The Grand Canyon Skywalk: What Would Edward Abbey Think?
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 02.07.06 | 12:24 PM ET
We’re big fans of the land. Mountains. Mesas. Wide open spaces. All of it. So whenever we come across questionable development on Mother Nature’s fine works, we often find ourselves wondering, What Would Edward Abbey Think? In this first installment of our new recurring feature, we ask what the environmental advocate and author of Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang would think of the Grand Canyon Skywalk. The Hualapai Tribe plans to open a glass bridge—it looks more like a see-through horseshoe to me—extending 70 feet beyond the rim of the Grand Canyon, 4,000 feet above the Colorado River. It was scheduled to open last month, but its debut has just been pushed back until the end of 2006. Read all about it in this press release. An artist’s rendering is above.
Five-foot-tall glass walls will line the sides of the Skywalk, and the structure will be able “to withstand the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes.” That’s quite an engineering feat. But then again, so is the Glen Canyon Dam that Abbey so despised. The Hualapai Tribe seems to be promoting the Skywalk as the centerpiece of an effort to bring more travelers to Grand Canyon West from Las Vegas, which is just 120 miles away. I understand the need to lure visitors with something spectacular, but is the Skywalk really necessary? Isn’t the view from the rim spectacular enough? It is, after all, the Grand Canyon.