From: "Philip Merryman" <phil_merryman@hotmail.com>

Date: Sat May 18, 2002 03:31:01 AM Etc/GMT

Subject: Grand Canyon

Hi all!

I have eventually reached Chicago and an internet terminal. The hostel here has several. The dorm also have their own lockers (like in Oz) but also each one has its own en-suite facilities!! This is definitely the highest spec. yet. I am in a dorm of 6 this time.

The journey from LA to the Grand canyon was largely uneventful. But when I went to check in my backpack at LA station I was told that as Williams Junction (where you get off for the service to the canyon) is an unstaffed station there is no baggage handling there, so I will have to carry it myself. On arrival, at 6am, it turns out that Williams Junction station consists of a sign, a patch of tarmac about the size of a tennis court, and NOTHING ELSE!!!! Fortunately the Grand Canyon Railway shuttle bus waits for the train there!

I was too early in the season for the train to the canyon to have the steam engine (starts next week) but it was a train of vintage diesels and carriages nevertheless. However just before you get on the train they stage a wild west shootout!! 4 outlaws and a marshall!! Very amusing. The train to the canyon winds through the desert for a couple of hours or so. Again nothing much to say except that you get a view of the highest point in Arizona: Mount Humphreys!! (This will mean something to only a few of you!)

The Canyon is one of those places where I just do not have sufficient command of any language to begin to do it justice. My first impression was that it was a painting. It is just so vast and at the height of the day there are fewer shadows, so there is no sense of perspective. You get all the facts and figures: 10 miles wide, 1 mile deep, 270 miles long, but you have nothing to give it scale. You look down to the river below and see some rapids. It takes a telephoto lens to get the rapids to go from one end of the picture to the other. Then you read the info sign which says that they are a mile long and rate 8 out of 10 for their size and power!

However as the sun gets lower during the day you get more depth and contrast and the colours become more vivid. The rocks are naturally red in many places, but the evening light emphasises this and this is perhaps when the canyon is at its most spectacular. Consequently with many different viewpoints, different light, different lenses, I took an enormous number of pictures. I suddenly realised that at the end of one particular afternoon I had taken almost 3 rolls of film: that's 100 photos!!! Now I know I take a lot, but 100 in an afternoon is a record even for me!! and by miles. What's more I spent 5 days there!!!

I had contemplated taking a hike down into the canyon. On arrival I saw a good looking viewpoint down in the canyon and considered getting as far in as that. However, as I said above, it is hard to judge distances and I later found out that this point was 3000 feet (nearly 1000m) down and a 6 miles (10km) walk to get to it. Furthermore it was hot, dry and at altitude: the south rim is at 7000ft (about 2200m). Unlike mountain climbing you do the hard bit last: going up and at increaing altitude. All the guide books say that this walk is the absolute limit for a one day down and up hike. They also say allow twice as long to get out as it took to get in, and this was 4 hours in, 8 out! Also down in the canyon itself it is much hotter. It was about 25C (77F) at the rim and nearer 30C half way down (at this point). The very bottom was another 5C hotter still. They also advise not to hike between 10 am and 4pm.

So in the end I decided that I was too out of practice, so I limited myself to the rim walk I hinted at in my earlier mail. However this was 8 miles and took me 7 hours! But much of that was stopping to take pictures! The path really did go right up to the very edge in places, and it WAS 2000ft down if you took one step sideways!! This certainly concentrates the mind and I must confess to being a bit nervous at one or two points to say the least! However on the walk I found a convenient point to sit looking over the edge at a point called "The Abyss", where it is 3000 ft straight down!! As I have said before, I have no fear of heights, but never ask me to step off! Therefore at this point I felt totally secure, enen though one step forward was off the edge!

I spent one day exploring the village, also as a rest after the walk. Then I hired a car to get further down the south rim, and this is the day I took all those picures. The road runs along the canyon for 25 miles (40km) and each viewpoint offers something different in terms of what is visible: the river, the valleys, the desert beyond, etc, etc.

The following day I used the car for its main purpose: to get to Meteor Crater. This was something which had fascinated me as a kid in all my "Boys book of astronomy" type books. However, like the drive to Mt. St. Helens, distances in these large countries are deceptive and it was 145 miles each way: again a bit like Bedford to Bristol just for the day! But it was worth it. However having spent so long looking at the canyon this other hole in the ground, at 3/4 mile (1.2km) across looked small! But nonetheless impressive. It is an fascinating sight if rock formations are of interest to you (they are to me) and they have an excellent information centre and talk given out on the rim.

The trip to Chicago was not without note, however. I had to meet the train at Willimas Junction at 4:30 am!!! This meant getting to Williams the night before and sleeping over in the hotel run by the Grand Canyon Railway. On the train back to Williams we were held up by the same outlaws that had taken part in the shootout on the way out!! They were by the side of the track with the neckerchiefs over the faces and chased the train on horseback. They were good riders too. They then came through the train brandshing their six-shooters , closely followed by the marshall again! More good fun.

At Williams I ordered a wake up call at 03:15 and went to bed at 8:30pm! Luckily the beer and pizza had the desired effect and I dozed off quite easily. At 3:15 the phone rings and the front desk says that Amtrak is running 3 hours late!! So we arrange another call at 6am! For once I am grateful that a train is late. Eventually we get to the patch of tarmac called Williams Junction, but our train is stuck behind a series of freight trains so we hang around for nearly an hour. Amtrak does not own the track, the freight railroads do, so they have priority. And once a train is late, they give all the on time trains priority too. So 3 freight trains, one every 20 minutes, came by before ours pulled in.

As the journey progressed we got steadily further behind schedule. It turned out that the problem was that there had been torrential rain in the Chicago and Kansas areas and this had washed away or flooded some routes, to the train was late getting out to get to LA three days before! And this was the same train on the return. It was an overnight trip from Williams originially due in to Chicago at about 4:30 pm. It finally rolled in after 10:30pm. At one point it was as much as 7 hours late, but there was a generous amount of time allowed for it to do some shunting in the yards just outside Chicago. So in the end it was just over 6 hours late getting here!! Just enough time to get a cab to the hostel and check in and get to bed before midnight.

Gotta go, running out of time again!

Cheers

Phil