Marble Canyon is that canyon that precedes the Grand Canyon. It’s a tough opening act but Marble Canyon is spectacular if not as grand.  Marble Canyon is actually part of Grand Canyon National Park. John Wesley Powell gave it it’s name even though there is no marble in the canyon. He thought its walls looked like marble.

I approached the rim of Marble Canyon last week from a road that few venture on. It’s a decent dirt road off Arizona Highway 89A. On my BLM map, it’s road 8910 and you take it about 25 miles to get to the canyon’s edge. When I camp at the upper elevations of the Kaibab National Forest in the summer, I look straight down towards Marble Canyon. From above it is a sharply defined rupture in the earth’s crust. The landscape is very flat leading up to the edge. But when you get to the rim, your breathe is taken away. You look straight down to its bottom and the Colorado River.

 

I camp from the top of the Kaibab Plateau above and have a birdseye view of Marble Canyon. But you need to be at the rim to see the bottom.