South Rim Grand Canyon Arizona

The grandeur of the Grand Canyon is beyond description, but I will do my best to help you view it through my eyes. This was our second visit to the South Rim Grand Canyon Arizona. Our first visit was about eight and a half years ago.

It’s not that anything changed in that period of time between our first and second visits. Really the only thing that was different was the weather. Our first time visiting the Grand Canyon was in late October. It was 29-degrees out with blustery winds. And though I had on so many layers that I could barely bend at the waist I was FREEZING!!! I was fearful that I would be blown into the canyon and never heard from again.

This time Steve and I were much better prepared. We both had our puffy jackets and sweatshirts. And I wore my toasty fleece lined boots. It was January, but the temperature was in the high 50s with bright, warming sunshine and only a slight breeze. It was a glorious day. We were in and out of the car so that we could capture the views with our cameras and didn’t even need those warm jackets!

South Rim Grand Canyon Arizona

As we drove the South Rim trail we saw before us waves of stair-stepped ledges, cliffs and buttes that appeared to be painted ochre, green and gray. The hues kept deepening as we drive along and brightened as puffy clouds drifted by. Occasionally we were able to catch a peek at the Colorado River miles below us, deep in the Canyon.

Vegetation

Also at the South Rim are pinyon and juniper trees that survive with less than 15-inches of rainfall annually at this elevation of about 7,000 feet. Yucca also seems to thrive there because of their thick, waxy leaves that conserve the moisture that their muscular roots pull from the dry, rocky soil. Cliffrose and Gambel oak hug the rim. The further you move from the rim the soil’s moisture and nutrient levels improve and you will find ponderosa pines growing in stands.

Wildlife

Though we did not encounter any Desert Bighorn Sheep, we did see several female Elk. Steve bravely got out of the car to get up close to the Elk and get the wonderful photos of these amazing creatures. We probably saw about six to eight female Elk, but not one male. I wish we could have gotten a photo of a bull Elk in all of his majestic antlered glory. But that wasn’t in the cards.

Carved by water

The story of the Grand Canyon’s formation is much deeper than six million years, and it is still continuing today and into the future. For as long as 65 million years the entire Rocky Mountain-Colorado Plateau region has been rising. The very same sedimentary rocks that we could see in the canyon’s walls – sandstone, limestone and shale – lie immediately below the plateau’s crust. Shallow seas and changing rivers deposited the sediments over a period of almost two billion years.

The Colorado River and its tributaries flowed across and cut into the plateau, revealing flat-lying, multicolored rocks that were formed in the Paleozoic era. Those layers contain marine follies that record some of the Earth’s earliest life forms.

Below the Paleozoic rocks are the tilted layers of the Grand Canyon Supergroup, which formed about one billion years ago

At the bottom of the canyon the Colorado River cuts through some of the plateau’s oldest rocks that were formed as long ago as 1.84 billion years.

Water in the rocks

Precipitation that falls on the North and South Rim plateaus becomes the Grand Canyon’s groundwater. It percolates through porous, faulted or fractured rock. Some of that water exits from the canyon walls, far below the rims, as springs or seeps.

Dwellers

Throughout the 277 mile river corridor inside the park, people built masonry rooms, hearths and pits for roasting food or maybe firing pottery. The earliest potter found in the Grand Canyon dates from about 1,500 years ago. At that time Puebloan people farmed along the canyon rims and deltas. The combination of masonry rooms, pottery, tools and heaths shows that some people not only hunted and foraged, but also lived full lives there.

Grand Canyon National Park preserves and protects wildlife, natural systems and cultural resources for future generations.