GRAND CANYON NORTH RIM, Ariz. – — My brother, John, loves deserts, slot canyons, mesas, buttes and treacherous dirt roads. At home, he pores over U.S. Geological Survey maps, dog-ears pages in hiking books, and studies dry treatises on the archaeology and geology of the Southwest.
When he said recently that he wanted to spend a few nights on the remote Powell Plateau, overlooking some of the finest vistas in the Grand Canyon, I immediately applied for a backcountry permit from the national park. I never had been to the North Rim or heard of the Powell Plateau, but if John wanted to go there, that was all I needed to know.
Thinking we deserved a reward after our planned two-night October camping trip, I tried to book a cabin at Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim, which was about to close for the season. I called for reservations and could hardly believe it when I learned it was full. Turns out people make reservations months — even years — in advance for the fall, so I called every day for a week and finally got a place, thanks to a cancellation.
Eons before my brother and I were born, seismic activity in what is now northern Arizona chopped a chunk about half the size of California’s Catalina Island off the North Rim.
It came to rest between the rims of the chasm on the northern side of the Colorado River, which makes a big loop around it, 5,300 feet below. The top of the plateau is flat, and its flanks are steeply terraced, falling away from points along the edge that overlook a canyon land unknown to most tourists.
That’s partly because the Powell Plateau is reached by driving rough roads and hiking from the North Rim, which is far less visited than its southern counterpart. Of the 4.3 million people who went to the canyon last year, only 5 percent ventured to the North Rim.
Then, too, while the warmer, dryer, easily accessed South Rim stays open all year, the more remote North Rim closes when snow blocks the road — around the beginning of November — and doesn’t reopen until May.
I flew, and John drove his old Toyota 4Runner loaded with gear, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, a good staging point for trips into the canyon lands of Utah and Arizona. I rented an SUV at the airport, where John met me.
When the woman at the rental check-in counter said we could upgrade to a Hummer for $10 a day more, John’s ears got as big as a mule deer’s. Driving a Hummer on an abominable dirt road is the stuff of his fantasies, and the price was unbeatable.
So we began our Powell Plateau adventure cruising down the Vegas Strip in an H3.
Hitting the road
Early the next morning, we were on our way to St. George, Utah, where we would turn east toward the North Rim, with the Vermilion Cliffs at one shoulder and the Arizona Strip (the part of the state north of the canyon) at the other.
At the Kaibab National Forest ranger station in Fredonia, we got directions to the Powell Plateau trailhead. To get there, we took a turnoff on Arizona 67 about 20 miles short of the North Rim lodge. Then we picked our way over a network of unpaved forest roads that led west to secluded canyon overlooks on the ragged southern edge of the Kaibab Plateau.
At Swamp Point, we parked the Hummer and started hiking.
The aspens on the road to the North Rim had turned a blazing canary yellow. Suddenly, we realized why the lodge was full. Fall comes to the North Rim in a geologic nanosecond, quickly whipped away by high winds and early snowfall. But if you’re lucky enough to be here at exactly the right moment, as we were, you will see an autumn display that blows the red maples of New England out of the water.
Along the way, John and I also saw evidence of man’s efforts to control the fires that regularly gut big tracts of ponderosa pine in the area. The national park and adjacent national forest used to suppress them vigorously.
But about 20 years ago, forest managers realized that fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, clearing out flammable undergrowth and thinning the trees, leaving only the hardiest ponderosas to grow into goliaths.
The authorities still battle conflagrations that threaten development and irreplaceable sites, but some are allowed to burn, although they’re carefully monitored. They even set prescribed fires to keep the forest healthy.
No matter how well-prepared you are, you take a calculated risk going into the wilderness. John is an experienced backpacker with a high risk threshold. Mine is so low that a falling pine cone can make me panic. Plus, I had been reading “Deep Survival,” by Laurence Gonzales, which uses neuroscience and true stories of disasters to explain who dies in the wilderness and why.
Swamp Point turned out to be an exposed, 7,565-foot-high shelf of rock. It looks over White Creek and the North Bass Trail on their way to the basement of the Grand Canyon. I couldn’t see the Colorado River from here, but John pointed to a saddle of land below the point, where you can see an old cabin, and the land mass on the far side. “That’s the Powell Plateau,” he said.
By then, it was 5 p.m. We figured we could make it 800 feet down to the Muav Saddle, cross the canyon and climb 900 feet on a trail that switchbacks over the terraced northeastern flank of the plateau, about 2 1/2 miles all told.
We did it in a little more than an hour, pitched our tents in the twilight and had freeze-dried chili mac for dinner.
Day 2, blazing trails
The next morning, the birds were singing, and the sun was rising in a cloudless sky. Once we packed, John and I followed the Dutton Point trail through golden meadows where asters and daisies lingered.
We frequently lost the trail, which was unmaintained and only occasionally marked with blazes and cairns. But after thrashing around a bit, we generally found it again.
Maybe we were too busy looking at the blackened husks of ponderosas — ghost trees, John called them — that lightning had selected for death. Lightning starts most North Rim fires, and the plateau’s remoteness has made it a testing ground for the let-it-burn strategy of forest management. So the top is a rare example of an almost virgin ponderosa pine forest, much thinner than you would expect for a Western forest primeval.
Around noon, we made camp on the edge of the plateau, where my open-sided tent-tarp looked into the canyon. We lazed around in the sunshine, then walked a few miles to Dutton Point. When we reached the edge of the plateau, John went first onto the overhanging ledge.
“Come on,” he yelled back. “It’s like a dance floor out here.”
I crawled, hardly daring to look up. But when I did, I forgot I was on a 7,500-foot-high rock ledge. The view was magnificent, at least 180 degrees of prime Grand Canyon panorama wrapped around the southeastern corner of the Powell Plateau.
We could see everything: the South Rim, clearly lower than the North; the 6,242-foot Masonic Temple, with its razorback ridge leading to Fan Island butte; King Arthur Castle and Galahad Point; even whitewater in what we deduced to be the Colorado’s Serpentine Rapids .
Only when the shadows lengthened did we leave the ledge. Back at camp, we ate turkey tetrazzini for dinner and went to bed, mostly in silence. There wasn’t much to say after a day that had been blissful from sunrise to sunset.
It still amazes me how fast things changed.
I started hearing the wind in the middle of the night. It sounded like a vacuum cleaner. By the time I got up, the sky was roiling.
Without a word exchanged, John and I knew we had to get off the exposed plateau. He could scarcely believe how efficiently I packed, but as Gonzales says in “Deep Survival,” fear sometimes makes people focus. I admit I was afraid, knowing that weather, not mountain lions, is the chief predator on the Powell Plateau.
We left at 6:30 a.m. and made good time until we stopped seeing the trail markers. At first, we followed the plateau’s eastern rim, thinking it inevitably would lead us to the takeoff point for the cross-canyon route to Swamp Point, where we had left the H3.
But it didn’t, no matter how hard we bushwhacked through scrub oak, crossed dry drainages and looked for familiar ghost trees.
Finally, John made a difficult but smart decision. He made us backtrack to the eastern rim and then walk west across the plateau, figuring we would have to cross the trail on the way.
We spent more than an hour doing that while the sky grew increasingly ugly. My brother was tense with worry, which more than anything else made me decide that I had lived a good life.
“I just don’t see how we could have missed the trail,” he said for the fifth time.
My eyes were glued to the ground. At just that moment the light must have changed, because I suddenly realized I was looking at a slightly worn place in the grass.
“I think it’s right here,” I said.
We got off the plateau just in time, the first thunder booming as we climbed up from the Muav Saddle. When we reached Swamp Point, it started to pour. My clothes were sweaty-cold, so I was happy for the H3’s heated seats and the way the Hummer plowed right over Swamp Ridge Road.
At the national park checkpoint on Arizona 67, the attendant gave us a big smile when we said we had come from Powell Plateau. The front-desk clerk at the lodge put us in a cabin with a propane fireplace. While we waited for the cabin to be cleaned, we had lunch in the dining room, feeling righteous.
During our two days at the lodge, John and I ate well, napped hard, attended ranger lectures and cheated at National Park Monopoly. All the while, the lodge tucked up for winter, urged on by 70-mph winds.
A good trip usually has its bliss and panic. You go for the one and learn from the other. You get back in touch with matters elemental and remember who in the wide world you can always count on.
Powell Plateau was one for the scrapbook.
Insider’s guide
The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is about 690 miles from Denver. The closest airport is Flagstaff, Ariz., 80 miles southeast of the park. You also can fly to Las Vegas, rent a car and drive the 270 or so miles. From Denver, restricted, nonstop, round-trip fares begin at $173 on all major airlines.
Stay and dine: Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim, 928-638-2611 or 888-297-2757, . (Note: The lodge is managed by Xanterra Parks & Resorts; reservations, . As of Jan. 1, Forever Resorts will take over operations; reservations, .) This 70-year-old landmark has motel rooms and rustic cabins, starting at $103. The lodge has a dining room that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, a saloon and deli; open mid-May to Oct. 16. The North Rim section of the park is open for day use until snow blocks Arizona 67. Kaibab Lodge, Arizona 67, about 18 miles from the North Rim; 928-638-2389, . On the highway leading into the national park, the lodge has cabins that start at $85, a store and a restaurant; open May 15 to Nov. 2 (weather permitting). Jacob Lake Inn, U.S. 89A and Arizona 67; 928-643-7232, ., is about 45 miles north of the canyon’s rim. It is open year-round and has a restaurant, store, gas station, cabins and motel rooms starting around $80.
More info: Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023; 928-638- 7888, . The North Rim Visitor Center and Bookstore is adjacent to the lodge. For information about obtaining a permit to camp on the Powell Plateau, contact the Grand Canyon National Park Backcountry Information Center, P.O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023; 928-638-7875, fax 928-638-2125, . (Requests for permits must be made in writing by fax, mail or in person.)
