A very early morning image from Horseshoe Mesa
about 3mi/6km and 2600ft/800m down the fantastic Grandview Trail (my devART ID is taken from the top of the Grandview).

It was "hike out" day and I was awake early psyching myself up for the grueling 4 hour trek to the top. The light was terrific, but fluid. I didn't have time to find a choice spot from which to shoot. I set my 4x5 up in camp improvising on the best foreground I could muster. Grandview Point, itself—the highest viewpoint on the South Rim—is just beginning to receive sunlight rays. This image was published in the March 2002 issue of Arizona Highways as part of a larger story I photographed on the New Hance - Grandview trails loop hike.

Horseshoe Mesa, which is within reach as a day hike, is famous for Peter Berry's copper mining operation in the latter 19th century. Remnants of this effort litter the ground on and around Horseshoe—rusted metal sheets and tin cans, machinery, yellowish copper ore as well as greenish oxidized fragments, and the shell of a cabin. If one looks slightly left of center, a mine opening can be seen just at the top of the bright talus slope. Berry, eventually, stopped mining the ore in favor of mining the pockets of wealthy, turn-of-the-century tourists who were now discovering Grand Canyon. He built the first hotel
at the canyon, and is buried in the Grand Canyon cemetery.

As of only a few years ago, the butte jutting out in the upper right was officially named Berry Butte.