Christmas Weather at the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon of Arizona in gay winter dress is like a veritable Christmas card come to life. The foremost of scenic attractions is never more beautiful than when new snow covers the Rim and pinnacles out in the Canyon sport turbans of heavenly white.

Christmas Weather At

MOST writers, good, bad and indifferent, sooner or later find their way to Grand Canyon. Generally they arrive with the throng of summer visitors and stay a day. Walking up to the brink of the canyon, they take a look into the abyss, then crack down with a barrage of verbiage, bristling with superlatives. Tremendous, majestic, inspiring, colossal, they say, all striving for an elusive word to blanket the great gorge with a soul-satisfying description.

In all this outpouring of words, scarcely a line is written about Grand Canyon in the winter. The canyon in its winter duds remains a mystery except to the favored few who brave the unknown and visit the park during the most spectacular season of the year. In the language of a popular entertainer, "you ain't seen nothing yet," until you've seen the canyon in the throes of a winter's storm.

Does it snow at the canyon? Sure it does-lots of it at times. You might

Grand Canyon

find a few inches or a few feet-depending on how the gods dish up the weather. But what's wrong with a beautiful, fluffy snowflake?

It gets cold too. And there's a good argument by the wife for a new fur coat. At nearly seven thousand feet elevation, the clear, crisp air puts an extra spring to your step that you didn't know you had. Button up your overcoat and take a brisk walk down the snow-banked paths along the rims. It's an exhilarating experience. And in what a settinga veritable Christmas card come to life. Below you lies the mile-deep canyon with its green, gray and red walls, now alternated with bands of pure white. The rims are capped by the great Kaibab forest of pine, pinon and juniper trees, bowed under a blanket of white.

All this is not to say that winter at Grand Canyon is a continual battle of the elements. Unfortunately a storm in the canyon can't be had to order, and visitors must take their chances on getting together with one of these masterpieces of Nature. Or come up and wait for one to happen along.

Actually, the canyon's almanac reads like a weather man's utopia: November, clear sunny days, average temperature 39 degrees; December, days pleasant, nights brisk, winter is in the air, average temperature 32 degrees; January, normally the coldest month of the year, average 29 degrees; and February, win-

try conditions pass, temperatures moderate, average 32 degrees. Which all sounds more like a press-agent's bally-hoo. Better not leave your top coat and rubbers at home before the first of May You're likely to need them.

Back to the snow again which really is the spice of winter anywhere. The records shows snowfalls as much as eighty-three inches throughout a season, but, of course, it doesn't all fall at once. During the heaviest storms the roads are kept open at all times. On windy days when the snow is dry and drifting, short sections of the drives may be blocked until the park service goes into action with its snow-bucking crews. So if you're planning to motor in, give your car a swig of alcohol or anti-freeze of some sort and come on up. Even on the wildest days you'll have little difficulty in reaching the park. Last winter Flagstaff and Williams had a deal on whereby motorists were given free meals and lodging during any time that U. S. Highway 66 was declared closed by the State Highway Department in the vicinity of those towns.

The north and south rims of Grand Canyon are operated independently, which sometimes causes confusion to visitors. Although there's only a distance of ten miles airline between the villages of the two rims, the village on the north rim is a thousand feet higher than its neighbor on the south, which means the difference of remaining open or closing during the winter months. The snowfall on the north side is double that of the south side. So the service on the north rim usually closes in October and re-opens the later part of May, while the south rim is open throughout the year.

By H. G. Franse

With all the snow that falls on the rims of the canyon, rarely does it fall on the floor of the gorge. The higher temperature at the lower levels reduces the snow to rain. Then the warm air, saturated with moisture, rises into the cold atmosphere above, converting it into fog or clouds that spill over the rims, powdering the forest with a coating of rime. Even unsightly service wires are transformed into things of beauty. Like huge strings of tinsel, the rime covered wires glitter in the dazzling sunshine. Fairies in fur coats are surely about!

At times clouds completely choke the abyss, obliterating visibility below the rims. Captain Hance, a colorful character and pioneer at the canyon, related that at one time the fog was so thick in the gorge that he drove half way across the canyon before he discovered he was on a cloud. But it doesn't get that thick now.

Don't be discouraged if you arrive at the canyon only to find it blanketed with a sea of white. Seldom a day passes that the fog doesn't break and fleecy clouds like tufts of cotton float aimlessly about below the rims, silhouetting magnificent temples that rise thousands of feet from the canyon's floor like edifices of a race of mammoth people. Shafts of sunlight pour through the cloud rifts like spot-lights in a theater of wonders. Try, if you will, to visualize the magnificence of brilliant-hued spires hemmed in with billowy clouds and flooded with a burst of dazzling sunlight. It baffles comprehension. There is only one way to grasp the splendor of the exciting spectacle-see it!

Fantastic is a good word in speaking of Grand Canyon in its winter mood. If by chance, however, you remarked that (Turn to Page 43)