February 12, 2005 - Grand Canyon National Park in Snow.

During the night I heard the pitter patter of little raindrops shift over to the "tinketty-tink" of little ice pellets, which was not a hopeful sign. It had quieted down by morning and I was hopeful for better weather, but when I looked outside it was snowing, which was even worse. We decided during breakfast that we first take the shuttle bus to the Visitor Center and then decide what to do after that. Fortunately I had brought our Yak Trax with, because we really needed them when walking sleet or slush covered sidewalks and trails, not to mention the snow covered mud of our campsite. I had never used them before but found they worked like a charm to give us more traction, except when we were on a smooth dry tile or concrete surface where they were actually a little bit more slippery than our normal rubber soled boots, which was disconcerting. Still, we didn't fall while walking around in the muck, and that was the important thing.

The visitor center was quite large and very empty except for two Rangers and us. We heard about a Ranger presentation at 10 o'clock, so we whiled away a few minutes at the bookstore across the way until it was time. The presentation concerned the reaction of poets, painters, musicians, and artists to the Grand Canyon, and it was given by the famous Ranger Bob whom we had also seen listed as the sponsor for keeping a section of the highway to Williams pristine. He read us excerpts of the impressions of folks visiting the park from the first formal report in 1861 to Colin Fletcher who was the first person to walk the length of the canyon in 1967. Each segment was headed by the topic the writer was focusing on, including Shapes and Colors and so forth. He asked volunteers to read some of the sections, and I read the one on "Clouds" by John Wesley Powell, the first man to traverse the canyon by river, and a segment on "Power" from a Carl Sandburg poem. Ranger Bob also played the "Cloudburst" musical segment from the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe, so all together it was a fascinating mélange of first impressions. Ranger Bob intertwined some of the history of the Grand Canyon into his presentation, so it really was educational as well as thought provoking.

It was only a short walk from the Visitor Center to the Mather overlook, and we crunched over that way after the talk. The snow was still falling in an occasional flurry, and the dusting of snow really transformed the look of the canyon. The pure white of the snow made the normally colorful rocks look dark and somber, but the layers of snow also brought out the shape of the canyon into much sharper relief than it would have been otherwise. The mist and rain/snow, however, were so thick that we could not see across the canyon as that is a matter of several miles. Fortunately we could see cliffs about ½ mile away looming out of the fog, and they were very impressive. Getting a little hungry, we returned to camp to have lunch and discussed what to do next.

We finally decided to drive east along the rim road toward the ruins of an old pueblo after lunch. We figured that we could at least take pictures of something that close even if the weather stayed foggy. Along the east way we stopped off at other lookouts just to check them out. At some we could just see fog in all directions, but at others we could make out the canyon through the mist. The stark contrast of the white snow and the dark evergreens and wet rocks really made the canyon look different than in the popular pictures we had seen. A typical Grand Canyon picture is extremely colorful and shows fantastic shapes, but the ones I have seen also seem to depict the canyon as hot, dry and barren. Our view that morning, however, was of a cold, wet canyon with fairly luxuriant vegetation along the rim. Down in the abyss we could just make out an astonishing collection of walls, towers, and other shapes.

At several stops, ravens were posing for pictures. This obviously was a learned behavior and they were clearly disappointed by us just taking pictures without feeding them afterwards.

After several stops we did get to the ruins and small museum just as a lady Ranger was talking to a small group of visitors about the ancestral native population. The site was a fairly small pueblo by modern standards with only 4-5 living rooms in it and about 3 smaller storerooms. The brickwork was crude by the standards of Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde, but the Ranger explained that the available rock was harder than at the other sites and since this was a small outpost the residents were probably also not motivated or just didn't have the time and energy to engage in fine masonry.

The museum was just one medium sized room, but the displays were uniformly beautiful artifacts from the old period as well as from the modern Hopi descendants of the original residents. Fine decorated pottery was, of course, represented from the old days as well as stone and obsidian arrowheads, stone clubs and other durable artifacts. From modern times they showed gorgeous necklaces and silver work, very artistic. I don't usually get covetous about material things that much, but the artistic work of different Native American tribes appeals very strongly to me for some reason. The best pieces actually create an itch to own something like that and either wear it or display it in our house.

As we retraced our drive back toward the campground, we decided to detour over to the train station and check on connections from Williams to either Phoenix or Las Vegas. As it turned out, there were none and the conductor's advice was to rent a car and drive to Williams and then take the train to the Grand Canyon for the day. The train was boarding as we chatted with the conductor, and I was surprised at how many folks were on it in the middle of February. Finally getting back to camp, we had low (high?) tea and worked on the computers for the rest of the afternoon while we waited for a break in the weather.

It continued to rain and snow off and on, so I wasn't really expecting any change, but son of a gun if a small hole in the overcast appeared just before sundown. We slipped back into our boots, jumped into the truck, and high tailed it over to Yavapai overlook to try to catch some sunlit views of the canyon. Although the sun was having trouble breaking through the clouds, we at least could see clear across the canyon and the view was magnificent. Curiously, almost all of the snow that we had seen in the morning had already melted off, and the canyon really looked different, much more colorful but with less contrast between bright and dark parts.

The sun went down and we returned to the trailer to yet again unload the cameras onto our computers, have a quick supper of soup and crackers, and spend the rest of the evening processing all the pictures we had taken during the day. I was stitching the panoramic shots together on Baby while Monika was orienting and working with the single shots on Daddy. By the time we finished all that and I had caught up on the journal, it was almost 9 o'clock and time for bed, so we just read a couple of chapters in our new book before turning out the lights.