I seem to be having some technical difficulties with the blogger site uploading photos from my recent trip to the skywalk. I'll get those posted as soon as blogger.com frees up some bandwith..
In the meantime let me tell you a bit about my weekend. I started my roadtrip with a visit to a group of about 40 boy scouts and their dad's camping in the Hualapai mountains south and east of Kingman. There they have got one year permit to 620 acres of state-trust land and will do their best to clean it all up. They had me and Patrick from the GCNP river permit office speak to the groups about the Leave No Trace ethics. It was way productive and a really fun and querky group! Way to go you guys.
Next I drove the infamous dirt road to the Hualapai's skywalk at Grand Canyon West. They've got phase one in place with the skywalk out and over the rim and a shuttle service herding Vegas-spawned tourons among the various "attractions." The skywalk itself is a neat piece of architecture and engineering. The noise pollution from the billions of helicopters coming and going however is a real drag. Kinda of a funny thing they got going out there with big plans in the near future. A hotel and restaurants are soon to follow and an IMAX and a made for television Indian village are on the way as well. The price of admission included a stop at the historic bat towers, the debunked mining site where in the 1950's some ambitious investors mined bat guano from a cave on the north side of the river and extracted it by way of a 9000ft long cable tramway. The tower mass is still on the rim and was interesting to visit.
My bottom line opinion on the place is complicated. I've been asked if the skywalk is worth the price of admission- $75.00. Well I'd recommend that if one was looking for a Grand Canyon Experience, then it's certainly not. I beleive that a quality Grand Canyon visit should be personal, one should be left with time to listen, look and smell the vastness of rock and sky. With the grumblings of a steady line of diesel belching motor coaches and the screetching buzz of litereally hundreds of helicopters above and BELOW the rim, it is nearly impossible to find the peace needed to absorb the grandness of the western canyon. The skywalk is a made-for-vegas attraction that the Hualapais are hoping to profit from, perhaps motivated a chance by the witnessing what their neighbors, the Havasupai, have done with their waterfalls...