Point Sublime, Well, Almost.

Point Sublime is a scenic overlook that is approximately 18 miles west of the North Rim Campground.  But unlike the other scenics you can drive to on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, the road to Sublime is not paved.  It is 18 miles of rutted, rocky, high clearance dirt road.  But the payoff for an hour of bumping, jolting and dust eating is a view worthy of its name.

Keeping with our goal of getting out and seeing the sights this year instead of spending most of our time in the campground, Point Sublime was high on our list.  We would have been out to this point long before now but as luck would have it, the last weekend in May there was a lightning strike that started a fire that burned for weeks and kept Point Sublime Road closed for all of June and July.  But it is open now and we are on our way.

Eighteen miles does not sound all that far, but when it is a rough dirt road and an average speed of 5 mph (not to mention stopping every few minutes to take pictures), it was well over an hour to get to our objective.  But the slow going was okay because the scenery was so great.  We alternated between flower-filled meadows, forested ridges and valleys and buffalo wallows.

One of the meadows.  If it gets even a little bit wet, this place turns into a vehicle swallowing mud hole.  Hard to see in this wide shot but the lupine is thick out here.

A little closer look begins to reveal the lupine that is just about carpeting the meadow.

I have photographed a lot of lupine in and around the campground but nothing I had seen so far had been this colorful and perfectly shaped.

There is one high ridge to cross over on the way to Point Sublime.

Up on the ridge, sunny spots are peppered with wild flowers.

Being in the arid climate of the southwest and at an elevation that experiences wicked winters, it is always a surprise to see sections of forest with lush growths of ferns.

The fire took its toll on a downed ponderosa pine but vegetation has rebounded  with a flourish.

After what seemed like a long time and a long way we came to a turn-out.  Finally, Point Sublime.  A check of the map confirmed that we were at the terminus of Tuna Creek Canyon and the rock outcropping that formed the point, although I was having trouble reconciling not seeing several roads that, according to the map, we should have intersected by this point.  But there were rocks to climb and trails to hike.  We can fiddle with the map when we get home.

If there is an edge, I have to get on it.

Tuna Creek Canyon at about 11:00 am

Most of the Grand Canyon is restricted to low flying aircraft, no fly zones are painted all over maps of every kind.  At the North Rim Campground it is a rare day that anything can be heard flying overhead and when you do it is usually a park service helicopter either making a medical run or dignitary transport.  But the canyon in the above picture is open to tourist flights.  In the short time we were at this spot there was at least a sortie of fifteen helicopters every thirty minutes.  You could hear them long before you could see them.  They would approach from the south rim, deep in the canyon and then follow Tuna Creek up its canyon, half way between the rim and the bottom.  Then, just as they approached the end of the canyon they would point their nose up and follow the contours of the canyon wall up and over the rim, turning back to the south and out of our sight.

 

So here we are, 10 miles or so from any visible water source, on the edge of a 2,000 foot deep, sheer walled canyon, nothing but thorny scrub brush under a low canopy of conifers.  We are walking around seeing the sights and taking pictures and what do you suppose we have to watch out for so as not to step in it?  Buffalo poop!  Everywhere we walked, even right to the very edge of the canyon was covered in buffalo patties.  All my life my only idea of buffalo habitat was large herds grazing on or thundering across the vast plains of the mid and southwest.  I have now learned that there are two species of buffalo, the plains bison and the wood bison.  And much to my surprise, the plains bison is the smaller of the two.  So it would seem that we have a herd of wood bison with us here on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Knowing that we were going to be out in the back country at lunch time, we packed ourselves a picnic lunch to eat while at the point.  It worked out pretty good as there was a place to back up the truck, let the tail gate down and use it for a table.  I had thrown in a couple of camp chairs so it made for a pretty comfortable lunch.

How's this for an al fresco dining view?  The canyon looks pretty good too.

A few more shots of the canyon, this time from the west edge and then we'll head back.

What kind of a post would this be if I didn't do a panorama?

Buffalo are not the only critters that hang out at the point.

Now that we have finished play time and are ready to go back to the campground I once again turn to the map that made me scratch my head.  There should have been a 'Y' in the road that we could use to go north and come out on the main road to the park at the entrance station.  Was it so faint that we missed seeing it coming in?  I took some measurements on the map and calculated exactly how far back in the direction we came that the intersection should be.  Then I set the trip odometer to zero (something I probably should have done the minute we started this trip) and headed back to the east.

In 5.2 miles we should see a connecting road heading north through the woods.  At the appointed mileage we are in a place that there is not even the slightest hint of another road or any indication that there has ever been another road.  This map is seriously messed up.

We continue on and in a little less than an hour we are back at the sign saying "Point Sublime 18 mi".  I look at the trip odometer on the truck and it says 10.2.  Instant realization, there was nothing wrong with the map, the map reader totally blew it!  After a whole day of thinking we were at Point Sublime we were not even close, a whole eight miles short of our desired destination!  I am going to have to sign up for remedial map reading.

So none of the point pictures above are Point Sublime, they are an unnamed rock outcropping at the head of Milk Creek, not Tuna Creek.  I wouldn't call the day a total loss but it sure was disappointing to figure out I hosed up the map reading so bad.  On the bright side, I have a good reason to go back out there again.