A Walk in the ParkA Walk in the Park

The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. In A Walk in the Park, author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom. Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held unknown dangers and unexpected discoveries. Accompanying Fedarko is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captured the stunning landscape. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors' camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park's remote wildness. An action-packed survival tale and deep spiritual journey, this book gives us a glimpse into an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.