Harvey Butchart is of course the God of Grand Canyon hiking and this guide is essential for any serious backcountry canyon hiker. While hiking down to the river in Cottonwood Canyon, I was sent on a scary, exposure-filled detour by this guide. On returning home, I compared it to my old editions of the book and found that this reprint mistakenly drops an entire crucial line of text in the Cottonwood Canyon section, so beware.

Harvey Butchart is one of the greatest Grand Canyon hikers and his books are classics. But don't rely on them as your primary guide. They make great supplemental guides if you already have Annerino's Sierra Club guide.

Of course, Harvey includes routes you won't find in any other book, since he pioneered them. If you are a serious Canyon hiker, your library is incomplete without Harvey.

Butchart's book is the only reference to about half the routes talked about in the book! Having hiked several of the routes in the book, ive found the descriptions to give just enough information to get you going in the right direction without taking away the adventure of it all by telling you every detail that you will experience. A must for Canyon hikers.

Sangani,Pranay
Feb-12
Period-1

Hole in the Sky
Pete Haulman
P.Sangani
P.1

This book by Pete Haulman talks about a flu bug that is really deadly.
hardly only some people survive after the flu has hit thrm and others hope to stay
away from it.They try to seclude themselves from the outer world.In fact,the isolate
themselves to such a major extinct that they prohibit outsiders from entering their
towns.Their is a mysterious group of people known as the Kinkas.These people have
survived the flu.People who have survived the flu are bald and some seem to loose
some of their human capabilities.Some can't talk some can't walk.In the grand canyon
in Arizona,there are some people living on the rim of what is the Grand Canyon.
Whithin them is a young boy named Ceej.He has a sister named Harryette.Ceej
has not been effected by the flu.Although his sister is a survivor.Before the flu she
was a playfu seventh grader,but the flu drained her ability to speak.She could
not hear either.Then there is their Uncle.He takes care fo them.Also,a person
named Hap trades stuff with Uncle.
The book was really good.The book gives you a sense of adventure.Unlikemost authors,Pete Haulman,has done something different.He has based the book on the
future,but he has not used futuristic technologies.The only reason to advance time was to make the event of the flu possible.The opening of the book is very good.There is a quote
which gives you a great sence of adventure,"That was when an earthquake hit.Except it wasn't
an earthquake at all,it was the rock moving,and I was standing on it.I saw tim's eyes go wide,and the sky seemed to tilt,and the air was filled with thunder/I must have jumped,because
the next thing I knew I was lyingon my belly on the rim and the rock was sliding down the
face of the cliff."Tim and Ceej are trying to push the rock down the surface of the grand canyon.
Then out of frustration Ceej stands on it.Then it falls and he jumps on the hard grand canyon.
This book is good,but there are four parts of the book,and in each of the parts there is a character.After each part the narration of the character changes and we have a book with
four first prespective reviews.I didn't like that.Another thing I don't like is the book meves at a very slow pace.You can convey the same information in a page,but they have taken 4 pages to display the data.So,it makes reading the book boring.Then the ending,it is abrupt.They wanted to leave the book on interpretation but this doesn't give an ending!"Maybe Ceej and Bella are dead on the river bottom,their mouths filled with silt."This is one of the last sentences and because of the narration changed the main characters are lost!
My least favorite part was that the main characters are lost.The holy place believed by
Bella is found,But Bella is not.I really got frustratedI read the whole book but in the end you don't know what happpened about the flu or anything else.

we read this book in school aswell, but in 8th gade. it was a very interesting book. And seeing as how i live in AZ, it made me want to go read it at the grand cayon (the setting of the story). It's got some interesting people, and ideas. A killer flu has spred and most everyone dies, but there are surviours, they loose something though (like they'r hearing or the abliaty to speek).

we had the aouther viset us in class as well, and to hear what he had to say about the book and answer our quetions was great!! ^^ (thanx mrs. wingert!) READ the book!! trust me u'll like it ! ^^

This book was one of my favorites, it gives you something to think about and also lets you use your imagination, if you like this book I recomend Z for Zachariah and Sang Spell.

this book was confusing and very not meaningfull i thought that page lambert did a bad job.

Very good reading, with excellent comments on the Grand Canyon, the experiences of rafting the river and essays on how the canyon touches people in different ways. I have just completed an 8 day trip of over 280 miles in the canyon and experienced every emotion and awe-inspiring moment described in the book. The photographs are worth the purchase price alone. A must read before and after taking a trip down the wonderous Colorado in the Grand Canyon

Writing Down the River grabs your heart and broadens your understanding of the power of the western landscape. The photographs are amazing in themselves; the essays stunning.

Sybil Downing, award winning author of Ladies of the Goldfield Stock Exchange

Absolutely wonderful book! We read some of the stories out loud in camp during a private rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Some had us laughing, some had us crying but all were moving in some way. The artwork and illustrations are a terrific bonus. If you love rafting, outdoor adventure or just having an "armchair adventure"....get this book, guaranteed you will love it!

There's This River lets you see The Grand Canyon through the eyes of peolpe who love and know the river best. The men and women shair their stories weather tuching or funny they alow us to feel why the river is a special and wonderuos place. Tim Cooper, and the rest, really let us see why boatmen do what they do. They simply love the river.

It contains stories (and photos, paintings, and drawings) by the men and women who know and love the Canyon best. The stories are funny and touching and really give a sense of why the Canyon is such a special and wonderful place. The artwork and photos are a nice bonus. Raechel M. Running's portraits of the boatmen (a generic term: both men and women refer to themselves as boatmen) are particulary good.

Our family found this to be a good guide to Grand Canyon trails during our visit in August, 2000. The descriptions of the Bright Angel trail and South Kaibab trail were accurate. However, the Rim trail, which is described in detail in the book, seems to no longer exist. I don't know who's at fault. The NPS does a terrible job of marking its Grand Canyon trails. Don't assume that every trail described in the book will be there. Check with an NPS employee first.

For those folks looking for a handy guide to easy Grand Canyon trails they can't go wrong with this guide. Each of the 17 descriptions includes basic facts such as trail mileage, elevation change, water availability, type of trail, directions to the trailhead and other information. Each hike is described in appropriate detail including comments about the vegetation. Upon reaching the hike's destination the author has excellent descriptions of the views encountered. Adkison's writing style is clear and easy to understand. Each hike has an easy to understand map. For those wanting to pick out more canyon details I recommend the National Geographic Trails Illustrated Grand Canyon National Park Topo Map. His mix of hikes includes not only those where one would meet a lot of other people but those where one is likely to enjoy much solitude. Both rim trails and below the rim trails are included in the book. The handy small size of this book makes it easy to carry in one's pocket or pack.

How did ancient peoples accurately depict the arrival of solar eclipses? They didn't have a NASA website, the concept that the earth was round, or the benefit of Copernicus' earth is not the center of the universe concept (not published until the 1500's). The author looks from Stonehenge to the walls of the Grand Canyon to the ancient Mayans to try to think how the ancients thought. It's a sort of how did we know what we knew before we should have known it puzzle. There's a lot about the degrees of the horizon, but it's still an interesting look at our past. If you're interested in native American culture then you'll enjoy the book more. While the author admits the difficulty in proving his ideas, he does outline 13 methods that might have been used and makes many interesting observations about the way things could have been.

As a trained astronomer and someone who has both taught the subject at the college level and been published in the sub-field of native american astronomy, I was amazed that someone from outside the field could make such a valuable contribution as this book is. It's both technically sound and entertaining to read. The explanations and arguments should be easily graspable by the educated layperson or novice at astronomy. They're plausible without being outlandish.

The book is especially good at giving an appreciation for how difficult it was for early scientists to acquire the basic understandings we now take for granted. Highly recommended to those interested in either prehistoric southwest peoples or the arcane area of the development of non-western timekeeping, calendars, and observational astronomy.

I truly enjoyed all aspects of this book. My husband and I hiked the Boulder Mail Trail in October and purchased several books on the area so I could learn more about it. This book included personal hiking narratives that I could relate to and touched on important issues facing the West - such as cattle's effect on the environment and tourism. It helped fill in some blanks on my knowledge of the area. I'd also recommend the book by Jerry C. Roundy titled "Advised Them To Call The Place Escalante".

Thomas Lowe Fleischner was an Outward Bound instructor bringing city folk into the Escalante for many years before writing this book. It is well written and entertaining, and provides a wealth of information in the realm of natural history: plants, animals, ecology, geology plus the pre-historic and historic human history of the area. A very nice book that will enrich your visits to the Escalante.

Look interesting and informative for people who are planning to go to Escalante soon. Good resource. I saw Bryce and Zion Parks on my first trip to Utah- can't wait to go back The escalante looked so beautiful even though I only saw part of it on the way to Capitol Reef National Park

This book will hurt to read. The Eliot Porter photos show what has been lost to our generation by the grossly irresponsible act of damning Glen Canyon. However the book also shows what has been saved in pictures of the Grand Canyon. May we know by our failure at Glen Canyon what to protect, and why, in the future.

Powell's own narrative, of course, forms the main written portion of the book, and its direct, yet eloquent, writings should remain a strong part of the story of what it is to be an American. Equal parts dry text and awed wonder, it is a must read.

A spiffy book, in the same vein as the acclaimed Sierra Club format series, of which I suspect this book may have been intended to be part. Enjoy this essential part of any Western library.

Ann Haymond Zwinger has contributed her scientific expertise to subsidized, multi-week inner-canyon environmental impact expeditions, has run each of the Canyon's rapids countless times (in nearly each month of the year), in every sort of water craft. What her scientific eye takes in, her pen transmutes into its own river of irresistible prose, carrying the reader, willing or not, from one chapter to the next. As a hiker, I expected the vision of a "boat person" to suffer from its constricted horizons. A bottom-up myopia. Instead, we find ourselves soaring with eagles. We climb cliffs, clawing our way through a darkness of thorns and pain. We crawl along brushy beaver tunnels. We ponder the local history and lore...and the primeval past. Our journey evokes visions of thousand foot-high lava dams filling the entire Canyon with water, as well as today's horror of a rapid at Lava Falls. While some of her snippets of local human history are rarely mentioned in other books about the Canyon, Zwinger's forte is in the natural sciences. In that arena, she has no peer among Grand Canyon authors. Since this is not a trail manual, it is not easy to restrict one's reading to a single, specific Canyon location. Rather, the chapters are organized by seasons of the year. No matter. If you start at the beginning, its 220 or so pages of narrative will sweep you into their main current and, well... I'll see you below the rapids.