Toroweap is one of the Grand Canyon's semi-secrets.
From most of the major viewpoints on the north and south rims, the epic sculptor the Colorado River is elusive. When you do see it, all you catch a glimpse of is a speck or a sliver miles and miles away.But you can drive to Toroweap Point, stroll to the cliff's edge, lean carefully forward and, just beyond the tips of your toes, look straight down at the cascading Colorado a half-mile below. More Colorado stretches to your left and to your right.
Toroweap is on the western North Rim, southeast of St. George on the Arizona Strip. And although pictures and descriptions of the canyon from this spectacular spot can be found in many publications, from guide books to National Geographic magazine, the viewpoint remains something of a secret for a good reason: It is remote, and to get there visitors have to drive a rattling 60 or so miles over dirt roads.
Although graded and passable most of the year, these routes are not state of the art highways. They are classic byways. "Unpaved roads are impassable when wet," warn Arizona's mapmakers. If it has rained or snowed at all, the drive is not recommended, Grand Canyon National Park representatives say; the gravel, sands and clays can make the journey unsafe. None of these roads, notes the park's handout for its Tuweep (a.k.a. Toroweap) ranger district, is recommended for motorhomes, travel trailers or low-slung vehicles.
In any case, a spokeswoman said, "Bring your own water, tools, gas and food."
Still, Toroweap is 3,000 feet lower than the better-visited North Rim viewpoints and trailheads on the upper stories of the Kaibab Plateau; it's also significantly below the South Rim's year-round Grand Canyon Village. The lower elevation, as you'd expect, makes a difference in the weather, especially during chillier months.
The principal routes to Toroweap veer south from Arizona Highway 389 near Pipe Springs National Monument, between Hurricane in Utah and Fredonia in Arizona. The road rambles across a plain of sage, yucca and grasses then follows the Toroweap Valley. A low line of hills defines the eastern horizon while the hump of pine-crested 8,028-foot Mt. Trumbull rises to the west. Eventually the road winds through a zone of orange-red sandstone spotted with pinyon and juniper. Then. . . .
". . . Toroweap Valley ends - awesomely," W.E. Garrett wrote in National Geographic in 1978. "Where it should be, athwart its path, lies the Grand Canyon. And nothing else. No steel guardrails, no asphalt parking lots, no manicured paths with starched rangers leading nature walks."
There are places to park, but not over many; a few primitive campsites and picnic tables are available, too.
But unlike many popular spots in Grand Canyon National Park, Toroweap offers solitude as well as grandeur.
In fact, the panorama is breathtaking - perhaps literally for those averse to heights. Visitors find themselves atop incredibly vertical sandstone cliffs. The Colorado, a dizzying 3,000 feet below, is a reflective ribbon. South of the river sits another multilayered plateau: brown, tan, blue and green, creased and crinkled by a sequence of side canyons.
And, as is invariably the case with the Grand Canyon, there's more to Toroweap than the view - there's a heap of geology. In that regard, this area is amazing in a landscape founded upon the remarkable.
The reason: volcanoes.
The Grand Canyon is famed for its billion-year staircase of sedimentary sandstones, siltstones and shales. Toroweap is notable for its more "recent" tendency to leak fire. More than 60 volcanic cones have been identified in the area. Many are prominent, visible on both sides of the canyon.
At least four times, scientists now believe, beginning 1.2 million years ago and continuing episodically until 350,000 years ago, flowing magma seeped into the Grand Canyon and blocked it with lava dams. Long, narrow Lake Powell-like reservoirs would form behind these; one stretched back 200 miles to just below our modern Glen Canyon dam. Each time, the Colorado gnawed and carried away the obstruction.
"Gravels of waterborne origin have been found perched in protected alcoves on the canyon walls high above the river," notes the Park Service's Tuweep handout. "In places, mud and sand that settled along the lake shores still clings to the canyon walls."
Upstream from Toroweap a column of lava protrudes from the canyon waters; Vulcan's Forge is what's left of a volcano's throat, smack dab in the middle of the Colorado. Down-canyon a cinder cone, Vulcan's Throne, sits just west of the Toroweap viewpoint, and a long tongue of lava sweeps down to the river. There black rock helped create Lava Falls, renowned as the most challenging of all the rapids on the Colorado, which quickly drops 37 feet.
Today hardy visitors hike down, and back up, this incline, known as both the Toroweap and Lava Falls trail, as did early river runners and the area's Paiute Indians before them.
It is not a route to be taken lightly. The "Toroweap Trail is anything but an aesthetic `hike,' as most people define the term," says John Annerino in the Sierra Club handbook "Hiking the Grand Canyon." "Plummeting an astonishing 2,600 vertical feet in a mile and a half, (the trail) is an avalanche of a route waiting to throw you to your knees during the descent and to suck the last drop of moisture out of you during the debilitating crawl out."
The features have names like Vulture Valley and the Chute, and guiding stone cairns and whitewashed crosses mark part of the way. Annerino recommends that hikers cache water on the way down - and that they watch for snakes.
The trek can be a day hike, requiring only signing the trail's register. Or campers can make their way down to the river for an overnight stay, which requires a back-country permit.
"Wear leather gloves," warned one park employee. It's a rough and jagged scramble, extremely hot in summer, and apparently the "trail" itself barely deserves the name.
When the seasons allow, the road over Mt. Trumbull provides a nice variation to the Pipe Springs route to and from Toroweap.
The mountain - a dormant volcano - offers additional campsites, a ponderosa pine forest and fluffy-tailed Kaibab squirrels. Striking - and generally hidden - lava-rock petroglyphs and pottery shards are evidence of a prehistoric Indian presence. And, beside a green meadow, a large sign marks the spot where Mormon pioneers established a sawmill in the 1870s that provided lumber for the St. George LDS Temple.
- A Park Service ranger is stationed near Toroweap, at Tuweep; the ranger station does not have a phone. The North Rim in the Jacob's Lake/Bright Angel area is closed for the season. For information, call Grand Canyon National Park at 1-602-638-7888. The number offers a menu allowing callers to find out about the weather, permits, camping and visitor services. You can also write to Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023-0129.
Toroweap campsites are first come, first served; back-country permits are required in advance for camping below the rim. As the Park Service warns: "No water, meals, gas, lodging or services are available."