Skiing the Grand Canyon by Gregory McNamee

The Grand Canyon, in summer, can be a slice of the inferno. Not because of the heat, although it is plenty hot in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. No, the Canyon takes on its hellish aspect thanks to the grinding of tour-bus transmissions, honking horns, low-flying aircraft, and a multitude of oohs and ahs and say-cheeses as endless crowds of tourists - more than five million of them in 1999 - jam into once-remote northern Arizona for a glimpse of eternity.

But in the wintertime, when piercing cold smothers the high country, the Grand Canyon takes on an entirely different aspect. The crowds begin to disappear with the changing of the leaves, and by the first snowfall the place is preternaturally still. The snow keeps coming and coming, building a snowpack that in most years exceeds 100 inches on the Kaibab Plateau and the Canyon’s North Rim.

All that snow seals off the Canyon from the rest of the world, giving the adventurous traveler a playground 1.6 million acres in extent. And all that snow, coupled with hilly terrain, means excellent cross-country skiing in some of the most remote territory in the lower 48.

Remote is the key word, for the North Rim, reaching elevations of 9,000 feet, is hard to get to in the best of weathers. The Kaibab Plateau, which encompasses the North Rim, takes its name from an Indian term meaning 'mountain lying on its side,' and the description is fitting: it is rough, steep, rocky country, crisscrossed by steep escarpments and deep-cut valleys and marked by dense stands of tall ponderosa pine trees - all of which end in the spectacular abyss of the Grand Canyon itself and its mile-plus drop to the muddy Colorado River.

Ideal though the skiing conditions are, at least in most years, until recently the whole of the Kaibab Plateau boasted only a single winter destination: the North Rim Nordic Center, eight miles from the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park and accessible only by skiing in or taking a SnowVan in from Jacob Lake, Arizona, some 25 miles away.

The Nordic Center boasted limited facilities for winter-weekend guests, accommodating only 60 people at a time. I first came there in 1993, on assignment for a magazine article, my charge being to take an expert course in cross-country skiing and report on the quality of the instruction. That instruction was superb, the best I’ve seen for any outdoor sport, so solid that other instructors traveled from all over the world to perfect their techniques. Even I, a coordination-challenged but exceedingly willing fan of all things outdoorsy, learned enough to stay vertical, successfully overcoming my natural tendency to plunge headlong into the nearest arroyo or snowbank.

The Nordic Center, I’m sorry to report, is no more. Longtime Canyon guides Gaylord and Joy Staveley, who run rafting expeditions down the Colorado during the long warm season, operated the Center at a loss for a decade.

"If we’d had even one winter of breaking even," Joy Staveley says, "we would have kept on going. But we were going broke running the center. People love the idea of a wilderness retreat - but one that you can drive or fly right up to, not one that takes so much work to reach."

With the loss of the Nordic Center, as of the 2000 season, if you were to ski into the North Rim country you’d have the place absolutely, as opposed to virtually, to yourself. A couple of longtime habitués of the winter landscape have been eyeing the possibilities of setting up something in the center’s place, but for the moment that means guiding parties into the Kaibab National Forest for a few days’ skiing. As I write, one of those guides is rumored to be caching food along the North Rim and quietly hunting up customers, while the other (who asks not to be identified by name, closely guarding his industrial secrets against the competition) is waiting for the next big snowfall before scrambling clients of his own.

The smart bet, if you wish to travel with someone who knows the area well, is to wait until 2001 and see who’s hung out a shingle. For the time being, if you want to ski the North Rim, you’re on your own.

This is a daunting prospect, but for an experienced cross-country skier, by no means an impossible one. It’s possible for an accomplished skier to set out from Jacob Lake and cover the ground to the North Rim, a distance of about 30 miles each way, in a long day of solid travel. The country in between those two points is rugged, to be sure, but not impassable. That said, you’d do well to know how to telemark, the point of which, as I understand it, is to stop on a dime while hurtling downhill, and then instantly change direction; useful knowledge, I suppose, should you ever find yourself tearing down the Grand Canyon’s brink while being chased by a black bear, of which the Kaibab Plateau boasts a small but attentive population.

In seriousness, be warned that anyone attempting a cross-country ski trip across the North Rim should plan to pack along camping gear, plenty of dry socks, a compass and topo maps, food for a few days’ survival in the wild, and a high-quality cell phone with a fully charged battery. Help is a long way off, the weather on the North Rim is as unpredictable as that of Everest, and that vast patch of ground is unforgiving of error, no matter how small.

But, considering the rewards, as any outdoor nut will tell you, none of that is sufficient reason to stay away.

If you do decide to go, you’ll find fairly easy passage between Jacob Lake and De Motte Park, the wide meadow that fronts the scattered buildings of the former Nordic Center, now a guest lodge during the summer months. The 25-odd-mile expanse crosses through some weird, high-lonesome country, including a huge patch of forest blown down in the late 1950s by a Pacific typhoon that traveled far inland, knocking down everything in its path between Los Angeles and Denver. The elevation rises more than a thousand feet in that distance, but at a fairly gradual pace.

South of De Motte Park, you can continue across relatively open ground, or climb along a low escarpment called Tater Ridge, which has some hairy spots, including a mile-long descent that locals have appropriately named Adrenaline Alley.

Traveling southeast from the park toward Point Imperial, an exceptional vista looking out over some of the Colorado River’s most imposing rapids, requires crossing over some of the most difficult country the North Rim has to offer: a series of steep, rocky hills called the Cocks Combs, on the flank of Saddle Mountain. Walking this route in mild late spring weather, as I’ve done a few times over the years, is a hard test of endurance. Skiing it, as I’ve done only once, can put you in touch with what you hope is a merciful God. Don’t even think about it unless you really have your chops.

If you don’t, head south or southwest. The meadow feeds out onto densely forested but comparatively level terrain that extends about eight miles to the edge of the Grand Canyon near the North Rim Lodge. Hot toddies will not await you there; the lodge is closed from late October to early May.

What will await you instead is the big payoff: an incomparable view far down into the guts of the earth, a sojourn with the spirits of the Grand Canyon that you won’t have to share with the howling busloads of tourists that bedeck the rim for so much of the year. Getting to that payoff requires a ferocious amount of work, a test of strength and skill that very few people have undertaken.

That test, of course, is pass-fail, and a low score can translate into an epitaph. Take care.