The Biggest Goddamn Hole In The World

Apologies for the language in this post title. I blame Clark Griswold.

There are times in my life when I realize how lucky I am. March 2026 is one of those times. 

Last weekend we visited the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona. Do I feel particularly lucky that I made it to that National Park in 2026? Not particularly. But I do feel lucky that it was my third trip there. I mean it's in the middle of nowhere and I've been there three times. A lot of people in this world are never able to move much beyond the place where they were born or the country where they live. Some folks scrimp and save so they can take a trip of a lifetime or get away for a week in a year. This was a weekend trip to some place that I'd already been to twice that a lot of people would have on some bucket list and not be certain that they would ever get there. 

I feel lucky to have been able to do this. After I've already done it twice before.

The first time I laid eyes on the Grand Canyon was in the summer of 1984 when my dad took an all-expenses paid recruiting trip (HE was being recruited) courtesy of a startup aerospace firm in the Phoenix area. At least I think it was a startup. I mean I really don't remember if I ever even knew. And the all-expenses thing probably didn't cover our side trip to see the Grand Canyon. Whatever. Close enough. That's why we were there in '84.

What do I remember about that Grand Canyon trip just after I turned 16? Pretty much nothing. I couldn't tell you what we did or what we saw, although I feel pretty confident that we looked down into it and that three of the four of our family members took a ride in a small airplane into the Canyon and that I don't recall actually walking into the Canyon at all. And on the airplane thing, it was probably below the rim. Not 100% sure. That memory (or lack thereof) is actually one of the inspirations behind me writing this blog. I reminisced about what I could not recall from my first visit to the Grand Canyon in the very first post on this blog back on my 45th birthday.

Trip number two? 26 years later. July 2010. Solo. On that trip I was determined to do one thing I hadn't done in 1984 and that was to actually walk into the Canyon. Not like all the way or anything but at least so I could get below the rim a good distance. I joined a ranger walk first thing in the morning with a big bottle of water I probably picked up at a convenience store somewhere near where I was staying (this was before I routinely took a water bottle on vacation) and spent maybe an hour and a half on a hike into and out of the Canyon. Cool stuff.

Now I have been there a third time.

The Abyss. Hermit's Rest Shuttle Bus stop number seven.

On a most basic level, the Grand Canyon is essentially a very large gash in the Earth in an otherwise very, very flat high desert plateau sitting about 7,000 feet above sea level. How did it get that way? Quite simply...the Colorado River made it that way. Over a very, very long period of time. Like millions of years. Sound farfetched? It did to us too a little bit but the land around the Grand Canyon is relatively soft and the Colorado River carries abrasive material like sand and rock particles that can cut through the sedimentary rock in the area of the Grand Canyon.

So how grand is the Grand Canyon? How about 270 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and about a mile deep. Does that make it the biggest goddamn hole in the world? Maybe, although that question is really tough to answer. The Grand Canyon is not the longest canyon in the world (it's second) and it's not the widest canyon in the world (it's also second) and it's not the deepest canyon in the world (it's sixth). The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet is both longer and way deeper than the Grand Canyon but it's also way narrower. On a volume basis, maybe Clark Griswold was right. Either way, it's pretty darned big. 

Probably some good advice for Instagram influencers.

With all that going for it, the Grand Canyon must have been an early add to the National Parks portfolio, right? I mean we all know Yellowstone was number one but this place must have followed shortly thereafter, right? Like first 10 or so? 

Not so much. Try 14. February 1919. The same date as Maine's Acadia National Park and after South Dakota's Wind Cave and California's Lassen Volcanic. Why so long? Totally speculating here but this canyon thing is in the absolute middle of nowhere and despite its size, it was probably an undiscovered gem for quite some time.

Undiscovered by some. Those that were here before 1492 knew about it all well and good.

There is evidence of man's presence in and around the Grand Canyon 10 to 12 thousand years ago. There are 11 different Native American tribes which claim part of the Canyon as part of the ancestral homeland. But once Europeans started claiming parts and eventually all of what is now the American west, they didn't seem to be bothered about a massive canyon. Spanish explorers led by Hopi guides first visited the area in 1540s but apparently didn't see much point in the whole thing. Neither did anyone else for about the next 300 years. It pretty much sat ignored for three centuries.

Then in the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States started mapping the Colorado River. Miners followed after that, seeking copper deposits in the area but apparently it didn't take long before it became obvious that tourism would be more profitable than copper mining for early European settlers. President Benjamin Harrison protected the Canyon as a Forest Reserve in 1893. Theodore Roosevelt elevated it to National Monument status in 1903. Then in 1919, it got to full National Park status. 

The Grand Canyon is claimed as an ancestral homeland by 11 Native American tribes.

So that National Park property...it covers the entire Canyon, right? Ummm...no. Not remotely. On the South Rim of the Canyon, really the easternmost 30 miles are easily accessible (the North Rim was close when we visited last weekend). The Park goes beyond those limitations, but not by road. And with Flagstaff experiencing a +24 degrees above normal heatwave in our time there, we were in no mood to hike about beyond the paved limits of the Park for very long. Or at all.

And actually and honestly, the heat isn't why we chose to not hike beyond points we could drive or be driven. We just didn't want to hike in the backcountry. 

I would venture that the majority of the visitors to the Grand Canyon National Park don't make it the full 30 miles or so of the easternmost portion of the Park. I would imagine most visitors stay within the less than three miles from the Grand Canyon Village to the Grand Canyon Visitor Center and maybe a bit beyond to Yaki Point. There's plenty of overlook-ing to do into the big hole that is the Canyon and both major trails to walk into the Canyon are within that span (the Bright Angel Trail at the Village and the South Kaibob Trail at Yaki Point).

I base that venturing on two things: (1) I believe that's exactly what I did the first two times I visited the Park and (2) the amount of people we encountered this year when we moved beyond the less than three miles or so noted above.

Views from a viewpoint just east of Mather Point looking west (top) and east (bottom).

We decided we were not going to do what most people do. Yes, we walked to Mather Point from the Visitor Center and we did walk on one of the two trails that start within that span, but we wanted to go places that are more remote. Where there would stand a chance of being fewer people. We hopped on the Hermit's Rest Shuttle Bus in the morning and rode that route all the way to the west end, with three stops along the way. Then in the afternoon, we drove all the way out to Desert View at the eastern edge of the Park to see the historic 1932 Desert View Watchtower. And of course look into the vastness of the Canyon.

Our trip west and then back east again on the Hermit's Rest Shuttle took us about 2-1/2 hours. the Park's website says it's an 80 minute ride but that's not allowing for any stops. We stopped at four places and got a different perspective at each one. We (or I) stood not that close to the edge of a stone shelf overlooking the Canyon at Powell Point and we first laid eyes on the Colorado River later on the ride at Pima Point. In between those two we hit The Abyss where we looked what appeared to be about straight down a couple of thousand feet into the Canyon.

I think it is easy to dismiss the views in person and the pictures we look at after leaving the Grand Canyon as the same. Sure, the colors of the eroded and collapsed walls of the Canyon are the same sorts of reds, yellowish-beige and green with each mile of the Canyon you travel. It's also easy to look out over the rim of the Canyon and just be overwhelmed with the size and claim that you just see the same thing everywhere you look. Cliffs. Rocks. Towers. Gullies. Bare trees at the rim and tiny, hardy evergreen shrubs that can cling to life in a place without much water lower down.

But it's not the same. It's not just a hole in the ground that's identical from place to place and from mile to mile. It changes. I know this if for no other reason than we were awed in places that we visited along the South Rim and we were less impressed with some spots. The Canyon really does appear more vast in certain places than others and the appearance of the Colorado makes a difference in those views. If you need any other proof of this lack of same-ness, ride the Hermit's Rest Shuttle in the sideways-facing seats on the left side of the bus (facing the Canyon on the way out). In that seven mile drive, you will see a Canyon that changes as you ride. What a privilege to be able to do that.

Views near the Bright Angel Trail Head (top) and at Pima Point (bottom). Note: NOT the same.

If you want a little more distance to your vista, you can get that at the Desert View Tower. We didn't manage to go into the Tower while we were there and view the landscape from the top of the Tower (too long a wait on timed admission tickets...) but the Canyon edge that you walk along to get to the Tower is not strictly facing across the Canyon. You actually get to look down its length just a bit.

And it seems to go on forever, which from the edge of the Canyon and the distance our eyes can see I suppose might be true. The visibility in that part of Arizona is incredible. I'm sure it's due to the flat-ness of the land. Two days after our Grand Canyon visit we were at a viewpoint at Petrified Forest National Park and we could see the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff on the horizon easily. They were 108 miles away from the spot we stood. You can definitely see for miles and miles.

If you need any convincing about the flatness of the land, check out the horizon on most all of these pictures. It's perfectly at eye level and it's pretty much perfectly flat.

Desert View.

So we had to take a little bit of a hike, right? 

I was so impressed with my walk into the Canyon on my last visit in 2010 (the South Kaibab Trail, I think) that I wanted to do it again. I think once you start walking in the Canyon, past walls of rock and through natural stone arches and along ledges with hundreds or thousands of feet of drop next to the path you are walking along, you get a different perspective on the place. You are no longer walking along a high desert plateau but are really following the Colorado River down into the depths of the Earth.

We didn't need to do a long hike here. We knew that we weren't going to make a dent in the full mile depth (that's depth, not walking distance) down to the bottom of the Canyon and we were very attentive when we came to the sign showing a shirtless white dude with a very sunburned back vomiting his guts out because he tried to walk to the Colorado and back in a single day. I've done my long hiking days. I've walked to Machu Picchu and Arches National Park's Delicate Arch and to the top of Mount Misen on Miyajima Island. I've also walked far enough in a day to find gorillas in the Ugandan mountains and fossils in the Canadian Rockies. I don't need to do every hike out there.

Walking up the Bright Angel Trail.

We picked Bright Angel Trail, a gently sloping and switchback-ing path wide enough to accommodate several humans or maybe a couple of humans and a mule train passing each other if they needed to. We saw no mules on the way down or up, by the way. But there was certainly evidence of prior mule activity. Mules don't wear diapers and their owners don't have to pick up the poop. Tread carefully.

We set our stopwatch on the phone for 15 minutes and walked down. 16 years ago, I was told that it would take about twice as long to get out as it took to walk in. I didn't time it that day but I did this year. It took us 25 to get out. Pretty close to double. 

I think seeing the inside of the Canyon is important. It is valuable to feel the temperature rise, even with a little walk down, and wanting to long for shade pockets to rest, particularly on the way up. Seeing and feeling and hearing the difference below the rim resonates. It's not the same as it is at the rim. Looking up at where you used to be (and let's be honest, we made it maybe 150 or 200 feet down into the Canyon so maybe 3-4% of the way down) and realizing how you got there was an essential experience for me, possibly because the land is so very flat at the Canyon rim. It's just an experience you can't get without making that walk.

We could have easily walked further. Not to the bottom of the Canyon all the way to the River but I will say the images from the bottom in the movie shown in the Visitor Center make getting there look awfully appealing. It's a completely different environment down there at the water's edge. 

There was a time I considered doing that. Walking all the way to the bottom and staying overnight in one of the huts they have down there a mile down into the Earth. That time is probably gone. I've accumulated a list of places I want to get to that is far, far longer than I will ever get to. I'm thinking my third trip to the Grand Canyon is likely my last. And If it is, it was a pretty good one. I feel confident I did three things in Bright Angel, Hermit's Rest and Desert View that I've never done before. What more could I ask for?

At Powell Point. It IS pretty grand.