A Winter of Content in the Grand Canyon : Visitors Who Avoid the Summer Crowds Can Expect Fresh Vistas and Crisp Air

It’s easy to dismiss the Grand Canyon as an overhyped hole in the ground when, at noon on a summer’s day, the shimmering heat flattens out its contours and it seems that most of its millions of annual visitors are bunched up at the South Rim snapping pictures of one another.

But to visit after a winter snowfall, as we did a few weeks ago, is like seeing it for the first time.

The powdery dusting atop the buttes and pyramids accents the red and gold tones of the weathered rock. The air is clear and clean and sharp as a knife blade. Tufts of snow are tangled in a pygmy forest of gnarled juniper and pinyon pine along the rim. Liquid-eyed mule deer stop traffic as they browse along the roadway in the lemon-colored sunlight. The deer, shy in summer, in winter crowd into the Grand Canyon Village, near the park’s south entrance, to feed in family groups--mostly does and fawns, sprinkled with a few males carrying big racks of antlers. They browse in the campgrounds and by the roadsides on whatever greenery they can find, nudging the snow aside with their muzzles.

In our campground and along the trails, we saw fresh coyote tracks in the snow, but the squirrels, so common in summer, seemed to be in hibernation. Fortunately, the same thing is true for the tourists. Unlike the summer mobs, winter visitors are free to drive the magnificent eight-mile West Rim road that wends past nine turnouts, each offering a fresh vista of the canyon. Between mid-May and mid-September, only Grand Canyon shuttle buses are permitted on this road.

Because the days are shorter in winter, the low-angled sun throws the canyon’s rugged contours into bold relief. By 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the classic view from Hopi Point takes on a copper glow. One morning as we picked our way gingerly by foot along the snow-covered Bright Angel Trail, we were astonished to see a line of mules and riders approaching the trail head. We knew mule trips went down into the canyon in summer, but it had never occurred to us that they would set out in the snow and ice.

“Yep, we go every day, rain or shine, sleet or snow,” a wrangler said. His proud boast was that the wranglers haven’t lost a rider in 84 years of daily trips. This cowboy’s dozen mule riders, from teens to retirees (most clad in jeans and hooded parkas), sat securely, if a little nervously, in extra-deep saddles, each with a yellow rain slicker tied on at the front. The sure-footed mules, shod in special winter shoes to add traction, picked a path through the ice and snow as they headed down the trail’s narrow switchbacks, which lead to the canyon floor and Phantom Ranch.

Down at the South Rim’s railway station, the end of the line for a spur of the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, a puffing turn-of-the-century steam train, discharged a load of day-trippers who had boarded early that morning in Williams, Ariz. They would have four hours on their own to explore the canyon and have lunch, then reboard for the early evening return to Williams.

We had found the road from Williams to the canyon’s South Rim, about a 60-mile drive, to be mostly clear and dry. We had started from Los Angeles in our 27-foot Winnebago Brave motor home, stopping to camp overnight at Lake Havasu, Ariz., and then heading for Grand Canyon Trailer Village--one of the rare national park campgrounds with RV hookups--to make our first attempt at winter camping.

“Check around until you find a water connection that isn’t frozen,” a young ranger said cheerfully as we registered and paid the $12 camping fee. We hadn’t really expected to hook up the water hose in the below-freezing temperatures, but hey, she was a ranger and should know more about it that we did.

She assigned us to Site 3, where the water didn’t work. But next door at Site 1, we found a functioning faucet, connected the water hose to it, then plugged in the electricity. There were fewer than half a dozen neighbors scattered through the 84 sites, and the nearest was about 90 feet away, uphill.

By 5 o’clock, when we settled in for the night, the light was almost gone. But an hour later, when we started to wash the vegetables for dinner, not a drop of water came out of the faucet. A quick trip outside confirmed our suspicions--the water-filled hose was frozen solid. We unhooked it, coiled it as best we could and stowed it in an outside compartment. (Two days later, near Carlsbad, N.M., it finally thawed. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do without water because the motor home is self-contained, with its own 60-gallon tank and automatic water heater.)

When we awoke the next morning, a thin glaze of ice covered the windows. But the propane gas heater worked through the night with the thermostat set at 60 degrees, despite the near-zero temperatures outside. After breakfast, we unplugged the Winnebago and set out for some sightseeing around the canyon rim, combining hiking and driving because of the cold temperatures.

As a national park, Grand Canyon grew up with motor vehicles. But that was well after the earliest European explorer, a Spanish captain named Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, discovered the canyon while searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola in 1540. The first to definitively chart the canyon was a one-armed Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell, who rafted the Colorado River in 1869.

The first tourist accommodations--camps, really--were opened in 1884 by John Hance, who also built two trails into the canyon floor when he wasn’t mining asbestos. The first Santa Fe train arrived in 1901; its passengers were met by carriage drivers with megaphones, each proclaiming the quality of his services. In 1902, Oliver Lippincott drove the first automobile to the Grand Canyon area; within a decade, organized groups of motorists were arriving to witness the spectacle.

President Theodore Roosevelt, who had visited the area in 1903, established the Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908 under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service. Although Roosevelt expressed a desire that there be “no building of any kind . . . to mar the wonderful grandeur,” this was a bit of wishful thinking since the original Bright Angel Hotel had been perched on the South Rim since 1896, and the Kolb Brothers photographic studio and El Tovar Hotel (both still standing) were built in 1904.

Teddy himself came back in 1913 for a bit of mountain lion hunting, a sport that decimated the natural predators and allowed mule deer to flourish, from 4,000 head in 1906 to 100,000 in 1924, when record numbers starved to death.

Perhaps it’s the magnificence of the Grand Canyon--or the challenge of all that unfilled space--that gives otherwise reasonable citizens grandiose ideas. In 1889, Frank Mason Brown of Denver decided to build a railway through the Grand Canyon to San Diego, but drowned when his boat capsized during an exploration trip. Two days later, two other members of his party also drowned, and the Denver, Colorado Canyon and Pacific Railroad Co. foundered as well.

In the 1950s, a 350-seat interfaith chapel--with hydraulic jacks to raise the Protestant, Jewish or Catholic altars from the basement as needed--was proposed and came close to being built on the South Rim. In 1961, the Western Gold and Uranium Co. planned a hotel that would be tucked inside the canyon wall 18 stories deep, its 600 rooms each boasting a canyon view. And in 1974, a Phoenix group proposed a tramway from the rim to the canyon floor so that more people would have easier access to the bottom. All these grand plans went unrealized, but that hasn’t deterred as many as 4 million visitors from taking in the park’s raw beauty each year.

Most visitors today, especially in winter, seem content to overnight in one of the hotels along the rim, buy some American Indian souvenirs in the Hopi House or one of the other gift shops, and be photographed along the rim with the canyon as a backdrop.

Except for excursion train passengers, foreign visitors seem to outnumber Americans in the winter. At Bright Angel Lodge in Grand Canyon Village, we encountered a cheerful group of Japanese tourists clumping around the lobby in brand-new cowboy boots. Nearby, at the El Tovar Hotel, a party of Italian women in high-heeled sandals were tiptoeing down the icy steps. And we found a family of Germans checking into a rustic cottage for the weekend. Most of these visitors would go on to Las Vegas, then to San Francisco or Los Angeles, to wind up their scenic Southwestern package tours.

When they return home, they will no doubt tell their friends and relatives of the vistas that have awed travelers for generations. By the summer of 1892, only 23 years after Powell and his 10-man party had their first rafting adventure down the Colorado River, tourism had arrived in full force. That was the year that one Gertrude B. Stevens wrote in a tourist camp guestbook: “I fainted when I saw this awful looking canyon. I never wanted a drink so bad in my life.”

* GUIDEBOOK

Cool Days in the Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon National Park: Entrance fees are $10 per vehicle, or $4 for pedestrians, bicyclists or bus passengers. U.S. citizens (or legal residents) with disabilities may enter free with a Golden Access Passport, available at entrance stations (many of the paved hiking trails at the South Rim are accessible to wheelchairs). Citizens or legal residents over 62 may enter free with the Golden Age Passport, also available at headquarters. Grand Canyon South Rim is open year-round.

Camping: Full hookups and pull-through sites for 84 RVs are available in Grand Canyon Trailer Village, with showers and laundry facilities nearby, for $16 per night; call (602) 638-2401 for reservations. There is another, larger RV park, Grand Canyon Camper Village, outside the park. Tent camping is available year-round at Mather Campground (toilets, showers and telephones nearby) for $10 per night; for reservations, required March 2 through Nov. 30, call MISTIX at (800) 365-2267.

South Rim lodging: The El Tovar Hotel is a historic 1905 lodge, with rates from $101 to $251 per room (one or two people; $11 additional for a third occupant). Bright Angel Lodge and Cabins has rustic accommodations for $46 for a lodge room, $53-$101 for cabins. The Thunderbird and Kachina Lodges, a pair of contemporary structures that are part of the Fred Harvey motel chain, are $89-$96, single or double. Another Fred Harvey motel along the South Rim, the Maswik Lodge, has modern budget rooms for $56-$91 per night for one or two people, $9 extra for each additional person. Reservations can be made at all Grand Canyon hotels and motels by calling a central number: (602) 638-2401 or (602) 638-2631.

Sightseeing: Mule rides must be reserved in advance (during summer, as much as a year ahead of time); call (602) 638-2401. Mule riders must be over 4 feet 7 inches tall, under 200 pounds and in good physical condition. A two-hour ride costs about $25, an all-day excursion with lunch is $70, and overnight trips to Phantom Ranch on the canyon floor cost $220 per person or $385 per couple and include meals and lodging.

The steam train excursion on the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams, Ariz., costs $54.81, round trip, for adults (including park entry fee), $15.67 for children and $24.50 for teens traveling with family members. The train departs at 9:30 a.m., arrives at Grand Canyon at noon, departs Grand Canyon at 4 p.m. and returns to Williams at 6:30 p.m. In winter, the train runs only on weekends; in spring and fall, it runs Wednesdays through Sundays; in summer, it operates daily. Call (800) 843-8724 for schedule and reservations.

For more information: Contact Grand Canyon National Park, Box 129, Grand Canyon, Ariz. 86023, (602) 638-7888.