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SAN JUAN COUNTY — For 100 years, an enormous rainbow of rock has attracted visitors from all over the world.
“It’s one of the seven natural wonders of the world,” Trevor Williams from Los Angeles said. “Beautiful!”
Since the 1960s, nearly everyone has made it to the monument by boat. Visitors motor up a narrow finger of Lake Powell. How close you can get by boat depends on how high — or low — Lake Powell is.
When the lake is just a little better than half-full, visitors have to hike the last mile.
Just as Rainbow Bridge comes into view, visitors will notice a big chunk of trail is missing. It’s been replaced with a temporary dock due to a flash flood in 2013.
“It washed out about 20 vertical feet of trail for about 130 linear feet,” Erin Janicki, a ranger for the National Park Service, said.
Janicki and landscape architect Jason Hand are redesigning the trail.
At the flood site, they may replace washed out ground with baskets of dirt and rock.
"Build it up,” Janicki said. “What that would do is armor the bank, and we could put a trail over the top.”
Janicki and Hand want the rest of the trail to stand up to foot traffic as well as the rising and falling waters of Lake Powell. They’re considering using soil-glue to harden the surface.
“The real advantage is that you’re using natural material and it’s colored like the surrounding environment,” Janicki said.
It's one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Beautiful!
–Trevor Williams, Los Angeles, California
They’re even considering whether Rainbow Bridge can be made wheelchair-accessible.
“In some cases it may not be realistic to do that,” Hand said. “The cost may be too great or the slopes may be just too much where we cannot accomplish what we want to try to do.”
One possible idea Janicki and Hand are considering is connecting the trail on this side of the bridge to an old horse trail that the Navajos have used to bring people in from the other side for decades. However, the Navajos don’t want a trail under the bridge.
The first non-Indians came in that way in 1909. Within a few years, Teddy Roosevelt and famed Western novelist Zane Grey paid a visit.
The easiest way to connect the old Navajo trail with the newer Lake Powell trail is to route hikers directly under the bridge.
However, some tribes consider Rainbow Bridge a sacred religious site. For years, the Park Service asked visitors to avoid going under it. Now they’re consulting with tribes to find an acceptable connecting route.
“The thought being, we can bring them around the bridge instead of under it. Bring visitors around the bridge instead of under it,” Janicki said. “They seemed to be relatively supportive of that concept.”
Regardless of what planners decide, it seems likely most visitors will feel like the hike is worth it.
“I just think it’s amazing, you know, just this sight.” Jared Wilson of Huntington Beach, California, said. “There’s nothing like it.”
