Between Navajo Mountain and Lake Powell, on Utah’s stony southern edge, the land is humbling, terrifying, breathtaking. For two days we cross canyons, skirt cliff faces and contour around swells of enormous sand dunes hardened by time and pressure. Wings would be useful. 

We’re on foot, though, my six companions and I. Our goal is Rainbow Bridge, one of the world’s largest natural bridges, which was declared a national monument 100 years ago. You can reach the 84-metre span in a few hours from Page, Arizona, by boat across Lake Powell, the massive red-rock reservoir formed by the dammed Colorado River.

But we’ve chosen the old-fashioned way: hiking for 30 kilometres through rugged backcountry. We’re lucky to be led by Harvey Leake, an electrical engineer and historian. His great-grandfather John Wetherill led the party that officially “discovered” Rainbow Bridge in 1909. Native Americans knew about it before that, but no Anglos had ever seen it, let alone mapped and measured it. 

Before Lake Powell filled, the only way to reach the bridge was on foot or horseback. Today, only a few hundred people hike there every year, with permission from the Navajo tribe on whose reservation it sits. Given the scenery, that’s astonishing. “It is certainly the most beautiful trail in the West, and worth all the hardship,” wrote the Western author Zane Grey in 1924. 

The first morning, Leake tells stories about his great-grandfather, an amateur archeologist who helped discover many of the Southwest’s most famous ruins, including the cliff palaces of Mesa Verde. “J.W. was tough as a mule, but he hated arguments,” he says. If one seemed about to erupt, Wetherill would simply get up and leave.

 

We traverse a sea of steep slickrock that Zane Grey named the Glass Hills. The afternoon sun seems to light the smooth orange surface from within. We ease around a tight corner over a long drop where several of Wetherill’s horses slipped and fell to their deaths.

Our sandy campsite is in Surprise Valley, so named because it seems to have no entrance or exit, just steep fins of rock at either end. It’s a far cry from the plush Amangiri resort, just west of Page, but lovely nonetheless. 

After dinner, Doug Crispin, a volunteer ranger with the National Park Service, tells how the bridge has sparked heated dispute over the years. The Navajo and four other Native American tribes consider it sacred. They have sued the government, unsuccessfully, to have it put off-limits as a religious site. 

“Who’d have thought that such a small, remote national monument would be the centre of such controversy?” Crispin says. Then again, “Just looking at the bridge evokes such strong emotions.” 

I understand what he’s talking about early the following afternoon, when Rainbow Bridge first comes into view around a bend in the canyon. The multihued sandstone curve looks sculpted, almost too perfect. It’s obvious why the Navajo call it Nonnezoshe, the “rainbow turned to stone.” Signs near the base explain how visitors can respect native beliefs by not walking underneath.

 

It took Wetherill’s party five days on horseback to reach this spot. About a kilometre down the canyon is a floating dock on Lake Powell for day-tripping visitors. There, a boat is waiting to carry us back to the new Antelope Point Marina near Page. However you arrive, you’ll find yourself agreeing with U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt, whom Wetherill guided to Rainbow Bridge in 1913: “It is surely one of the wonders of the world.” 

(Julian Smith’s writing and photography have appeared in Outside, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. His next book, Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure, will be published by Harper Perennial in December 2010.)

 

Getting There
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