Seventh Natural Wonderland

It’s morning on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, and as I poke my head through the flap of my tent, I find the campsite muffled by cloudbanks. Already, Kate, our photographer, hovers near the edge, eager to capture the light of morning with her camera. By the time I’ve wriggled into my ski pants and started the coffee, there’s movement in the abyss. Wet shrouds drag across ponderosa pine-clad slopes. Where the fabric thins, sun bleeds through in an amorphous smear.

Elsewhere, openings in the trees expose Toroweap Formation ridges and pinnacles perched atop raw-boned Coconino sandstone scarps. To the northeast, a thick broth spills across the Painted Desert, barely contained by the glow of Vermilion and Echo cliffs.

A true Götterdämmerung — a dawn stirred by sullen gods, a scene Wagner himself could not have staged better. 

It comes as no surprise that the Grand Canyon, and the North Rim in particular, inspired heroic nomenclature. Geologist Francois Emile Matthes, a naturalized American born in Holland and charged with producing the Canyon’s first topographic maps, named the locale of our weeklong ski tour.

In Nordic mythology, Valhalla was the “Hall of the Slain,” abode of the god Odin (also called Wotan), and paradise for warriors killed in battle. Still veiled from our sight, this frosty otherworld juts from the main rim east of the visitors center, flanked by Bright Angel Canyon. Like a misshapen lobster claw, it pinches the Colorado River where it swings from a north-south to an east-west orientation. Theories to explain the river’s crookedness or the remnant plateau speak of headward erosion, drainage reversal, rate of uplift… but nobody knows for sure.

More certain are the steep-pitched routes from Cape Royal — the mesa’s southernmost tip — down Unkar Creek into the inner gorge that gave Ancestral Puebloan farmers access to permanent water and soil fit for corn.

As the cloud screen dissolves, Kate’s partner joins us at the overlook. Andy is along for companionship and some Arizona-style skiing, but he’s also carrying a heavy load: camp gear and photographic equipment in a search-and-rescue sled. Both are thrilled at this winter wonderland opportunity, because, normally, they experience the Canyon differently — as river guides more than a mile below.
 

Snow conditions looked iffy two days earlier. Our original plan was to drive the trucks from Jacob Lake as far as possible on the unplowed road. Expecting bottomless drifts, we piggybacked two snowmobiles that would get us to the park boundary, beyond which they’re not permitted. To our surprise, we were able to drive the trucks where we needed to go.

In DeMotte Campground’s broad meadow, two coyotes were sniffing for gophers along a brown south-facing bench. A Forest Service sign spelled out the fire danger — Low! After our shuttle drivers left us by the roadside, we began rigging the sleds and putting on our skis. Silence poured in, amplified by the trickling of water down ice-rutted macadam.

Geared up, we crossed asphalt patches and jokingly followed the yellow centerline. We slowed on the downhill, compelled by blacktop that threatened to stop us dead and strip our skis’ bottoms. Icy stretches provided zero traction. Curves in the shade — untouched by afternoon sun — required trail breaking. Windfall forced us to scramble, 50-pound sleds in tow. Seduced into the brush, we foundered in snow sumps, thigh-deep in powder. Nightfall surprised us near a thawed, sopping campsite. The following morning, tent stakes were stuck in the frozen ground.

Was this climate change, or simply bad timing? I’d attempted this trip the previous year, but after waiting in vain until mid-February, I returned home to Alaska to a place where I can ski from my porch until Easter. A week later, the North Rim was hit with 3 feet of snow.

The next day, we skied Walhalla Glades — a peninsula forming one of the lobster claw’s pincers — to peer into the gorge’s Redwall limestone wound. The Canyon was spitting fat flakes at us from below. Snowmelt from the peninsula’s edge filters through porous Kaibab limestone, gushing from cliffs at Cheyava Falls, which feed Clear Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River.

At the edge, we stood over a mountain lion print. Snow, as clumpy as cottage cheese, quickly filled in the paw’s outline. Without warning, lightning pulsed, followed by thunderclaps. A nearby ponderosa stood cored, a black cleft running down its spine. Lightning kindles most wildfires on the North Rim, and electric storms can strike any time of the year. Under another salvo, we hurried to camp to cook dinner.
 

The Norse gods are smiling at Roosevelt Point. After a night of freight-train gusting that had me fretting about “widow makers,” the Rim shines like a bride beneath puffy clouds. Airborne frost flickers in imitation of sequins, and the snowline descends to the top of the Redwall formation. Pine stumps and charred trunks near the brink betray elemental forces at work — fire and wind. Etched in white, the landscape resembles a copper engraving.

Navajo Mountain bulges across the void, miles away. Blue Moon Bench, Shinumo Altar and a crosshatching of dirt roads on the South Rim mark the plateau, which unrolls into the flat distance. Even the squirrels that chewed a hole in one of the food bags can’t dampen my spirit.

Taking advantage of the fresh dusting, we decide to leave our tents and sleds and push for Cape Royal, a 20-mile round-trip. The new snow cover keeps a perfect record of creatures that passed through the night. Cottontail, mouse and squirrel tracks stitch the surface. A bobcat stepped “in register,” carefully placing hind feet into the depressions left by its front paws, in typical cat behavior. Coyote prints intersect those of some rodent, leading to a pink stain in the snow. I cut a swath of my own through the fluff and eventually spook the trickster as he crosses the road.

Leapfrogging with Andy and Kate, I get into “the zone” — a condition known to and craved by every cross-country skier. Arms and legs start to move as steady as pistons, working in sync with my lungs. I submit to the detached rhythm of push-glide, push-glide until it becomes effortless. Cloud rags drift through trees, and I consider racing them. Endorphins flood every cell.

At last the mind stills, cleared by the sighing of wind in pine needles, the hissing of skis, the tapping of white-bibbed nuthatches, the rasping of Stellar’s jays. Unbroken, the trail’s ribbon stretches ahead, spawning illusions of being first and alone, obliterating the tarmac, as well as the presence of companions. Brightened by aspen groves, the forest appears mature and less ravaged here than near the storm-beaten viewpoints. 

But our bliss can’t last. As we lose elevation, as the sun climbs and we approach the rim, we run into bare spots again. Sticky snow gloms onto our skis, pine duff as well, and possibly topsoil. Andy, who forgot his wax kit, applies a stick of butter — to no avail. Reluctant to twist ankles, we ditch our gear and continue on foot.

Past the Cape Final turnoff we come upon the remains of a small pueblo inhabited between a.d. 1050 and 1150 by Kayenta Anasazi, likely ancestors of the Hopi. Low walls trace a dozen rooms, hearths, garden plots and az fire pit. Archaeologists unearthed four human skeletons with grave goods here: ceramic vessels, a bracelet of shale and turquoise beads. A 1930s survey yielded close to 100 sites scattered across the Walhalla Glades. More were discovered along Unkar Creek, all the way to its delta, one of the inner Canyon’s most densely populated areas. Warm air rising from the chasm lengthened the growing season on the plateau. Mule deer and piñon nuts provided protein for commuters between the river and the Rim.
 

I’ve been scanning the woods for one of their secretive denizens, but other than zipper tracks leading to and from pine trees, I haven’t seen a sign. Then, from the corner of my eye, when I least expect it, I see the flash of a bushy tail — an impression of weasel swiftness. A Kaibab squirrel dashes across sunlit snow, pursuing a mate. The tassel-eared, black-bellied rodent is endemic to the North Rim and Kaibab National Forest, separated from its cousin — the more widespread Abert’s squirrel — by topography and millennia of divergent evolution.

The supercharged creature is a link in one of nature’s amazing webs of interdependency. It digs up and nibbles on truffles, the fruiting bodies of fungi that attach themselves to the rootlets of ponderosas. Passing through the squirrel’s digestive tract, the spores are deposited throughout the forest, accompanied by a bonus package of fertilizer. The fungi in turn assist ponderosas with the absorption of nutrients and water from the soil. Pinecone seeds, buds and the inner bark from twigs make up the bulk of the squirrel’s diet — the little chatterboxes also find shelter in ball-shaped nests built from the trees’ materials.

Toward afternoon, we reach Angels Window, pried open in a limestone fin by freeze-and-thaw cycles. It frames a toffee-colored slice of the Colorado River. The vegetation is that of the upper Sonoran life zone. Cliffrose. Sagebrush. Currant.

Sapsuckers have mined a Utah juniper trunk as if riddling it with buckshot. Atop the natural arch, a thin coating of frost covers piñon boughs, and the wind cuts through layers of clothing. Looking at the fractured rock strata that unravels from this point, I can’t help but admire those who farmed up here, then trekked down to Unkar Delta in sandals braided from yucca fiber, urged by snow flurries, carrying toddlers, pots, mats, deer skins, water, provisions and a summer’s memories.

Late in the day, we return to our cached skis. Our shadows have grown gaunt. Oblique rays throw individual snow granules into relief. Chickadees let go of the day with plaintive two-note calls. By the time we reach Roosevelt Point, alpenglow ignites the rim.

During our five days of skiing, we encountered water in its many forms: as sleet, slush, firn, graupel, powder, rime, hoar. As clouds. Evaporating. But never enough in the crystallized dry form that makes skiing so spectacular. As if to mock us, Odin and his cohorts dump loads of perfect snow on the North Rim as we head home, and we almost become snow-bound.

For more information on skiing the North Rim, call the Kaibab Plateau Visitor Center at 928-643-7298, or visit nps.gov/grca or www.fs.usda.gov/kaibab .

Michael Engelhard is a wilderness guide and the author of two books. He lives in Alaska, where six months of snow are considered normal.

Kate Thompson says there’s never a dull moment while working on a story like this. Extreme weather always presents interesting challenges — fogged lenses, frozen fingers. … She’s learned to expect the unexpected and always keeps a good sense of humor as a secret weapon.