Rock on at the Grand Canyon, by Rory Gibson, June 24, 2008

YOU would have seen it countless times – in books, travel brochures, magazines, television documentaries, Qantas ads – you name it.

But no matter how familiar you think you are with it, nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare you for the awe that will overcome you when you stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and peer down into it for the first time.

Photography and film do not do justice to the world's most famous hole. It so defies human notions of scale and panorama, of size and power, that standing anywhere near it seems to render you weak and unable to move or speak properly.

There is no other way to put it: you must see this place before you die. And for many people it is the last thing they see before they die. But more of that later.

You have to gaze into its grandeur to try to comprehend it, and even then it is hard to imagine how such an amazing place came to be.

With my wife and children in tow I had hired a car in Las Vegas and spent most of a sunny but bitingly cold winter's day driving through Nevada and into Arizona determined to get a glimpse of the canyon before daylight faded.

We had booked a couple of rooms at a motel in Tusayan, a village just outside the Grand Canyon National Park on the southern rim, and had the best part of two days to have a poke around, but I just couldn't bear to be so close and not have a quick look before the last of the sun disappeared.

We drove into the car park at the visitor centre and walked along a short track, then wham!

There it was, as big a king-hit as nature can deliver, a full-on punch to the senses that knocks the breath out of you and never really lets you regain your composure.

This place would be a god's altar

The dying sun was spilling its blood hue all over the ancient rock formations of the chasm gouged out by the Colorado River, painting the vista many different shades of red, orange and purple the same way Uluru lights up at the end of the day.

We gazed in awe. I know that sounds like a cliche but that's what you do there. Stare in wonderment.

Strangers from all over the world were gathered at the vantage points around us, everyone silent except for the occasional reverential exclamation: "Wow!" If nature were a god, this place surely would be its altar.

Next morning I got up before dawn, determined to see the first rays of the sun strike the canyon walls. It was -17C but being from Queensland, that meant nothing to me. I thought my trackie daks and sweatshirt would do the trick.

I reckon the windchill factor pushed the temperature down to about -30C, so it was a brief foray outside the car. There was low cloud on the horizon, which meant there were no rays of sun to warm me up or ignite the colours in the canyon walls, so it was a wasted trip anyway, except that now I know how Scott of the Antarctic felt for much of his exploratory life.

Canyon of death

Back at the motel, I thawed out and joined the family for breakfast.

"What are we going to do today, Dad?" the boys asked.

We are going to explore the Grand Canyon, of course, I told them.

"Aw, we're not going to look at rocks again, are we?" they yelped, clearly disappointed. What they really wanted to do was play in the motel's sauna, having never seen one before. Philistines.

Back to the canyon we went. You would have to spend months here to explore the place properly, years even. We really only had time to walk along the rim trail for a fraction of its length, never mind actually venturing into the canyon itself.

Apart from the amazing scenery, the thing that struck me most about the place was how easy it would be to fall to your death. Unlike Australia, where everything interesting has been fenced off in case we hurt ourselves, the sensible folk of Arizona have put up the occasional sign saying "Watch your step" and that's it, you are free to sail off the edge as you wish.

And over the edge they go, with frightening regularity. People have fallen trying to get great photos, or they suffer from vertigo-induced wobbles because they looked into the abyss. Maybe a ledge gave way or they slipped on the sandstone rubble that carpets the rim.

Some have accidentally driven off the edge because they hit the accelerator and not the brake. Others have been pushed.

There are records, some more thorough than others, detailing the deaths of more than 600 people, on the edge of and in the air over the canyon, going back to the pioneering explorations of the 1800s.

Most people who come to grief do so inside the canyon, not from falling over the edge. Indeed the majority of warning signs counsel against descending into the canyon on any of the trails without enough time, water and stamina to get back out because, apart from being one of the prettiest places on Earth, it also has one of the harshest and driest environments.

Going over the edge

I found a book in the hotel gift shop with a great photo on the cover of a clothed skeleton lying on rocks underneath a rainbow straddling the canyon.

Its title is Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, and it details every known fatality by misadventure, murder or mystery that is known to have occurred in and around the canyon.

It was written by two men who have had first-hand experience with some of the tragedies, one of them a rafting guide and national parks river ranger, and the other a doctor.

The poor fellow on the cover was photographed in 1906, but never identified. He had copies of both The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Examiner dated March 1900 in the pocket of his overcoat. That is all that is known of him.

From the opening pages, which recount how a celebrated Hollywood designer fell to her death during a fashion shoot in 1946, to the end of the book which details the murder of Donna Spangler in 1993 by her husband, Robert Spangler, who pushed her off a cliff, the riveting compilation of tragedies reveals more about the canyon's true personality than any tourist brochure could.

The river that created the canyon accounts for many of the fatalities. It looks so passive and enticing when viewed from the rim high above, but many people have died by drowning in it, freezing in it, hitting rocks in it and trying to pee in it.

Reading the book while visiting the canyon was very rewarding, because you can see many of the places where the tragedies occurred and watch them unfold in your mind's eye.

But apart from being a cracking read, Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon has the effect of making you want to go over the edge.(Credit: The Daily Telegraph)