Headed west? This is an ideal jaunt – culture and some adventure – but navigating by photos has its disadvantages. As in getting lost, dehydrated, and something close to hallucinatory. And don’t try this in high summer.
Wetherill participated
in numerous expeditions into the gorgeous, forbidding slick-rock canyons above
the Colorado River, often crossing the Arizona
line. He and a few others are credited with the “discovery” of Rainbow Bridge, a massive natural rock formation
almost three hundred feet high from the base, with a span of 275 feet that is 42
feet thick at the top. One of those trips, in 1913, included former president
Theodore Roosevelt.
In Pueblo cultures the
bridge had been considered sacred for centuries. Wetherill’s wife, Louisa,
spoke Navajo fluently and first learned of its existence; she informed her
husband, whose exploits in 1909 helped bring it to the attention of the wider
world. Now Rainbow Bridge attracts thousands of visitors a year because,
with the damming of the Colorado in 1956 and
the creation of Lake
Powell, power boats can drive
to within half a mile of what was once one of the most inaccessible natural
wonders in the American Southwest.
But Harvey Leake decided not long ago to follow
his great-grandfather’s tortured 20-mile overland course in this, the
centennial year of Rainbow
Bridge being named a
national monument by President William Howard Taft. Harvey’s accompanied by five
other outdoor enthusiasts, and we shoulder our packs in the shadow of
snow-draped Navajo Mountain at dawn, having first driven through a spring
snowstorm for this 21st century backcountry reenactment, sans horses.There was no trail, but Harvey brought along a unique navigational tool – a packet of old photographs from John Wetherill’s early expeditions. These black-and-whites are to be matched with surrounding horizons and are full of vast arid country sprinkled with rocks and a verdant grass called Mormon tea, wind-and-water sculpted sandstone monoliths, an up-ended, deeply-shadowed world of hanging caverns a thousand feet above many drainages we climbed into and out of.
I was soon jealous of the men in saddles, with their big hats and boots. In one photo, Wetherill looks the unassuming cowboy, but his Piute guide, Nasja Begay, wears a properly dour expression. Teddy, former president of the United States and famous outdoorsman, solidly sits his mount wearing dusty jodhpurs, cloth wrappings on his legs as protection against the cacti and yucca spines, and the signature rimless specs.
What the photographs don’t show is
the astonishing chromatic vibrancy of this living sandstone diorama, its
striated walls resembling hieroglyphics carved by natural forces, accentuated
by the blue-greens of twisted conifers and stunted gambrel oaks. The dark,
almost purplish streaks of iron that have leeched out of Navajo sandstone are
known as desert varnish and glow in the powerful sunlight.“Here’s where they had to dismount,” he said, holding aloft a photo of the steep slick-rock slope we’re standing on. “They had to lead the horses down from this point.” Exactly how is a mystery, but Harvey was unconcerned. Here’s what the former president and Rough Rider had to say about the same scene: On we went, under the pitiless sun, through a contorted wilderness of scalped peaks... and along tilted masses of sheet-rock ending in cliffs. At the foot of one of these lay the bleached skeleton of a horse.
The rest of us lowered our packs by rope into a crevice and clambered after them, squeezing between rock walls until we gained access to more or less level ground. And there was Harvey, having found his great-grandfather’s more circuitous route, having beaten us to the bottom.
Surprise Valley is a lovely corridor of colored stone, junipers, and sandy soil untouched by discernible footprints other than those of mule deer and an occasional wild stallion. We set up camp, twelve miles and as many hours into the 20-mile hike to Rainbow Bridge, exhausted. The others built a fire, but I was in my sleeping bag shortly after dark, and the next morning felt the effects of cold and altitude. A Sierra cup of hot tea was offered me by the photographer, Kerrick James, the best thing I ever tasted.
About eight hours and several drainages later we were descending Bridge Creek when the Park Service interpreter on the trip, Chuck Smith, said, “Look over your left shoulder.” There, partially obscured by a canyon wall, was the upper thrust of Rainbow Bridge, even its colossal grandeur diminished by the towering rock walls above it.
Almost an hour later we got there, weary but exhilarated. The bridge is in fact the remnant of a massive fin of Navajo sandstone laid down some 200 million years ago by inland seas and violent winds. It blocked the flow of the creek until the water worked its way through the permeable rock, and the wind over eons widened the hole and added height to the span in the process. The base is of harder Kayenta sandstone, older and darker, a beautiful reddish brown contrast with the lighter rock above.
Other notables of a century ago passed this way, including the famous romance novelist, Zane Grey, who pitched his tent next to a juniper like the one still standing at the bridge’s base. The various Wetherill parties did the same, but today camping’s not allowed near the bridge, still considered a religious site. And no one is allowed on top – although to gain access would require several more hours of climbing canyon walls to the east, now touched with the sort of light that inspired Grey’s purplest prose.
“Teddy floated under the bridge,” said Chuck, the ambulatory encyclopedia of Rainbow Bridge-iana and foremost advocate of this unique place. “On his back, looking up. I’ll bet he said, ‘Bully.’”
To see my bio, click
on: http://cjonwine.blogspot.com/2013/02/heres-concise-bio-for-those-who-have.html
To order my novel, Nose,
click on:
No comments:
Post a Comment