No description can actually prepare a person for the scale and grandeur of this enormous chasm, heading off as far as eye can see, forming a grandiose complex of canyons, waterfalls, caves, towers, terraces, and ravines. Grand Canyon always looks different, while the sun and shadows from passing clouds make cliffs change their color shades within a refined range from black and purple brown to pale pink and pearl-gray.
Peeking in the canyon’s bottom from of numerous terraces, you can hardly believe that the tiny muddy river there have created this enormous ravine. However, if you come down to the canyon’s bottom, the Colorado River appears fast and mighty – Lava rapids are supposed to be the fastest navigable rapids in the world. Now you can easily imagine how the river succeeded to make its way through the rocks.
Less than 10 million years ago, the Colorado River meandered around a vast plain. Then, the Earth crust movements made this area rise and the river started entrenching into the ground. Soft 2 million years aged limestone was the first to erode with more ancient slate stone and sandstone in deeper layers to follow. The oldest layer was formed by 2 billion years old granites and crystalline schist, which make the canyon bed.
The main canyon stretched out for 365 km with about 29 km in its widest part. Its depth in some places reaches 1.6 km. There is no bridge across the ravine, and if you wish to get from North Rim Headquarters to Grand Canyon settlement on the southern bank with the distance between them lesser than 19 km in a straight line across the Canyon, you will have to cover more than 322 km.
Grand Canyon is not just a ravine. Many other ones, each of them being just as unique, connect herewith to form the Grand Canyon National Park. There is much to look at in this park. Âóêàíñ-Ñòîóí, a black ash cone formed by volcanic activity about 10 thousand years ago soars above the river; Esplanade – an intensely eroded terrace of red sandstone – flares in damask in the beams of the evening sun; in many places, lumps of laminar sandstone balance fancily over the abyss.
Millions of tourists visit the most famous parts of Grand Canyon. However, there are many places were you can find total solitude. Fern Glen Canyon is well-known due to its special environment: magnificent flowers and rich vegetation amidst a desert. In Canyons of North Wash, calm lakes are lying at the foot of walls.
Above: until 1948, less than 100 persons sailed along the entire length of the Colorado River; today, these trips are very popular and made by thousands of people each year. On your way, you cross several reaches full of rapids; the most dangerous of them is Lava Rapids.