ALL INDIAN POW-WOW AT FLAGSTAFF

"I Travel the Skyways

IN SPITE of the fact that thousands of people travel millions of miles each year by air, and this new means of transportation has become quite common, the flight over Grand Canyon still remains the most fascinating air trip in the world.

For twenty-two years I've followed the highways and byways of Arizona on horseback, in a buckboard, and by automobile. Most of the last eleven of these years I've traveled the skyways of Arizona, and particularly those of Grand Canyon.

Like so many other things in Arizona, the skyways are different from those of any other part of America. The atmosphere is so clear one can see 10,000 By JAMES E. KINTNER Manager Grand Canyon Scenic Tours square miles of country from a plane and see it well.

This is especially true of the Grand Canyon country because, when viewing the surrounding country from above Grand Canyon, there seems to be no limit to one's vision. It is difficult for anyone viewing Grand Canyon from the rim to realize how big this great gash is. Following the highways along either rim, one sees the Canyon from various points for a distance of thirty-five miles and there is no other sight like it in the world. Traveling down into the Canyon on a mule, it seems to be an immense,rough valley filled with mountain peaks, plateaus, and sheer high walls. Looking up from the bottom, one wonders where the rim is located, but when you get over it, it is something entirely different from what anyone could imagine.

Few visitors realize as they stand on the rim that this great Canyon is 217 miles long with an average width of 10 miles and that they are seeing only a small portion of it from the most ac-cessible places. The grand part of Grand Canyon . . . the terrible, awesome part of it, lies to the west of those points accessible by car.

From the Big Thumb north of Hava-supai Canyon to Diamond Creek north of Peach Springs is approximately 80 miles of winding, twisted canyon country which can be seen only from above. Here there is no level plateau country above an in-ner gorge. The entire distance is all a gnarled inner gorge, heavy, eroded, and carved into all sorts of inconceivable rock masses so entirely different from anything the human mind can imagine, that one seems to be looking into another uni-verse.

of the Grand Canyon"

No two trips over the country are alike. The masses in the Canyon seem to change with the seasons. There are changes due to weather and every hour of the day causes light and color changes which expose new buttes, new amphiteaters, springs, creeks, spots of vegetation, and Indian ruins which have never before been seen. I have been in the air over the same portion of the Grand Canyon as much as seven hours in one day with a hundred different people and always someone asks about an unusual object and points out something I've never seen before.

Last summer one of our pilots told me of a large cave he had discovered in the red wall of the Canyon. This was on our regular line of scenic flight. Our ships crossed this particular locality several times daily yet the pilot claimed the cave was big enough to fly into with a plane. To satisfy him, as well as myself, I went on the next flight and he pointed out the huge cave. It did appear extremely large and interesting and I felt foolish never having noticed it before, after making hundreds of trips over it. After discharging the passengers at the airport, we went back with an empty ship and flew down into the Canyon past the mouth of the cave. It really was large enough to fly into. Later we learned that the cave was visible from above only in certain lights which occur in late summer afternoons and entirely invisible from either rim.

I have often been asked to describe a flight over Grand Canyon. This is the most impossible thing that any man could attempt to do for words cannot express the unsurpassed grandeur, the subtle light changes, the mellowed colors of the walls, and all that goes to make up this greatest of natural wonders. To float along over this tremendous gash in the earth's crust and realize that you are looking not only a mile into the earth but that you are looking back into time, according to geologists a billion and a half years, makes me wonder why we human beings take life so seriously. (Continued on Page 24)