Five million tourists swarm to the Grand Canyon every year. And so they should, because it’s the most spectacular natural feature terrestrial tourism can offer — proof that raw geology, presented in the right light, really rocks.

Plan properly and you’ll leave with an impression that stretches your understanding of the anatomy of Mother Earth. Get it wrong and you’ll be processed as if in a sausage machine. Also, you might die. Be it from falling in, of thirst, through exposure, or heat exhaustion, one in every million visitors fails to use the return half of their tickets. Many, many more find good reason to invoke the small print of their holiday insurance. Which is a great shame, because of all the world’s must-sees, the Grand Canyon has to be the best of the must-tells.

Its chief appeal is its scale. It stretches 277 miles long, wriggles from four to 18 miles across and, at its deepest, drops more than a mile down beneath your feet. Nothing prepares you for that first glimpse, but be ready for awe, wonder and a tangible sense of spiritual elevation. And be prepared, too, for some surprise emotions.

Fear, for instance. Your first guttural gasp at the abyss makes you instinctively grasp the nearest handrail, branch or tourist.

There can also be, dare one suggest it, disappointment. “I went to look at the canyon for two days,” a friend told me. “It was amazing, but the more I stared into it, the more the amazement failed to increase.” And hence the final potential pitfall: indifference.

Despite its majesty, the canyon can be austere and remote. If you want more, it’s not enough just to sidestep the shell suits — you’ve got to delve in and get it under your nails. So follow our guide, and you’ll leave with a deeper understanding of the world’s deepest place.

The smart tour

NORTH, SOUTH or west? You’ll get conflicting advice on how to “do” the canyon. Rim snobbery is freely exercised — “You went to the South Rim? Oh dear.” “You took a flight over the West Rim? Poor thing.”

Take no notice. For nine out of 10 visitors, the path of least resistance is beaten to the South Rim and the government-run Grand Canyon Village. And with good reason: while many harder-core hikers make the effort to drive 215 miles around to the quieter and wilder North Rim, it’s snowbound and closed off from October to May (as is its only hotel). And at 1,000ft higher, it’s always chillier and bleaker than the main South Rim venue.

The South Rim it is, then, but how to avoid the crush? Simple — plan your visit for this September to October or, next year, from late February to mid-March. It’ll be cooler than peak season and the most popular viewpoints and trails will be relatively jostle-free.

And what of the West Rim? It lies way downstream, beyond the borders of the national park, and is managed by native Hualapai Indians. To some, this is the poor man’s canyon, as it’s a simpler U-shape with fewer internal contours. If time is short, though, and you want a taster as a bolt-on from a holiday in Las Vegas, it’s still fabulous, even if it is less dramatic than what awaits upstream (see travel brief). Ideally then, allot at least two days. And spend them like this

DAY ONE: morning

You’re heading out from Vegas, about five or six hours’ drive away, so set off at about 7am (no problem: you’ll be up early with jet lag anyway). You need to be at the South Rim’s Grand Canyon Village by 1pm, but whatever time you arrive, you’ll be too late to contemplate any steps into the abyss. That’s because time spent descending necessitates at least twice as long to get back, and if you try a vertical mile in this sort of heat (even in autumn and spring it can reach 100F down below), you’ll end up being eyed up by the local condors as the plat du jour. Instead, we’re off for a walk along the edge: a great way to binge on the visual feast and limber up for tomorrow’s gruelling — sorry, exhilarating — hike.

Just one thing before that, though: it’s time to forget schedules and have that very first viewing. Three miles in from the South Entrance gate, the road bends to the left and ahead of you is Mather Point. There’s a car park straight ahead (which can be packed at sunrise, but won’t be now). Park up and step (carefully now) just beyond the pavement... Incredible, isn’t it? Welcome to the world’s most visceral vista.

DAY ONE: lunchtime

Once your pulse has settled, the new Canyon View Information Plaza is a good point to plan your stay, thanks to the bookshop and information centre. You can’t park here, though — you’ll need to dump your hire car half a mile on, at the shop and cafe complex opposite the park HQ (where you can also fill up with a keenly priced heavyweight lunch). From the HQ, jump on a gas-powered Park Shuttle Bus. You’ll see a lot of these today — they run east along the South Rim as far as Yaki Point and west to the end of Hermit’s Drive. And they’re free, so you can jump on and off willy-nilly.

Hop aboard, then, for Yaki Point. There’s an eerie feel to this drop-off point — maybe because it perches on an absurd promontory. Head right and slightly uphill from the bus stop and you’ll reach the start of a 7.1-mile downhill descent to Phantom Ranch, the only accommodation option inside the canyon. This is the South Kaibab Trail — the quickest route down. Try a few switchbacks to see what’s coming tomorrow, but save your energy and head west out of the car park, following the obvious signs for the Rim Trail.

A fabulously flat cliff-edge walk awaits, weaving 4½ miles back to the village centre. You should aim to be at the Bright Angel Lodge for teatime, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to stop along the way, the chief lookout points being Mather and Yavapai. The latter has a 007-ish observation station where you can ogle the abyss through reassuringly thick glass.

Stop for tea in the cafe (or a snifter in the wainscotted bar) of the charming Bright Angel Lodge. Don’t dally too much, because we’re heading west for Maricopa Point. You get a great perspective on some of the canyon’s chief peaks and spires, including the crimson sandstone of the Zoroaster and Brahma “temples”.

DAY ONE: sunset

Finish the day on a real high at Hopi Point — a walk away from the village, which keeps out most of the coach hordes. You’re just two miles from the Bright Angel Lodge, and because Hopi juts further north than any of its neighbours, it is the very best place to watch the sunset ripen. Sunsets are the canyon’s biggest cliché, but that doesn’t detract from the mesmeric quality of the moment.

DAY TWO: 6.30am

Another early start, but the sun’s a cruel mistress in these parts. You’ve had a good look; now it’s time to get up and get down. Don’t panic, though, because we’re opting for the least calorie-consuming route — the Bright Angel Trail. It starts at yesterday’s tea spot; simply look for the old wooden shack. Before you gallivant off, though, we need to think about time. From the rim to the river, it’s just under eight miles and 4,410ft as the backpacker drops. That should take four hours to reach, plus eight more back up. Hmm.

Without being too doom-laden, there’s no water en route at this time of year, so you’ll have to carry your own — and a good supply of carb-heavy, salty snacks. The main pitfall of canyoning is dehydration, but some hikers fall prey to the opposite: hyponatremia, a dangerously low level of sodium in the blood due to excessive water consumption and loss of salt through sweating (see box, below).

So if you’re keen to stay out of a Michael Buerk shockumentary, the sensible suggestion for a safe day’s hike is to go only as far as Plateau Point, which is still 3,800ft below but will be easily walkable in an entire day. If you’re determined to wet your feet, you can go the extra five miles, but you must then stay at the Phantom Ranch and extend your expedition by 24 hours. And you’ll need to have reserved a room way in advance.

Your path rides the back of the Bright Angel Fault, a shoulder of rock bridging down into the chasm. It was used first by the Pueblan tribe, then the Havasupai and finally by mineral prospectors. After two tunnels and a ridiculous tumbling zigzag, you’ll reach the Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse, which has water (well, not between October and April), loos and, should you feel the urge, telephones.

The Three-Mile Resthouse is, predictably, a mile and a half further on. By now, you’re leaving the wooded area and walking into lunar desert. Your next big descent is through Redwall limestone, which, because of its hardness, has worn down vertically. No fewer than 40 super-tight chicanes await. This stage is called Jacob’s Ladder, but it’s not going to feel so heavenly on the way back. At its end, you reach the easy green slopes of the Indian Gardens. It’s now far softer underfoot and there are cottonwood trees and cactuses along the way. The Havasupai farmed this area (hence the name) from about 1300 until the government evicted them in 1928.


DAY TWO: 1pm-ish

It’s decision time now. If you like, you can start heading back. That’ll make a 9.2-mile hike in all, and the grind back to the top should require a four-hour effort. If you fancy raising the stakes, consider turning left along the path signed for Plateau Point. It’s a dead-end detour of 1½ miles or so, but the view is special: it’s over the canyon’s 1.8-billion-year-old inner gorge, which is largely gneiss and schist, and has a dark, foreboding air: the kind of place Gollum would choose for his holidays. This is the next best thing to descending to the river: it gives you a sense of conquest for fewer calories. Speaking of which, it’s a good place to crack open the picnic.

DAY TWO: evening

The Plateau excursion will add a good hour to the return time, so you won’t be back at the village long before sunset. Jump in your car and drive eight miles east along Desert View Drive to the Grand View Point, which does what it says on the sign. This was where canyon tourism began — where those first Spaniards pulled their horses up sharply. The arrival of the railroad at Grand Canyon Village killed off the hoof-dependent trade here. Just as they did then, most people find this vista too much of a schlep from the main drag. Their loss is your gain — given the west-facing aspect, there’s no more breathtaking place to watch the sun streak through the clouds and turn the Colorado gold. Leave the camera in the car: the image will last forever.

Simon Hacker travelled as a guest of Virgin Holidays

Knowledge is power

WE’LL SPARE you the geography field trip, but this is a unique peepshow of the planet’s formative history. Picture Mother Earth as a giant lasagne. We live on the top crust with scant knowledge of the strata beneath. Now picture that lasagne sliced deeply by a knife called the Colorado River, and all its earthly innards exposed.

How long did it take to get here? That’s the scary bit for Homo sapiens. Think of two billion years as a 24-hour day. In the first nine hours, metamorphic rock was laid down. At lunchtime, it was covered by an ocean; by teatime, the oceans had gone; and by dinner, animals (big, scaly ones) had arrived. Not until four minutes to midnight did the Colorado start its work. And man? The hairy prototype dragged his knuckles onto the scene at 23.59 and 15 seconds, modern man showing up only in the last fifth of the last second.

Tourism was not a priority — 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers sought shelter from hostile neighbours amid the canyon’s labyrinth of peaks and valleys. A millennium or so later, some troglodytic communities had developed, though these were wiped out by drier weather during the Dark Ages. By the time the Spaniards arrived, the canyon was a virtually depopulated, forbidding place. Their Indian guides craftily showed them to the widest point and, after an abortive attempt at descent, they gave up.

Mineral prospectors had more success, which was part of the reason why President Benjamin Harrison created the Grand Canyon National Forest Preserve in 1893. It wasn’t until 1919 that Congress finally made this a protected national park.

Everything you need to know to plan your Grand trip

Getting there: Las Vegas is 290 miles (just over five hours’ drive) from the canyon. The only direct flights to the city from the UK or Ireland are from Gatwick with Virgin Atlantic (01293 747747, www.virgin-atlantic.com), from about £520. Benz Travel (020 7462 0022, www.benztravel.co.uk) has fares from 14 regional airports from £459, with KLM/Northwest via Amsterdam and Minneapolis. Or try Expedia (0870 050 0808, www.expedia.co.uk) or STA Travel (0870 160 0599, www.statravel.co.uk). Ebookers in Ireland (01 488 3507, www.ebookers.ie) has fares from Dublin from €720, with Continental via Newark.

Where to stay: rooms at the Phantom Ranch (00 1-303 297 2757, www.grandcanyonlodges.com) are usually booked months ahead, but if you plan to hike to the river and haven’t made a reservation, you can inquire about cancellations at Bright Angel Lodge’s transportation desk. Spare beds are more likely in low season; dormitory space (typically £20pppn) is more likely than a cabin.

In Tusayan, a mile south of the South Entrance, the Grand Hotel (928 638 3333, www.gcanyon.com) is the most attractive option, with fuss-free rooms from £33 to £71 per night.

In the village proper, the Bright Angel Lodge and the El Tovar Hotel (303 297 2757, www.grandcanyonlodges.com) are owned by the same company. For ultimate bliss, the Angel’s Bucky O’Neill Suite (from £136) overlooks the rim, while rim-view detached cabins cost from just £33. In the historic part of the village, the El Tovar (doubles from about £54) looks like the world’s poshest wooden shack — and is a more charming choice.

Getting around: Holiday Autos (0870 400 4497, www.holidayautos.co.uk) has weekly inclusive car-hire rates from £130. Or try Alamo (0870 400 4562, www.alamo.co.uk).

Tour operators: Virgin Holidays (0871 222 0306, www.virgin.com/holidays) has three nights at the Grand Hotel and three in Las Vegas from £677, including Virgin Atlantic flights from Gatwick and car hire, but excluding car insurance. Regional add-ons from £89. Or try Kuoni (01306 742888, www.kuoni.co.uk) or Travelbag (0870 814 4440, www.travelbag.co.uk). In Ireland, try American Holidays (01 673 3840, www.american-holidays.com).

The easier option: mule trips are a traditional alternative to hiking the canyon. They’re arranged by Xanterra (00 1-303 297 2757), need to be booked in advance and are restricted to people weighing less than 200lb, much to the mules’ relief. You need to be at ease in a saddle and have a contempt for heights. However, all trips are currently suspended due to track maintenance, but they’re scheduled to start again this autumn. Expect to pay about £70pp for the seven-hour return ride to Plateau Point.

Park details: entrance fees to the park are £11 per car for a seven-day pass. Pay on the way in to the park and pick up a free copy of the Guide newspaper for concise, up-to-date information. Visit www.nps.gov/grca for more park information.

Safety: a free copy of the Backcountry Trip Planner from the Canyon View Information Plaza is an invaluable safety guide. The (perhaps unfortunately named) Walk-In Medical Centre is open all year round at the village (928 638 2551).

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