With Your Head In The Clouds

For about the fortieth time this week, I wish I knew how to operate the safety van's lights. Was it because I was driving at night or early morning? Good guess, but no. Extreme rain? Only at moments. Fog? Well, sort of.

I was driving through clouds. This week I got to witness something very strange and apparently, not as rare as I thought it was.





A few days ago on my commute out to Hermit's Rest, I noticed what I took to be steam or smoke coming out of the canyon. It was a strange sight to be right next to the rim but see nothing but white vastness. As I drove further out to my destination, I noticed that there was far too much dense whiteness in the canyon for it to be smoke (that would have been one hell of a massive wildfire), also steam doesn't look or move like that.



What was happening is what's known as inverted clouds. It's this strange and supernatural-feeling phenomenon where clouds are formed and trapped deep in the canyon and along the rims. I've been living, walking, driving, thinking, hiking and eating in the clouds for days now.


(there is a trail--and drop--here)

All of this is all ok, seeing as how rapidly it cools off inside of a cloud and how the cover blocks those pesky sun-burning rays. The downside to this is that it rains. All. The. Time. After spending four days in it, I'm soggy, muddy and miserable for the most part. Everything I own is damp and my shoes are coated in thick, canyon mud. Canyon mud is not like regular mud. For one, it's orange. Also, it's stickier and more like cement than normal mud.



The clouds are cool, but make driving on a two-lane road winding around the western part of the South Rim without knowledge of car headlights just a little bit nerve-wracking. Lets add in to this bikers, without lights or vests, foreigners who walk in the middle of the road and not the trail for some reason, critters that weigh up to about half a ton, buses carrying more tourists out on a schedule, and numerous tourists who somehow got the code to the gates and are now rubbernecking it through the dense and barely-visible cloud.



I kept trying to stop and take pictures on my way back, but the clouds envelope you here pretty fast and make taking pictures a complicated task. I did manage to get a picture of people standing in the clouds, in case you ever wondered what that looks like (above).

The clouds are strange in that they get sucked upwards out of the canyon when they hit rim (thus my driving problem). They move so quickly you can stand there and visibly see them get ripped into the atmosphere, like a huge, white waterfall in reverse.



Here's a video of the clouds being sucked out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKXbcC7JDeg)