Grand Canyon

Continuing onto the Grand Canyon, your tour guide will tell you all about the Canyon and the Hualapai Indians. Included is admission to the West Rim, VIP bus access at the Canyon (an exclusive benefit for this tour only), Breakfast, BBQ lunch on the canyon rim and two bottles of water. Return to Las Vegas at approximately 5pm.

Grand Canyon North Rim

The Grand Canyon Skwalk, Eagle Point, Guano Point, the Cabins at Grand Canyon West, and Hualapai River Runners are NOW OPEN.

• Grand Canyon, immense canyon cut by the Colorado River in the high plateau region of northwestern Arizona, U.S., noted for its fantastic shapes and coloration. The greatest depths of the Grand Canyon lie more than a mile below its rim. It is over 275 miles long and ranges in width from about 500 feet to 18 miles.
• See the Grand Canyon on the Grand Canyon Railway, an ideal tour for young and old. Trips depart from the train depot in Williams daily, traveling through the Old West on a train that might just be robbed by horse-riding bandits! The schedule allows travelers several mid-day hours to roam the Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim, checking out.
• Grand Canyon Tours from the South Rim offer the broadest range of experiences from Rafting, Helicopter, Airplane, Motorcoach, Jeep, Biking and much, much more. Click here to learn about all of your Grand Canyon South Rim tour options.

Reopening dates for Hualapai Ranch, the Zip Line at Grand Canyon West, and Hualapai Lodge will be announced at a later date.

Grand Canyon West has features you just won’t find at the South or North Rims. Get an aerial view of the Canyon through a glass bridge on the Skywalk, take a white water rafting tour with Hualapai River Runners, take a helicopter & boat tour, soar over cliffs on a zip line, and explore the area’s history at the Native American Village and Guano Point.

Grand Canyon West is just a two hour drive from Las Vegas and a quick drive from Laughlin, or Lake Havasu and offers plenty of activities and sights that can be experienced in one day. Start planning your Grand Canyon West vacation today.

Experience Grand Canyon West

Getting Here Your Adventure at a Glance

The activities at Grand Canyon West are split between two locations: The West Rim and Peach Springs. At the West Rim, you’ll find the Skywalk, ziplining, aerial tours, and calm floats down the Colorado River. You’ll also find Hualapai Ranch, where you can rent a cabin and experience the history and culture of the Canyon.

Peach Springs is the launch point for Colorado River whitewater rafting trips. It’s about a two hour drive from the West Rim, and you can stay at the Hualapai Lodge. Peach Springs is along an unspoiled section of historic Route 66, so in addition to seeing the Canyon you’ll be able to experience a stretch of this iconic highway.

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Grand Canyon Tours

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Grand Canyon, immense canyon cut by the Colorado River in the high plateau region of northwestern Arizona, U.S., noted for its fantastic shapes and coloration.

The Grand Canyon lies in the southwestern portion of the Colorado Plateau, which occupies a large area of the southwestern United States and consists essentially of horizontal layered rocks and lava flows. The broad, intricately sculptured chasm of the canyon contains between its outer walls a multitude of imposing peaks, buttes, gorges, and ravines. It ranges in width from about 175 yards (160 metres) to 18 miles (29 km) and extends in a winding course from the mouth of the Paria River, near Lees Ferry and the northern boundary of Arizona with Utah, to Grand Wash Cliffs, near the Nevada state line, a distance of about 277 miles (446 km); the first portion of the canyon—from Lees Ferry to the confluence with the Little Colorado River—is called Marble Canyon. The Grand Canyon also includes many tributary side canyons and surrounding plateaus.

The greatest depths of the Grand Canyon lie more than a mile (some 6,000 feet [1,800 metres]) below its rim. The deepest and most spectacularly beautiful section, 56 miles (90 km) long, is within the central part of Grand Canyon National Park, which encompasses the river’s length from Lake Powell (formed by Glen Canyon Dam in 1963) to Lake Mead (formed by Hoover Dam in 1936). The North Rim, at approximately 8,200 feet (2,500 metres) above sea level, is some 1,200 feet (365 metres) higher than the South Rim. In its general colour, the Grand Canyon is red, but each stratum or group of strata has a distinctive hue—buff and gray, delicate green and pink, or, in its depths, brown, slate-gray, and violet.

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Geologic history

Although its awesome grandeur and beauty are the major attractions of the Grand Canyon, perhaps its most vital and valuable aspect lies in the time scale of Earth history that is revealed in the exposed rocks of the canyon walls. No other place on Earth compares to the Grand Canyon for its extensive and profound record of geologic events. The canyon’s record, however, is far from continuous and complete. There are immense time gaps; many millions of years are unaccounted for, owing to gaps in the strata that resulted either from vast quantities of materials being removed by erosion or because there was little or no deposition of materials. Thus, rock formations of considerably different ages are separated by only a thin distinct surface that reveals the vast unconformity in time.

Briefly summarized, the geologic history of the canyon strata is as follows. The crystallized, twisted, and contorted unstratified rocks of the inner gorge at the bottom of the canyon are Archean granite and schist more than 2.5 billion years old. Overlying those very ancient rocks is a layer of Proterozoic limestones, sandstones, and shales that are more than 540 million years old. On top of them are Paleozoic rock strata composed of more limestones, freshwater shales, and cemented sandstones that form much of the canyon’s walls and represent a depositional period stretching over 300 million years. Overlying those rocks in the ordinary geologic record should be a thick sequence of Mesozoic rocks (about 250 to 65 million years old), but rocks dating from the Mesozoic Era in the Grand Canyon have been entirely eroded away. Mesozoic rocks are found nonetheless in nearby southern Utah, where they form precipitous butte remnants and vermilion, white, and pink cliff terraces. Of relatively recent origin are overlying sheets of black lava and volcanic cones that occur a few miles southeast of the canyon and in the western Grand Canyon proper, some estimated to have been active within the past 1,000 years. (See alsoGrand Canyon Series.)

Nps Grand Canyon

The cutting of the mile-deep Grand Canyon by the Colorado River is an event of relatively recent geologic history that began not more than six million years ago, when the river began following its present course. The Colorado River’s rapid velocity and large volume and the great amounts of mud, sand, and gravel it carries swiftly downstream account for the incredible cutting capacity of the river. Before Glen Canyon Dam was built, the sediments carried by the Colorado River were measured at an average of 500,000 tons per day. Conditions favourable to vigorous erosion were brought about by the uplift of the region, which steepened the river’s path and allowed deep entrenchment. The depth of the Grand Canyon is the result of the cutting action of the river, but its great width is explained by rain, wind, temperature, and chemical erosion, helped by the rapid wear of soft rocks, all of which steadily widened the canyon. An experiment was conducted in March 2008, in which water equivalent to about 40 percent of the river’s original flow was released from Glen Canyon Dam for a period of 60 hours to measure the erosion and deposition of sediments along the river. Researchers monitoring the experiment noted additional sand deposition at numerous locations along the river following the release.

Grand Canyon Railway

The most significant aspect of the environment that is responsible for the canyon is frequently overlooked or not recognized. Were it not for the semiarid climate in the surrounding area, there would be no Grand Canyon. Slope wash from rainfall would have removed the canyon walls, the stair-step topography would long ago have been excavated, the distinctive sculpturing and the multicoloured rock structures could not exist, the Painted Desert southeast of the canyon along the Little Colorado River would be gone, and the picturesque Monument Valley to the northeast near the Utah state line would have only a few rounded hillocks.