Grand Canyon West

Whenever I told anyone about my last visit to the Grand Canyon, without fail someone asked me if I went on the Skywalk. I patiently explained that I had visited the South Rim and the Skywalk was in another part of the canyon. Gradually, as this conversation was repeated over and over, I started to feel like I had missed something important by missing this Skywalk thingy. Perhaps I’d somehow failed to have the essential Grand Canyon experience.

Thus it was that the Cream Puff came to be rattling along 11 miles of an unsealed, corrugated, dusty “road” to Grand Canyon West, which is part of the lands of the Hualapai Nation.

Despite the vigorous wind, the dust of the drive still managed to cling to the car, which I temporarily renamed Dust Puff . The headache I developed on the drive also stuck with me for the rest of the day. I was now very tired, after three days of entertaining guests in Fresno, then the farewell party, the long day in Death Valley and the long night in Las Vegas. I didn’t realise how exhausted I really was until I found myself trying to pay the entrance fee to Grand Canyon West with my NRMA membership card. While I waited in the sun for the shuttle bus to the various attractions, I resolved not to get too close to the edge of the canyon in case I had some kind of narcoleptic episode and fell to my death.

The first shuttle stop was at the Skywalk that I’ve been feeling so inadequate about. There’s a lot of construction going on up there at the moment, so at first glance it doesn’t look particularly inspiring. In fact, even at second glance it doesn't. It probably won't look much better when they've finished building the resort they're working on.

Actually getting onto the Skywalk is quite an ordeal. First you have to lock everything you own, including your camera, in a locker. No cameras are allowed on the Skywalk. The stated reason is to avoid the risk of dropped items scratching the glass. Really? I can put it on a strap around my neck. If my neck hits your floor you have bigger problems than scratched glass. I suspect the real reason is so that tourists can't take any uncontrolled photos. You can, of course, purchase "professional" photographs of yourself on the Skywalk, which feels rather exploitative, especially when you've just paid $80 and driven for hours just to get there.

The Skywalk is also disappointingly small. You look at the statistics and see that it's a glass walkway extending 20 m out from the cliff and you think "Wow, that's impressive." Then you stand on it and think, "Wow, did they start measuring from the car park?"

Visitors are issued with little shoe coverings to prevent scratches to the glass and prevent slipping. No other tourists were on the Skywalk when I approached it. I smiled at each of the security guards I passed, put on my little booties and shuffled out onto the Skywalk.

It didn't feel like walking on air, or flying. It felt like walking on a very solid and secure transparent surface. There was one cool moment when I looked straight down, from the very outer part of the Skywalk. For a second I felt vertigo and thought "Okay, that's a long way down." Then I looked back up and realised that I'd just done the whole Skywalk in about 5 seconds.

Feeling a bit ripped off, having just paid $80 for this thrill, I shuffled back around the Skywalk in the other direction. I might as well get a whole minute's entertainment out of it. I hung around at the outermost point for a little while and admired the canyon until I tired of communing with the view while security watched over me like an Eagle Rock.

This is not the best angle from which to identify the eagle. The best angle is visible only from the dusty windows of the shuttle bus, or from closer to the verboten cliff edge. With a bit of imagination you can see the main part of its body in the centre of the shot, the span of its wing to the right and part of the wing to the left.

The coolest sight in Grand Canyon West is actually this abandoned guano mining equipment. Guano (bat manure) deposited in caves in the face of the cliff on the other side of the canyon was extracted, then winched across to this station. Guano is useful in the production of fertiliser and gunpowder. I advise you never to allow an open flame near a bat, just in case. When the guano mine was closed down, the cables remained stretched across from the canyon until a military pilot did a quick run through the canyon for kicks and tangled his aircraft up in the bat poo lines. The cables were then dropped down into the canyon, where they remain.