SunSet tour ... 15 may.

Today I went for a ranger guided sunset tour . It is USD 20 for normal guest , but as employee of Xanterra , We get it for free. In fact, I have free access to every ranger guided program available in Grand Canyon. We get 50% cut in restaurant , 20% in retail and fine dining ... and many more. We even get to take air tour at the price of USD16 . there are many many other benefits (Free IMAX theather ticket etc etc).. must try it out during this 2 months period here.

Well , today we hike with ranger , and the experience is different. The ranger told us alot about grandcanyon. We learned quite alot from the ranger ... and interact with him . It was a great tour.

See the pine forest Far far behind ? Its the largest pine forest in north america. If you can see .. on the right there's a village .. that's where i work and live at.

there are many layers in the canyon. The colour was caused by different climate , different physcial condition in different ages of time. The canyon is about 1.5 KM down ... the place we standing is 2000 m above sea level. According to the ranger , the place we stand was seabed few hundred million years ago ... that means we would be in sea if we were back in few hundred million years ago. We get to see some fossils on the ground too .. according to him , it was some sea worm hide in seabed .. but because of sudden geographical change , the worm was trapped in the seabed and become fossil like what we see today.

If you really strain your eye .. you could see the trail hiking down to the bottom ... it is some 9 miles ( about 14 KM) 's hike . Its awesome to hear the history of the trail and the significant of hiking down. at the bottom of the canyon where the calorado river flows , the rock and soil is almost 2.2 billion years old . 2.2 billion .. if we reach there .. it means that we were 40% back in time when earth was born. Earth is about 5.6 billion years old. Every 200 step go down will bring us back 200 million years . Just 2 steps hiking up will means 2000 years of geological change . ( means the rock 's age ... changed 2000 years.) 2 steps ... 2 steps down means the birth of christianity .. few more steps back means the birth of civilization ... Amazing.

the point there in the middle .. its the plateau point i talked about before. the hardest trail to hike in Grand canyon . If you look at the furthest canyon ... the far far far end on the other side .. it is the north rim. I am standing on south rim , watching to the direction of north .. and that's north rim there. The distance that bird flies directly from my point to the other point is about 10 miles( 15 KM ) . If hike till plataeu point .. we can hike down from south rim , to the river , and hike up to north rim .. it is about 30-40 KM one trip .. The ranger said he take 2 days to do it ~!

Captured using my K810 phone.

See the calorado river ? .. amazing river. He's the one cut thru this whole canyon.

sunset -ing .

That's it .