Bright Angel Point

Author's Comments

The North Rim is a different canyon. I do not mean that loosely. The thousand feet of additional elevation changes everything about how the light arrives, how the air feels, how the canyon reads from the edge. There is conifer here. There is a coolness in the morning that the South Rim has forgotten. Bright Angel Point is the obvious walk and you should take it. Half a mile out a paved spine of rock with the canyon falling away on both sides, Roaring Springs to the west and Bright Angel to the east, and the South Rim gone soft and blue in the far distance. The promontory is narrow enough that you feel the drop in your stomach if you let yourself. Most people do not linger. They walk to the end, take the photograph, walk back. I would stay. The hour before sunset is when the canyon begins to do its real work, when the side canyons fill with shadow and the ridges go orange and the layering of stone reveals itself in a way that midday flattens completely. From this point you are looking into a system of tributaries rather than at a single wall, and the photograph that rewards patience is the one where the shadow has reached three-quarters of the way up the far cliffs and the light is only catching the highest rims. The season is short. Mid-May to mid-October, and the shoulders are quieter than the middle. September is my favorite. The light has begun to lengthen, the summer haze has thinned, and the lodge is still open but no longer full. Bring a wide lens. Bring something warm for after the sun is down.

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