Rainbow over the Grand Canyon

After shooting a beautiful sunrise at Maricopa Point, I loaded my pack with the camping gear, camera gear, food, and fuel necessary for a five-day backpacking trip. I planned to hike 8.2 miles down the Hermit Trail, a descent of 3,740 feet, and camp for two nights at Hermit Creek, then hike the Tonto Trail 3.5 miles to Monument Creek and camp for another two nights, then grind back out the Hermit Trail. It was late February, and the friendly clouds that had graced the sky at sunrise had coalesced into an ominous gray mass. The forecast called for a 70 percent chance of rain, and it looked like the forecast was going to verify, as forecasters like to say. In other words, it looked like it was going to pour. I hiked down the Hermit Trail for an hour, watching the clouds nervously as they descended and obscured the north rim of the canyon. Then I saw a liquid gray wall rolling up the canyon toward me. The wall engulfed me and rain began. I stopped under a little overhang and battened down the hatches, donning rain pants and jacket, putting the camera in a plastic bag, pulling the rain cover over the chest pack containing the camera, and pulling the rain cover over the pack itself. Then I continued across a section of trail I nicknamed the Infernal Traverse. A level trail sounds easy, but this trail was heavily eroded as it cut across a steep slope composed of hard dirt with a veneer of sharp-edged gravel that rolled beneath my boots like ball bearings. In places, large boulders had tumbled down onto the trail, partially blocking it. Progress in the cold, steady rain, under a heavy load, was painfully slow.

Then I noticed a faint band of light on the cliffs to the north. Maybe it won’t rain all day, I thought. The band of light brightened. I could see now that the band was forming an arc. Could it be a rainbow? Impossible, I thought. Rainbows form when the sun is low in the sky. To be precise, they form in a circle, centered on the anti-solar point, with an angular radius of 42 degrees. In other words, in flat terrain, such as the plains of Kansas, it is impossible to see a rainbow unless the sun’s altitude is less than 42 degrees. But this terrain was far from level, and it was February 21. Although it was nearly noon, the sun’s altitude at that moment was only 42 degrees, much lower than it would have been at noon in midsummer, and I was looking down into the vast chasm of the Grand Canyon. Perhaps a rainbow was possible after all. My hopes grew stronger and my pace quickened.

I rounded yet another bend in the trail and saw that the band of light had brightened further and begun to show color. A rainbow! I threw off my pack, dug the camera out of its chest pack, and grabbed a few shots. Bad composition. I ran off the trail 25 yards and tried again. Better. Then I looked at the lens. It was covered in raindrops. My photos were worthless. My lens-cleaning supplies were buried deep inside the pack. I thought for a few seconds, then grabbed my toilet-paper bag from an outside pocket of the pack. I dried the lens and saw that it was now covered with toilet-paper lint. Frantically I brushed the lint away and resumed shooting. Fortunately, the rainbow lasted long enough that despite all my fumbling and lack of preparation I was able to capture a rare and magnificent event: a rainbow over the Grand Canyon.

Two hours later it was raining again.