Yavapai Point, Grand Canyon National Park, AZ, 12/16/2009
In the cold and dark of a winter dawn I prepared my camera by the canyon rim and waited for something beautiful to happen. My feet froze in 12 °F weather on the icy ground as I hoped to make a worthwhile photograph of the Grand Canyon. Fortunately at sunrise the sky glowed in warm colors, contrasting harmoniously with the bluish cast on the shaded stone walls and snow! In my experience the most colorful and attractive sunrises and sunsets occur in winter. We're standing on Yavapai Point (also known as Yavapi Point and O'Neill Point), which is one of the main viewing areas on the canyon's South Rim and is at an elevation of 6,840 feet above sea level. Yavapai is the Paiute word meaning "sun people" and the Yavapai are an indigenous people in Arizona. We're looking east-southeast, and Mather Point is at right with an elevation of 7,119 feet. This promontory is named in honor of American industrialist and conservationist Stephen Tyng Mather (1867-1930), the first director of the National Park Service. The purple promontory at center is Yaqui Point (or Yaki Point), elevation 7,260 feet, which we see descending into the canyon along Cedar Ridge on its way to O'Neill Butte. The Yaqui or Yoeme are indigenous people whose ancestors originated in the valley of the Río Yaqui in the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe is based in Tucson, Arizona. The distant mauve walls at far left are Hollenback Point and Lipan Point.
