Cape Royal

You know those life-size posters of Shaq and other basketball stars? You can really appreciate how big those guys are. I’m happy with our pictures, but they can’t convey the scope of the Grand Canyon. So it would be handy to have a life-size picture to show people. Maybe one I could fold up and keep in my wallet.

It sounds like folks were impressed with our pictures from our first day here. Today was better. We played a little Monopoly in the morning, then went into the park after lunch. As you saw, we attended the ranger talk on condors. Here are the basic facts: California Condors are very ugly, about four feet tall with a nine-foot wingspan, and weigh 18 to 24 pounds. Like most birds, they can’t smell well. So they follow the turkey vultures to the latest big dead animal. (Turkey vultures are the exception to the poor sense of smell thing.) Turkey vultures soar like drunken sailors. California Condors soar smooth and flat. The ranger had a picture of one in flight with a raven flying directly behind it (and at the same height). They look very similar in silhouette — except the condor is four times larger.



After the talk we drove along the only other road on the north rim, which takes you to Cape Royal and some amazing overlooks. At each pull-off on our 45-minute drive we clambered out of the truck and stood in awe at the view. One advantage of the north rim is its elevation. Because it’s about 1,000 feet higher than the south rim, you can look out across the plains beyond the canyon. At one point the far side was roughly 8.5 miles away and beyond it lay a vast green plateau, unbroken by any man-made construction save for one thin dirt road fading into the distance. We were looking out on the western reaches of the Navajo Indian Reservation.



Cape Royal sits at the tip of a peninsula of forested plateau that stretches far into the canyon. We were surrounded by juniper and pinyon pine woodlands. This is the habitat at the very edges of the cliffs along the north rim. Daredevil trees. Pinyons are small, bush-like in growth habit, and gnarled with handsome green needles. Their cones yield a feast for the pinyon jay: pine nuts. The same ones you mixed into your pasta dish the other day.



Speaking of habitats, the extreme elevation differences here mean there are several widely varied habitats. The highest, where we were camped, are alpine meadow and boreal forest consisting mostly of firs and quaking aspens. A little lower and surrounding the lodge and visitor’s center is the ponderosa pine forest. Ponderosas are great trees. They have long needles, prickly cones, and like fire. Fire clears the forest floor — you probably remember me saying exactly the same thing about redwoods and sequoias. Ponderosas work with one of the unique animals on the north rim, Kaibab squirrels. We saw exactly two while we were here. There are red squirrels too, but they don’t look nearly as distinctive. Kaibabs are charcoal gray, almost black, and have long feathered ears and a big, wispy white tail. They live way up high in the ponderosas and eat the cones. Unlike other squirrels, they don’t store food for the winter. If the snow is deep and they can’t find any cones, they break off the end of a ponderosa branch, discard the bit with the needles, and eat the bark off the stick like you and I eat corn on the cob.



Below the woodlands, the habitat changes to Sonoran desert. We saw this in southern Arizona way back in February. No squirrels down there, but one unique species, the pink rattlesnake. Frankly, I’d prefer squirrels. We didn’t see the creosote, prickly pear cactus, and yucca first hand this time. Maybe Danine and I will come back and do the rim to rim hike. This means descending one mile in elevation, traversing 14 miles to the Colorado, and then ascending another 7 miles (and 1 mile in elevation) to the South Rim. It’s best to do this over a few days. Or watch someone else do it on the Discovery Channel.

The desert gives way to the narrow riparian habitat along the Colorado. Here cottonwoods and willows should be growing and giving shade to critters who live near the water’s edge. Unfortunately, tamarisk trees have taken over. These are Mediterranean trees introduced in Texas for shade and their ability to hold onto the soil of river banks. They’ve muscled out the indigenous trees though. We saw them last at Big Bend and tasted their salty, cedar-like leaves.


That little green line in the window is the Colorado River.

Near Cape Royal is another short trail leading to Angels Window. We saw an opening along the rim and walked over. We looked across to a narrow pier of creamy limestone (ancient, dead sea creatures) with a giant square knocked (eroded) out of it. Through it, we saw for the first time the Colorado River.



We walked out on top of Angels Window too. There are beefy steel railings along the outermost section. None of us could imagine walking out there, wind blowing hard, without those railings. The view is not at all bad. As I looked out, I was not only trying to take in the details of the canyon, but I was trying to wrap my head around the distances. My little brain worked furiously in the background trying to make sense of the 6,000 feet of drop to the Colorado, and the eight miles to the other side. I never really did it.


Vishnu Temple, 2 miles away. The far rim is 8.5 miles away.

At Cape Royal we wandered from southern view, to western, to eastern and back around again. The tapered butte called Vishnu Temple stood in the middle ground and seemed close, maybe 500 yards. Nope, it was two miles away! A couple we passed on the trail said they had seen a condor off to the west. We hoped to get lucky, but didn’t see any soaring birds. As consolation we simply gazed at one of the biggest, most elaborate and beautiful clefts in the earth.