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Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
- abruzzi 12y agoAs a regular visitor to the Grand Canyon, this saddens me, but fortunately the Grand Canyon is big, and even if this gets built, there are still plenty of places where you can visit the canyon and see next to no development, such as Toroweap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroweap_Overlook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroweap_Overlook My hope is that enough of the canyon access remains dirt roads and trails, with nothing but a few camp sites at the end.
- mason240 12y ago>A holy war is being fought I guess I know which side I'm on.
- japhyr 12y agoA gondola ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon would be like a gondola ride to the top of Everest. These projects are deeply frustrating because all the developers have to do is get them built once - they can essentially fail as many times as they need to in order to get their project built. If you oppose this kind of project, you have to succeed in your efforts over and over again. If you fail once, the wild nature of the place is lost. We need to preserve wild places, and this is one of them.
- sp332 12y agoA gondola ride to the top of Everest would be awesome. Right now, 1.4% of the people who try to summit it die. That's ludicrous and totally indefensible. Anyway it's not as wild as it used to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest#Everest_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest#Everest_economy
- codyb 12y agoA gondola ride to Everest would be awful. A quick ascent to that height would virtually guarantee some pretty awful side effects for most passengers. I certainly wouldn't want to be on it.
- forrestthewoods 12y agoDon't be so pedantic. You know what he meant. That an easy way for people to visit the top of the mountain would be great.
- nodata 12y agoI read somewhere you can do that today with a helicopter.
- npongratz 12y agoMillions of people ascend to the height of Everest's summit every day, extremely quickly. I imagine that such a purpose-built gondola would, like modern jets, have a pressurized cabin.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sosuke 12y agoI couldn't get a real sense of just where this development wanted to be, what it looked like: http://grandcanyonescalade.com/comparison-chart-grand-canyon-national-park-grand-canyon-escalade-land-use-plans/ http://grandcanyonescalade.com/comparison-chart-grand-canyon... That monstrosity should absolutely not be built.
- VieElm 12y agoDo you live in Arizona? Are you affected by this in any sense? Why shouldn't the people who live there have the say in it. It's jobs for them, it's their home. The Grand Canyon is thousands of feet deep and hundreds of miles long, it formed millions of years ago. It doesn't need to be "saved" from a tourist attraction that will be a blip on a tiny side of the canyon and an even smaller blip in the history of it. The Grand Canyon is not in any danger. It's so frustrating to see people who come to places they're not from and protest in fights that they have no stake in, shouting their opinions, generally making everything worse and when the fight is over go on to the next place.
- nodata 12y agoI personally know three groups of people who avoided the Canyon because of that crappy walkway that was built. People visit the Canyon for its natural beauty. You can't improve on that by building something.
- narrowrail 12y agoWell, there're plenty of people who frequent this National Park and live in the area who are against the building of this project. It just cheapens the whole place for a handful of jobs (think of the jobs!1). To you it may just be a "blip on a tiny side of the canyon," but to many of us who treasure the place as one of the few great places without giant monuments to human existence, it is an atrocity.
- astazangasta 12y agoYou're right, you totally have the right to ruin one of Earth's great treasures because your state needs jobs.
- MrDosu 12y agoIs it me?
- rayiner 12y agoIrrigating the southwest in the first place was a Big Government mistake. That's the real disaster here. The Grand Canyon is pretty, but it's just a big ravine. Damming up the Colorado so people in Tuscon can have grass lawns is the real crime.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- peteorpeter 12y agoThe price of solitude is effort. Don't want to share nature with others? Walk a mile and you will filter 99% of humanity. Three miles uphill will filter 99.9%. My trip to the Grand Canyon was tailored for solitude. We drove hours to get to a trailhead on the North Rim, hiked a a steep trail down, camped (by a hard-to-believe falls/spring), and hiked up and out by moonlight to avoid the heat. I don't mean to sound hardcore - I'm really not - I just like solitude and that's how you get it. I'm ambivalent about this particular proposal. Exposure to nature creates naturalists. At the same time people ruin nature - the experience of it and it's physical environment. It's a balancing act and I have no idea if this is too much or too little.
- ebbv 12y agoThe proposed development doesn't expose people to nature any more than a shrub in the middle of a shopping mall does. It is simply trying to convert one of the greatest natural wonders in the world into a cash grab for greedy, short sighted developers. Preservation of natural beauty like the Grand Canyon is one of the most important functions of government. Allowing this would be a disaster.
- JustSomeNobody 12y agoIf you've not been to the Grand Canyon, you should go before we humans ruin it. It truly is one of the most beautiful places you'll ever see.
- sspencer 12y agoFor a good perspective on this see Ken Burns' documentary series about the creation of the national parks. It will open your eyes to the constant battle the parks face from commercial enterprises, and explains why the parks are such a unique system that should be protected at all costs.
- hv23 12y agoSeconded. Netflix link here: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70202578?strkid=834083463_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=70202578 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70202578?strkid=834083463_0_0...
- chucksmash 12y agoI typically refrain from commenting on how heavy a page is because we're here for the content, not web design critiques. That said, page load for the "As a single page" version of the article generates 349 requests (prior to the ad beacon/analytics calls that are made periodically after loading the page). Those 349 requests pull down >11,000KB in >52 seconds. That's excessive to the tune of an order of magnitude (and really for the page load time, probably 2 orders of magnitude).
- johngalt 12y agoI agree that the park is beautiful, and perhaps development should consider better locations. However the Grand Canyon national park is huge. Something like 2000 square miles. Anyone claiming that there should be no development, or that this will 'ruin the grand canyon' is incorrect.
- mcguire 12y ago2000 square miles is a circle with a radius of about, what, 25 miles? Have you ever been to the American southwest?
- BCharlie 12y ago"...who like the idea of enabling a large number of people to enjoy the great canyon’s very heart, a stunningly beautiful and remote site long inaccessible to the masses." Don't they realize that being remote and inaccessible is a big part of what makes it stunningly beautiful? The moment you arrive there with 10,000 other people, the place will no longer have what you came there to see.
- timhon 12y agoI somewhat disagree. I rode around it on a motorcycle from the bay last year. It was my first time seeing it. I hate crowds just like everyone else, and there was a crap ton of buses with even more people there, but I have to say -- I didn't expect much... "big whoop, grand canyon..." but when I walked up to the side in person, the shear size and strange 3d illusion the sight put on my brain, I just couldn't comprehend. I was put in awe and literally couldn't turn away for 10 minutes... the people around hadn't detracted from that. But everyones different... the southside will always be crowded, if you want it to be remote, just plan a trip to the north side.
- sanderjd 12y agoThe whole point of the article is that the inside will be like the south side. The north side only works because it is remote—if you set up a gondola from the south side to the north side, then your "just plan a trip to the north side" advice won't work. It's even worse to do that to the real remote area, which is the floor itself.
- 001sky 12y agoThe current canyon r2m "tourist" corridor is 17 miles long by maybe 1/2 a mile wide (of the 100+m miles length). Also if its only on indian land, the thing is on a side-canyon off to the east that is 80% out of theway anyway. You have to take 4x4 roads or trails over to Nankoweap. What is a pity is that area is supposed to be really nice, and is on the edge of the existing trail networks. So it kind of takes advantage of the National park whislt at the same time being incongrous with it. The other irony here is that the indians surely had all of these same arguments about the US feds. Its just the table are turned on who is getting the $$ and the benefits.
- gumby 12y agoThey should all be sent a copy of "A Pattern Language". In one of the most memorable patterns, Christopher Alexander writes (paraphrased), "Find the most lovely location on your plot of land. Then make sure you don't build on it! Instead build elsewhere so you can continue to enjoy that lovely location."
- scotch_drinker 12y agoI'm currently reading The Wilderness Warrior, the biography of Theodore Roosevelt who was instrumental not only in setting aside the Grand Canyon as a national park but also in saving millions of acres of forest through the West from wanton development. In that time, it was possible for a politician to have that kind of far reaching impact. Leaving aside whether it was the right or wrong thing to do, it's interesting that now we're likely subject to financial interests in whether this gets done and possibly a court decision. I doubt that any of our elected leaders could have much effect over what will eventually happen here. I think that's probably a failing of our political system.
- donpark 12y agoIf Escalade has to be built, they should build it entirely underground with just a handful of few holes at the top and a couple at the bottom. Each room gets its own fixed camera projecting outside view to the room as well as remotely controlled camera drones for lazy visitors.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- tepal 12y agoplease sign this petition to stop the tramway from the Grand Canyon. http://grandcanyontrust.nonprofitsoapbox.com/escalade http://grandcanyontrust.nonprofitsoapbox.com/escalade