Toroweap offers a completely different perspective of the Grand Canyon that those available from the main viewpoints on both the North and South rims. Not only is the canyon at this point far less deep (around 3000 feet) and narrower (1 mile) than at the more popular locations upstream, but it is also located just above a stretch of river where the Colorado runs more or less rectilinear, enabling a continuous panorama of water surrounded on both sides by near vertical walls.

Another bonus is the solitude and silence you are basically guaranteed to find here. While the crowds descending on the National Park classical viewpoints number in the several thousand per day, ensuring that you are going to share the views with loud cell phone conversations, barking dogs, and crying babies, only a few brave souls per day make it to this completely undeveloped and isolated location accessible only through a sixty mile long sandy track, plus five or six extremely rocky ones thrown in for fun just at the end. Once you arrive, however, the silence is only broken by the distant roar of the famous Lava Falls rapids below, and the solitude only perturbed by the elegant flight of a raven or, if you are lucky, that of the elusive condor.

I had attempted to come here in 2009 without a high clearance vehicle, being forced to turn around close to the end upon encountering deep sand that nearly got me stranded. This time I came better prepared and my only problem when I got there was that I could not stay forever and I knew I had to return at some point.

Toroweap is a magnificent photographic location both at sunset and sunrise. The view westward at dusk, shown above, with the dark lava that descends from Vulcan´s Throne at the right (out of the picture) and forms the fearsome (and loud) Lava Falls rapids, is impressive. But when you return to the same spot on the next morning, and look in the opposite direction towards the rising sun turning the vertical sandstone cliffs red-hot with the river below, it is difficult to choose one or the other. But there is no need to, as you can have both.

"The top environmental priority of my administration, perhaps my entire life, has been a carefully considered, proper protection of the wild and precious land of Alaska." Jimmy Carter, U.S. President

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