Grandview Point

Author's Comments

Most people drive past Grandview on their way to somewhere louder. That is the first gift of this place. The parking lot is small enough that on a January afternoon I have had it almost to myself, and the viewpoint sits high enough at just under seventy four hundred feet that the canyon below seems to drop away in stages rather than all at once. What I come for is the way the late light works across Horseshoe Mesa. The mesa juts out into the canyon like a held breath, and when the sun drops low in the west, the shadow of the rim crawls across it slowly enough that you can watch the geometry change. The Sinking Ship is visible from here too, that strange tilted formation off to the east, and the buttes between catch and release light at different rates depending on their faces. It is a layered view rather than a panoramic one. The composition rewards a wide lens but it rewards patience more. There is history under your feet. The Grandview Trail switchbacks down toward the old Last Chance copper mine on the mesa, and the trail itself is one of the oldest maintained routes into the canyon. I have never made it all the way down with a camera, but even from the rim you can trace the line of it and feel the weight of what people once carried up. Come in winter if you can. The low angle of the December sun does things to the canyon that the high summer light cannot. And come for the last hour before sundown, not the first hour after sunrise. Grandview faces its best light west.

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