Bright Angel Point

Author's Comments

The North Rim is the canyon for people who want the canyon to themselves, or as close to it as the park allows. The road closes by mid-October and does not open again until May, and that single fact changes everything about how this place feels. The lodge sits a thousand feet higher than the more famous rim across the gorge, and the air at eight thousand feet has a clarity that the South Rim simply does not get. Bright Angel Point is a half-mile walk from the lodge along a paved spine of rock that narrows as you go. On either side the ground falls away into Roaring Springs Canyon and Bright Angel Canyon, and the South Rim reads as a blue line in the far distance, sometimes thirty miles off, sometimes closer depending on the haze. I come here for sunset. The canyons that drop away from this promontory run roughly north to south, which means the side walls catch the last light at different angles and at different moments, and the shadows do not fall all at once but in a slow cascade from the upper rim down into the inner gorge. It is a longer light show than most overlooks offer. Bring a wide lens and stay past the moment you think it has ended. The minutes after the sun is gone are often the ones that hold. September is my favorite. The summer monsoons have mostly passed, the light turns honest again, and the lodge is still open but the families have gone home. You can stand on that narrow finger of stone in early evening and hear almost nothing. That is rare, in a canyon this famous.

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