A Backcountry Crossing of the Grand Canyon

The September 22 Mountaineers meeting will feature a talk by Bill Carey entitled “Nankoweap to Bright Angel: A Grand Canyon Crossing via the Butte Fault Traverse and High Saddles Passage.”

The Grand Canyon park is much larger than the visitor center and main hiking corridor and encompasses some of the most extraordinary wilderness and solitude that one can find anywhere in the West. We (Bill Carey, Mike Fugate and Mary Frances Dorn) will describe a wonderfully challenging and interesting 10-day trip in April 2025. The route starts on the North Rim in the southeastern part of the Grand Canyon, where the usual layer cake geology is disrupted by a series of faults and an enormous thickness of colorful sedimentary pre-Cambrian rocks that can only be seen in this part of the Grand Canyon. Our route touches the Colorado river only once before we exit via the South Rim visitor area, as it crosses a series of massive north-side canyons that dissect the imposing architectural features of the Grand Canyon. Each crossing exposes an imposing, high saddle, where the route is sometimes evident and otherwise hidden amongst a confusing series of side drainages and boulder-filled alleyways. In the midst of the terrain, we travel among magnificent rock monuments with mystical names, like Wotan’s Throne, Jupiter‘s Temple and Krishna’s Shrine. Please join us for a description of the joys and challenges of backpacking through this magnificent desert landscape.

Bill Carey grew up in the farmlands of Central Illinois having no knowledge or experience with mountains or the great outdoors. Through a career in geology, he has come to be an avid hiker both on foot and on ski. With his friends, Mike Fugate and Mary Francis, he has spent many nights below the Grand Canyon rim absorbing the vision of the great US Geological Survey geologist of the 19th century, Charles Dutton: “The Grand Cañon of the Colorado is a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery, and in our conceptions of the grandeur, beauty, and power of nature. As with all great innovations it is not to be comprehended in a day or a week, nor even in a month. It must be dwelt upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow acquisition of the meaning and spirit of that marvelous scenery which characterizes the Plateau Country, and of which the great chasm is the superlative manifestation.”

We welcome all to this Mountaineers’ meeting on the regular fourth Tuesday of the month. The social hour, with cookies, begins at 6:45 PM and the program at 7:00 PM. The presentation will be in-person at Los Alamos Nature Center; the slides will be live-streamed on Zoom. Registration is required to Zoom and recommended for in-person – we would love to see your smiling face. Registration details are available at https://peecla.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/peecla/event.jsp?event=68360&.

Bill Carey in the remote Grand Canyon backcountry.