Grand Canyon National Park - Toroweap Point, AZ (4/10/2018)

Before getting to the Toroweap story, here are a couple more sunrise/sunset photos from the Kaibab Paiute Reservation.

 Now, about Toroweap Point, a remote part of Grand Canyon National Park that few people have heard of and even fewer have ever visited.  This point is the only place in the park where one can look down directly at the Colorado River some 3000 feet below.  I've been aware of it for years, but have had mixed feelings about going there.  The park service actually seems to discourage visitation by the warnings on its web site, mostly related to poor roads and the absolute remoteness.  From the paved highway, any of three roads can access the area, but it is a minimum of 60 miles on rough road.  The last several miles are even rougher, more like rock crawling.  The park service advises 4WD only, and bring two spare tires, a good jack, and food and water in case of a problem.  With no cell service, help is hard to get and very costly.

After hearing from some friends who made the trip, I decided to do it.  Only five miles from the Toroweap Road, there would never be a better opportunity.  The only problem was the best photos are taken at sunrise or sunset, which requires camping overnight at the point.  An application for permit to camp must be mailed in advance, which I couldn't do.  Still, I wanted to check this trip off my "bucket list", so I went.

Parts of the road aren't bad at all, and the scenery is prettier than I anticipated.  On the other hand, parts of the road are very uncomfortable and slow going.  You can see "wash board" in the photos.

 Seeing this ancient horse-drawn road grader made me wonder if it had been the last to operate out here.

 After 2.5 hours on the road, I arrived and began to look around.  I was soon joined by a Kanab tour guide and his customers.  He allowed me to tag along so I got to learn more about the area, which incidentally is called Tuweep because that's the Paiute name for it.

 Looking down at the river, we watched about twenty rafts and 5-6 kayaks run through Lava Falls.  This is more than a section of rapids, it includes one drop of 38 feet, I'm told.  No personal knowledge, mind you.  You might be able to see a raft in the falls in one shot, when enlarged.

In this photo, you can see some of the lava flow that several times blocked the river and created the waterfall.  The guide mentioned that the lava dam had once caused the river to back up for many miles and was more than 2000 feet deep.

 I also spotted some California Condors soaring in the canyon about 2000 feet down.  Not having my long lens, I wasn't able to get a good photo of them.

 When I talked with the volunteer at the Ranger Station, he told me how to find an area called Nampaweap ("foot canyon" in Paiute), where a significant group of petroglyphs could be found.  Although it added more than ten miles of rough road to my return trip, I went to check it out.  The volunteer had not mentioned the 1.5 mile walk to see the petroglyphs.

The most unusual part of this rock art, to me, is the fact that they are on some very hard volcanic rock, basalt.  As a result, the images do not penetrate the rock much at all.  It amazed me that they have lasted hundreds of years on the surface of these boulders.  It must have been difficult to get even this much scratched into the basalt.

In the end, I was pleased to have made the trip, something that only 20,000 or so people do each year, while more than six million visit the "normal" Grand Canyon N P.