Grand Canyon North Rim

I first visited the Grand Canyon in 1981, when I drove out to work at Personal Software. I had always heard people rave about the North Rim as being superior, though it's a much longer drive from civilization.

You run out of superlatives with the Grand Canyon. Suffice to say that of the wonders of the natural world I have seen, it ranks second after a total eclipse of the sun. And it's almost as hard to capture in a photograph. However, I do think I've come as close as anybody with my panoramics.

The north rim is different, though I suspect the thing people like about it most is that it's not crowded. The south rim is a zoo, a busy city or parking lot, especially in the summer.

The north rim is higher than the south rim, but that's a tricky statistic. You can't see the Colorado river itself from most viewpoints on the north rim. You're mostly looking at side canyons, not the full depth of the Grand Canyon you see from the south. The river is far away.

But it remains spectacular.

We were unable to get a campsite in the national park itself, and you can't just make your own, but it is OK to do that in the national forest which surrounds the park. However, late at night the roads are rough, narrow and unmarked. In many cases all you see are two ruts in the grass leading off into the darkness from the main road, with no sign of anywhere to turn around.

GPS to the rescue. While often the GPS may be just a toy, this time it let us camp. Using the mapping software we could see what jeep trail was what, where they led and what routes back there were. This allowed us to drive blind into the forest and set up camp just 100 feet from the edge of the canyon itself. There were some flaws in the database -- some things it thought were roads were really trails -- but we would never have been able to camp this way without it.

I returned to the south rim as part of my return to Lake Powell a month later.

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Narrow mesa

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Bright Angel Viewing Station

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Another view of Angel's Window

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I photograph at Bright Angel Point

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Way down

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Looking down

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Hazy canyon and wispy clouds

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The only view of the Colorado at the North Rim

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Another view down into a side canyon

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K., lovely at sunset with Bright Angel view behind her

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Exact same shot with me

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K. and the vastness of the canyon

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More from the panorama

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I shoot my panorama at Cape Royal

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Part of panorama at Cape Royal

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Sunset at Bright Angel

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The view from Bright Angel Point