Grand Canyon Expedition....Part I

During the deepest months of winter, a good friend and I planned a journey to the Grand Canyons of Arizona . As such, we made good upon that plan and flew to Arizona last friday. Aboard a jet aircraft, some 2600 miles of North American continental vastness was bridged in 4 hours. Upon arriving at Phoenix, I was quite surpised by the vastness of this city. Of particular contrast, was the lush(almost tropical) city scape when compared with the semi-arid desert which surrounded the metropolis. I saw a series of well maintained canals which undoubtedly supplied the city's million or so inhabitants with potable water. Of particular note is the fact that the canal network was originally built by the pre-literate Hohokam culture. That group of people, through a centuries long construction effort had enabled the Phoenix area to be inhabitable in the first place. Unfortunately Hohokam society unraveled and perished due to the decade long droughts which hit the region in the 13th century. Basically, the canals dried up, Hohokam agriculture collapsed, and their society soon followed.


In anycase, we drove some 270 miles across the desert Friday night. We passed the night in the small town of Williams. On Saturday morning, another 60 miles of barren desert and scrubland was crossed to reach the Grand Canyons. It dawned upon me that the desert effectively served to isolate the early Native American societies of the region from each other. This must have been a great inhibitor on the spread of ideas and technologies between the various regional tribes. It is doubtless in my mind, that the indigenous peoples of these lands must have been extremely clever and adaptable to have survived at all in the harsh landscape. But I do surmise that the isolation of the desert prevented the emergence of a literate, high civilization in these parts.


The Grand Canyon was of course as awe-inspiring as the advertisements promised and more. After some preparations we began our hike down the cliff-side to the bottom of the Canyon. The trail was of course narrow and quite slippery at certain points. The Canyon floor, some 5 miles away, was approached at a steady pace of 2 miles per hour. Along the way, we encountered many other hikers going in both directions. The Canyon cliff top where we started is a vetical mile above the canyon floor. Thus, as we descended upon these heights, the surrounding climate and vegetation began to change very significantly. The cliff-tops were predominantly alpine in nature, but the vegetation gradually transformed into a kind of bushy scrub as we went lower. The temperature of rather cold at the top and of course got higher as we went ever downwards.

Along the narrow trail, there was a rather constant stream of dung and other wastes emitted by the mule teams that walked up and down the canyon. At the higher elevations, this was rather endurable since the lower temperatures kept the smell down to a minimum. Near the valley bottom however, the scent of mule dung permeated the entire trail. In some areas, the dung was grounded into a fine greenish paste which was subsequently sun baked into a distasteful(literally) powder which of course was carried everywhere by the dry wind.

Along the trail, I noticed several rather interesting cliff-side paintings. Of worthy mention, was one such portrait depicting the pursuit of a mountain Ibex by several paleolithic bowhunters.
Of course these hunters belonged the little-known Mogollon culture. The Mogollon tribesmen of this region were of the hunter gatherer type found in so many other primitive cultures. They hunted mountain Ibex, collected berries, and lived in the hillsides. When the droughts of the 1300s hit, their small populations were significantly impacted. Their enviroment effectively collapsed. When the droughts finally ended, a new tribe of part-time cannibals(whose descendents were destined to become the Apache, Kiowa and other plains tribes) migrated here from the northern grasslands and effectively wiped out the remnents of Mogollon society. Coincidentally, the mountain Ibex prey of the Mogollons has outlasted their hunters by some 700 years.

And speaking of the Mountain Ibex, never in my life have I seen a breed of goats as fluffy and lovable as these. In fact we bumped into several of them along the trail. They would come to within a few feet of us and just stand there. I surmised that they were begging for food or candy of some sort. In anycase, these goats had hooves that looked like tiny claws which effectively allowed them to grab onto small stones and bits of turf along the cliff sides. These goats were able to nimbly scale up and down cliffsides with the kind of speed and agility that no human could match.

After 2 and a half hours of hard hiking we came down to the valley floor. It was more or less a desert. The dry wind swept away any sweat that had accumulated on a person's skin. Thus I had to drink water every so often to prevent dehydration. We stopped at a camp called Indian Garden to grab a bite to eat from our backpacks.


After the refreshment, we immediatly headed back up the cliff side. Since it was already 3pm in the afternoon, we did not want to be caught scaling a cliff after sunset. Going up seemed to be twice as hard as coming down. The relentless pace of progress only exacerbated my discomfort. And the occasional passage of mules certainly didn't help the situation! By the end of that 5 mile upward hike, my back, my calves, in fact my entire lower torso felt like a huge burning mass of cramping muscles. But we had made it back to the top before dark!