Rainbow Rim, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona

[Photo: North Timp Point and Steamboat Mountain, North Rim of Grand Canyon, Arizona.]

Evening at the Rainbow Rim. It's a remote and special place on the boundary line between the Kaibab National Forest and Grand Canyon National Park. About 20 miles by dirt Forest Service roads from the nearest paved highway, Route 67, also known as the North Rim Parkway. And about 50 miles from the nearest town of any note, here on the Arizona Strip in the northwest corner of the state.

You drive through lush mature forests of Ponderosa pine, aspen, spruce, and fir. Big trees. Kaibab squirrels, a tassel eared species with a white tail and dark body, live here on the Kaibab Plateau and nowhere else. I saw four this day. 

I camped near Locust Point, one of the points on the Rainbow Rim. Only a few visitors. Peaceful. Awesome viewing, down into the Tapeats Amphitheater in Grand Canyon. 

Just the kind of place for a modern day mountain man.

On The Mountain Lying Down

The "mountain lying down" is the Kaibab Plateau of the northern Arizona Strip. It's a high (8,000 feet plus) densely forested plateau with a broadly rounded top. A broad upswell in the land that triggers a lot more precipitation (mostly snow in the winter) than the surrounding high desert areas.

["Wildland Fire In Progress" marquee, De Motte Park, Kaibab National Forest, Arizona]

But it has no craggy mountain peaks. Even though the landform was lifted by the Earth's tectonic forces to be so high in elevation, it never was crunched into peaks. Thus to the Paiute Indians it was called Kaibab, the mountain that is lying down.

It's a fascinating portion of the remote Arizona Strip, that area north of Grand Canyon up to the Utah state line. It forms the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, as the ever scouring Colorado River far below keeps exposing more cliffs and side canyons to be widened by erosion of water and gravity.

And it's a wildfire ecosystem. Fire is a natural part of the habitats here, especially the Ponderosa pine-spruce-fir-aspen forests. The trees, and the animal species that live there, are well adapted to periodic fires.

So when a thunderstorm on May 23, 2014 produced two wildfires from lightning strikes to trees, the one close to North Rim Village was put out, because it was too dangerous to let grow. The other lightning strike fire was about 20 miles into the backcountry and so let to burn under the intense management of fire personnel from the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and other cooperating agencies. It was named the Galahad Fire, which you can read more about on the InciWeb Incident Information System website.

Snow Shower Sunset Colors, Lonesome Valley

Sunset on the Lonesome Valley Buttes

I was coming down out of the foothills on the western side of Mingus Mountain as sunset time was near. Out onto Highway 89A north of Prescott Valley. 

I like this high, wide area of open grassland in part because it's right on the break between two watersheds. The small ravines flowing to the south are actually the very headwaters of the Agua Fria River, though nobody knows it unless they study the maps. Meanwhile, on the north side of the highway is Lonesome Valley itself, which drains into Granite Creek, and by that watercourse (usually dry on the surface) into the upper Verde River gorge. 

Thus if you were to pour out your water bottle you could choose which river's watershed to contribute to merely by stopping at this spot versus that spot along the road. Not that your water would get very far in the dry, deep soil, but still kind of cool to think about.

Sunset from Highway 89A, Lonesome Valley

My watershed musings were quickly interrupted by the sunset sky. The day had been one of flirtation with snow. In fact, showers were now hanging down in the distance to the north. The Lonesome Valley Buttes were visible on the horizon, up at Perkinsville Road east of the town of Chino Valley.

The low angle of the setting sun turned the buttes and the snow showers pink, purple, and rose. I wished that I could instantly transport myself about ten miles north to the Buttes, but instead I had to content myself with the view from afar. High, wide, and longingly lovely.    

Lonesome Valley, Arizona.

Lonesome Valley Road

Lonesome Valley. The first time I saw its name on the map, I was hooked. How evocative. 

Curiously, nobody I knew around there called it that. There was Prescott (Arizona's first capital, before it was even a state), Prescott Valley, and Chino Valley. Two valleys as city names, but neither of them Lonesome. 

This area, which likes to call itself the Central Arizona Highlands, isn't lonely these days, which is why they named the town east of Prescott to be Prescott Valley instead of Lonesome Valley. You see, back in the 1960s, some astute land developers recognized that it probably wouldn't be the shrewdest of business moves to try to sell plots of land in an out of the way place 90 miles north of Phoenix by calling it "Lonesome Valley". 

So they didn't. 

Thus they called their new little city Prescott Valley. Which sounds quaint, but will forever confuse non-locals as to whether the town they are driving through on the way to Prescott was actually Prescott, or Prescott-In-The-Prescott-Valley. After all, ringed by mountains, this must be a valley, right? And Prescott is the heart of it. Sufficiently confused, hopefully they will just pull over at a good restaurant and eat while asking the waitress. 

I guess that East Of Prescott wouldn't have been good, either. But it would have been accurate. 

Which somehow brings us back to Lonesome Valley. The real valley the town kind of borders. The valley north of it, the one too beautiful to take its name. Because cities, even small mountain town cities, are only beautiful in a way. Until they get crowded and polluted. 

That's when you need somewhere much more wide open and amazing. Like Lonesome Valley. Where the sky meets the land, instead of the other way around.

See more of my photography on my website: www.NaturalMoment.com.

© Copyright 2013 Stephen J. Krieg