Grand Canyon North Rim

The forested highland the North Rim rides on is the Kaibab Plateau, and the name comes from a Southern Paiute word often given as mountain lying down. The Southern Paiute, along with the Havasupai, Hualapai, Hopi, Navajo (Diné), and Zuni, hold long ties to the canyon and its rims, and the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians live in the country to the north.

The Ancestral Puebloan peoples used the rims and inner canyon long ago, and the whole gorge remains a sacred landscape to the tribes connected to it. The high plateau was hunting and gathering country, its forests and meadows a very different resource from the deserts below, and that contrast between cool highland and hot depths still defines a visit to the North Rim today.

The North Rim is higher than the South Rim for a simple reason of tilt. The whole Colorado Plateau leans gently, so the layers of rock rise toward the north, lifting this rim well above its counterpart. That extra height means more snow, more rain, and a cooler, wetter climate, which is why forest grows thick here where the South Rim stays dry.

That same tilt sends water the other way. Rain and snowmelt on the North Rim run south, toward and into the canyon, cutting the long side canyons that make this rim so deeply scalloped and giving the North Rim its dramatic, far-flung viewpoints. The South Rim, sloping away from the gorge, sheds much of its water in the opposite direction, which is one reason the two rims feel so different to stand on.

The North Rim is a pocket of high country stranded above the desert, and its wildlife reflects that. The forests hold mule deer, wild turkeys, and the striking Kaibab squirrel, a tassel-eared squirrel with a black belly and a bright white tail found only on this plateau and nowhere else on Earth. California condors, brought back from near extinction, sometimes ride the thermals along the rim.

In summer the meadows bloom and the aspen shimmer, and by day's end deer drift out to graze at the forest edges. Mountain lions range through the woods, mostly unseen, and the plateau is quiet, dark-sky country where the stars come out in force. It is a landscape that feels closer to the Rocky Mountains than to the Sonoran Desert baking a mile below.

The North Rim keeps a short season. It opens in late spring, once the deep snow clears, and closes again in autumn when winter storms return. Summer is the heart of a visit, with warm days, cool nights, and green meadows, though even then the high elevation keeps the air crisp after dark.

Late summer brings the monsoon and its afternoon thunderstorms rolling across the plateau, and early fall is a quiet, golden time when the aspen turn and the crowds thin further. Once the road closes for winter the rim belongs to snow and silence, reachable only by those willing to ski or snowshoe many miles in, which is a large part of its mystique.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.