Cape Royal

Author's Comments

The drive out to Cape Royal is part of the experience, and I would not skip it. Twenty-three miles of road through ponderosa forest and meadow, the canyon hidden somewhere off to your right, and then the trees thin and you are walking the last half mile on pavement and the world opens. What Cape Royal offers that the other North Rim viewpoints do not is width. The canyon here is not a single dramatic gash but a vast, layered country, and the eye keeps traveling. Angels Window sits below the main point, a hole worn clean through a fin of stone, and through it you can see a slice of the Colorado River far below, framed by rock the color of rust and bone. I have stood here in late September at golden hour and watched the shadows do something I have never quite seen elsewhere. The canyon is so wide from this point that the light does not move across it the way it moves across Mather or Hopi or Desert View. It moves into it. The eastern walls go dark first while the western faces hold their warmth for what feels like an unreasonable amount of time, and the temple formations in the middle distance seem to float between the two. It is the canyon at its most painterly. Come for sunset. The North Rim sits higher and quieter than the South, and Cape Royal at the end of a long summer day with the crowds thinned and the light going long is one of the places where the canyon stops being a postcard and becomes a feeling. Bring a wide lens. Bring something warm for after. The drive back in the dark is its own quiet thing.

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