"It's about overcoming human nature.

It's intellect over instinct as you step out onto the glass-floored walkway cantilevered over the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Your gut tells you not to do it. But your brain says, "It's nothing. Any fool can walk out there. And look - many are right now. You'll be fine."

The brain wins out. Most of the time.

Of course, if you'd totally bought into everything your intellect suggested, you might not be here at all. You'd have saved the $73 ($43.05 for the entrance fee, $29.95 for the Grand Canyon Skywalk adult ticket), you'd have avoided subjecting your vehicle to the 70-mile, 90-minute drive out from Kingman, Ariz., most of the last 12 miles on dusty-graveled or paved-but-potholed roads. Instead, you'd be back in Las Vegas winning big at the roulette table. (Or not.)

Personally, I'd been wanting to get here since I read about it a couple of years ago. A Las Vegas entrepreneur and engineers had mastered a scheme, with the cooperation of the Hualapai, to build this horseshoe-shaped walkway that extends 70 feet over the Grand Canyon bottom nearly 4,000 feet below. That's how it's billed. In reality, it hangs over a side canyon of the Grand, and it's probably only one-fifth the drop, but falling off still might hurt.

The walkway is constructed with steel beams anchored 46 feet into the sandstone cliff. Engineers used 1 million pounds of steel. I'm impressed as I read that while standing in line at the Skywalk, but the guy in front of me is from Georgia and he cuts steel for a living and he does about twice that amount in a day, he tells me. I don't quite know what he means by cutting steel, but now I'm more impressed by that than the 1 million pounds. "

Get the Story:
John Peel: World falling for Grand Canyon Skywalk (The Durango Herald 5/31)