Soothingly I Was Informed That This
Was An Exceptional Season, And That The Good Snow Might Arrive At Any
Time.
After waiting a few days, I gladly hailed a broad-browed cloud
coming grandly on from the west in big promising blackness, very
unlike the white sailors of the summer skies.
Under the lee of a rim-ledge, with another snow-lover, I watched its movements as it took
possession of the canyon and all the adjacent region in sight.
Trailing its gray fringes over the spiry tops of the great temples and
towers, it gradually settled lower, embracing them all with ineffable
kindness and gentleness of touch, and fondled the little cedars and
pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind like young birds begging
their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals began to
fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the canyon, and
swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the hearty
swarms closed their ranks, and all the canyon was lost in gray bloom
except a short section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which
looked glad with snow in their needles and about their feet as they
leaned out over the gulf. Suddenly the storm opened with magical
effect to the north over the canyon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a
sunlit mass of the canyon architecture, spanned by great white
concentric arches of cloud like the bows of a silvery aurora. Above
these and a little back of them was a series of upboiling purple
clouds, and high above all, in the background, a range of noble cumuli
towered aloft like snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl bosses
flooded with sunshine. The whole noble picture, calmly glowing, was
framed in thick gray gloom, which soon closed over it; and the storm
went on, opening and closing until night covered all.
Two days later, when we were on a jutting point about eighteen miles
east of Bright Angel and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another
storm of equal glory as to cloud effects, though only a few inches of
snow fell. Before the storm began we had a magnificent view of this
grander upper part of the canyon and also of the Coconino Forest and
the Painted Desert. The march of the clouds with their storm banners
flying over this sublime landscape was unspeakable glorious, and so
also was the breaking up of the storm next morning - the mingling of
silver-capped rock, sunshine, and cloud.
Most tourists make out to be in a hurry even here; therefore their
days or hours would be best spent on the promontories nearest the
hotel. Yet a surprising number go down the Bright Angel Trail to the
brink of the inner gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep
canyons attract like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more
surely are we drawn into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger
whatever, and, with ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In
comfortable tourist faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women,
and children on whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if
saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing but fear" - not without reason,
for these canyon trails down the stairways of the gods are less
dangerous than they seem, less dangerous than home stairs. The guides
are cautious, and so are the experienced, much-enduring beasts. The
scrawniest Rosinantes and wizened-rat mules cling hard to the rocks
endwise or sidewise, like lizards or ants. From terrace to terrace,
climate to climate, down one creeps in sun and shade, through gorge
and gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long scramble on foot, at
last beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand, roaring river.
To the mountaineer the depth of the canyon, from five thousand to six
thousand feet, will not seem so very wonderful, for he has often
explored others that are about as deep. But the most experienced will
be awestruck by the vast extent of huge rock monuments of pointed
masonry built up in regular courses towering above, beneath, and round
about him. By the Bright Angel Trail the last fifteen hundred feet of
the descent to the river has to be made afoot down the gorge of Indian
Garden Creek. Most of the visitors do not like this part, and are
content to stop at the end of the horse trail and look down on the
dull-brown flood from the edge of the Indian Garden Plateau. By the
new Hance Trail, excepting a few daringly steep spots, you can ride
all the way to the river, where there is a good spacious camp-ground
in a mesquite grove. This trail, built by brave Hance, begins on the
highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet above the sea, a thousand
feet higher than the head of Bright Angel Trail, and the descent is a
little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful variety of climate
and life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are blowing and
snow is flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are blooming in
balmy summer weather at the other. The trip down and up can be made
afoot easily in a day. In this way one is free to observe the scenery
and vegetation, instead of merely clinging to his animal and watching
its steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp awhile on
the riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants and
animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady
amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white
silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall
snowy mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf
oak, and other small shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses
and sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave,
etc.
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