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webpage last updated by James Keith Montz on 09-Sep-2009

Grand Canyon, Meteor Grater
and Hualapai Skywalk
January 26 and 27, 2008

This was a guy trip, planned by my good friend Holger Piprek and his friend Christian Depner.  Christian's wife is best friends with Holger's wife Melanie since high school back in Celle Germany.  Christian works for Baker Hughes like I do and like Holger formerly did before taking a position with SAP.  Christian lives in Celle and travels to Houston because of his position with Baker Hughes.  They planned to take a Friday evening flight to Phoenix Arizona and see the Grand Canyon and the "Skywalk over the Grand Canyon" and invited me to tag along.

We landed in Phoenix around 10:30pm on Friday, Jan 25th and drove to the Grand Canyon for lodging on that evening.  We arrived near the South Rim around 3:30am with the temperature near zero Fahrenheit.  We took only a few hours for sleep and got up at 7:30am to proceed to viewing the South and East sides of the Grand Canyon.  The weather was cold but not unbearable with beautiful clear skies throughout the whole day. After taking our time viewing the Grand Canyon we went on to see Meteor Crater, saving Sunday for going to the Skywalk.

Saturday evening we drove to Kingsman Arizona to stay for the evening so that we would be closer for the long drive to the Skywalk.  Sunday morning we made the two hour drive to the Skywalk as the weather took a turn for the worse.  On the way to the Skywalk it was sprinkling rain and by the time we arrived at the Skywalk it was getting ready to close down because of heavy rain and mist coming out of the Grand Canyon.  Worthy of note, for those who plan on seeing the Skywalk in the future, you should do some research.  The trek to the cut off onto the Hualapai Indian reservation, where the Skywalk is located, is a long, desolate drive with a twenty mile dirt road off of the highway.  If it raining like it did for us, there is a potential of flash flooding and your vehicle could getting stuck.  We almost got stuck in one spot and for most of the way, we did not get any cell phone coverage. 

  Saturday Jan 26
  At Grand Canyon
1 Keith at our first stop on Saturday morning
2 Beautiful view looking towards the North Rim
3 Keith and Holger at one of the lookouts
4 View of the roads around Park.  Beautiful snow covered the ground.
5 Holger and Keith coming down one of the trails.  I had two layers of shirts and pants on and just took off my coat as the exercise down started to heat everyone up.
6 Keith at one of the lookout points down the trail.
7 Keith, Christian and Holger at the same point on #6.  This is right above the house about a 1/5 of the way down.
8 View of the water, way down from where we were at high level zoom on camera.
9 Another zoom down at the water from one of the last vantage points on the South Rim.
10 A mesa view in the Grand Canyon . Close up of the same mesa
11 Keith standing in snow with a nice view of the river running in the background
12 A. This is a the exact same place where we have photos from three previous years dating back five years.  It is at start of the Grand Canyon, outside of the park and in Navajo Reservation land. B. Sep 2006    C.  Link to Nov 2002 photo - sorry it blurry.  D.  Original from 2002
  Meteor Crater
1 Inside Observatory
2 At the top platform looking into the Crater. Notice Keith on the platform below.
3 Keith on the next lower level platform.  Notice this platform was in in #2 picture, which gives you a starting  perspective the size of the crater
4 Picture towards center of crater from #3's platform
5 Zoomed into the center of the Crater.  Notice the Steam equipment on left and the astronaut next to the American flag on right of fence.

 

  Sunday 27th
  Grand Canyon west - Hualapai Nation
1 Keith and Holger at the far entrance down the 20 mile dirt road near the bus terminal which goes to the sky walk,
2 View of the rain coming in over the mountains which guards the sides of the Grand Canyon by the sky walk.