached the Skywalk, we could appreciate the scope of the construction. From our vantage point, the view was breathtaking and intimidating at the same time. And the Skywalk was built at a point facing the opposite wall of the Canyon so that the sun would set lighting up the Canyon wall as you stood admiring it. Nothing is allowed on the Skywalk for fear of cracking the glass walkway. So we had to leave our cameras and our cellphones in the lockers provided (for a charge, of course) and then proceed towards the Skywalk. They also make you wear these covers for our shoes so that we don't scratch the glass surface or stain it. So with these sleeves on our shoes, we were made to wait behind a curtain in an effort to dramatize the effect of walking onto the Skywalk.

The dramatization worked!

As the curtain came away, the effect was phenomenal! An all glass walkway jutting over the canyon! Before we arrived at the Skywalk, we were talking about how it would not be a big deal walking on the glass walkway and why it should be fine. Let me tell you...we were scared witless when we walked onto the glass. As I stood on the edge of the opaque area and considering my first step onto the transparent glass, sparks ran through the soles of my feet and it was an exhilarating few moments as I took my first few steps on the clear transparent surface. Saday and Ashish immediately dove for the opaque sides of the walkway, but I wanted to overcome this knee buckling effect the Skywalk had on all of us. After more than 10 minutes on it, we were finally acclimatized to walking on something that made one think that they are walking on air. I even have a picture of the three of us on the Skywalk which I bought from the staff (we obviously could not take our own pictures).

After only a minute of being there, there was a unanimous agreement that the money spent on the Skywalk was completely worth it. So much so that we did not feel like leaving. Mainly because the sun was setting and it was throwing the most amazing light on the opposite wall of the Canyon. We did have to leave though, and thankfully so, otherwise I would have missed this picture that you see on the right side. As we were coming back from the Skywalk after collecting our belongings, the sun was right behind the tour bus stand and the lone staff member sitting there to help the visitors was illuminated perfectly from the back by the sun. This is one of my favourite picture from the trip, one that I want to blow up in size and hang in my house. Trust me, the photograph looks a lot LOT better when seen at the native resolution captured by my 8 megapixel Nikon 8700.

Immediately after taking the above shot, I took my next favorite picture. The same tour bus stand, but this time with the sun on the horizon. The couple of pictures that I took just after the Skywalk provided the icing on the cake. This was one of my more memorable tours and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested. The only suggestion I will make to anyone who is going there is to not underestimate the Skywalk. One of the staff on the walkway pointed us toward what looked like bushes from the Skywalk. He said they were actually large trees which were looking like bushes from out height of 4000 feet from the Canyon floor. That was when we realized that our concepts of distance had gone out of the window and that we could not comprehend how far some of the points in the Canyon were. The scale of this natural structure is awesome in the true sense of the word.

This was the final shot of the day at the Grand Canyon, the sun just settling below the horizon. When I say horizon, I mean the horizon as you can see from the Grand Canyon. Being 4000 feet from the floor of the Canyon tends to expedite sunset. What it also does is enhances the colours when the sun is setting and this picture is testimony to that. It is also the same time when I realized the genius that is the human body. The appreciation that these two eyes gives us is far more than any camera can capture and amplify. The sights that we were surrounded with and the light we were bathed in was just fantastic. Too bad my limited vocabulary is too feeble to describe it. What I can say, however, is that anyone who has a chance should see these sights at least once in their life. They will be memories you will cherish for a really long time.

We left the West Rim after sunset and that was the time Ashish got in the mood to do a little bit of Rally style driving. In a place where there is no cell phone reception and where the visibility is made really poor with the last cars leaving the West Rim, the man was pushing his luck sliding in and out of corners. Saday and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we got off the dirt road and onto a paved road, on the way to the South Rim.

We had booked ourselves at the Motel 6 which was about 50 miles from the Grand Canyon National Park South Rim entrance. By the time we reached and had dinner, it was already 11:30pm. There was a lot of debate about whether we should get up early to catch the sunrise (Ashish had asked around and found out that sunrise was to be at 6am). It would take us at least an hour to reach the National Park and we would have to leave around 4:30am if we had any hope of catching sunrise. After a lot of discussion, I prevailed and we slept with the idea of waking up at 4am to take some amazing pictures. After we saw the pictures that we had taken that day, there was no contest on whether we should carry on the next day.

Wake up at 4am we did and left for the National Park entrance. After paying our entry fee of $25, we figured out that Mather Point would be our best bet for the right sunrise pictures as the sun came up over the horizon. We were not disappointed. The only thing is, we were there almost 45 minutes ahead of the actual sunrise, mainly because we did not take into account that sunrise would be a little later at the Canyon.

I had become so shutter happy that I was clicking pictures every couple of minutes. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that it was extremely cold. And the little wind there was not helping either.

So after setting the camera up on the tripod (yes, I carried a tripod for the trip knowing I would need it for some great pictures), I spent most of my time alternating between keeping myself warm and clicking pictures.

It was all worth it when the sun peeked above the Canyon top and I caught the first light of the day at the Grand Canyon's South Rim. It was a great sight and the light that it threw on the Canyon walls and the shadows it created was an amazing site. A photographer's dream! Suddenly, standing in all that cold and waking up early to get to sunrise felt like a small price to pay after being treated with such a glorious display of light and colours.

In the first light of the morning, you could see all the reds and yellows that made the Canyon walls. You could see the rock formations and the abrasions made by wind and water from the Colorado river as it chiseled it's was through rock over millenia. And standing there appreciating the scale of this gigantic structure made me realize why it is called the Grand Canyon. The scale truly makes it grand.

I want to end this post with a picture of the Canyon wall at sunrise. This is just one of the more-than-hundred photos I have clicked during this most amazing trip (and there is no reason to pick this particular one). But it is one of the most breathtaking picture sets I have taken in a long time.


This post would be incomplete without mentioning my thanks to Saday and to Ashish. Saday is the person who engineered this trip and got Ashish involved. And Ashish made the whole trip worth it for all of us. From taking care of a lot of logistics to the banter in the car to the song singing sessions to the dinner arguments, it was one heck of a trip, memories of which will stay alive in my mind for a long long time. And in the process, I got to know a great person in a short time of two days.

Thanx a lot, guys! You guys made this trip worth it and I would not have had anywhere close to this much fun without you. Thanx for making the trip a memorable one.