As one hikes more and more of the Grand Canyon, certain areas start to stand out.  Mostly, they do this because they are totally devoid of lines drawn in showing your hiking progress!!  One such spot for me was the Great Thumb Mesa, well to the west of the South Bass area.  In May of 1983 my father and I drove out on the Great Thumb road (with a detour to the Topocoba Trailhead, which leads to Supai).  We were stymied by a huge hole in the road that looked to be impassible by any vehicle, four wheel drive or not.  We were just past Enfilade Point, and driving alongside the rim.  We walked down the road a half mile or so just do to that, but otherwise had to turn around and leave Great Thumb to another day.

     Fast forward to 1997 and it is finally time for another try at this.  Colleagues Doug Brown and John Eastwood agreed to join me as did Doug's son (and my student), Mathieu.  We decided to make it a day hike as best we could, and it would be a long day.  My notes are scanty for this trip but I know we left early in the morning.  We didn't have to stop and pay at the Havasupai gate during this trip, although this might have been before that operation started in earnest.  And, hiking the canyon in August is not that popular.  We didn't have any trouble on the Great Thumb road - that hole must have been filled in.  The road does get very rough and slow going.  Mathieu wanted to run part of the road and I believe that John joined him.  Doug brought along his mountain bike and rode it over the last few miles.  I can't say that they weren't traveling about as fast as I was driving!  [Doug was probably faster!]

     It was just about noon when we reached a dead end in the road.  You could see signs of a huge fire that had swept through here with lots of burnt trees, but fairly lush grasses growing.  We headed north from the truck at 12:10 p.m. and found a ravine that we followed to the rim.  We didn't seem to be on the real trail, but were able to make our way down through the Kaibab.  At the top of the Coconino, the trail, which we did find, contoured to the right to a talus slope and then plunged down to the Esplanade.  We walked across the Esplanade to an overview of the upper reaches of 140 Mile Canyon, and Fishtail Mesa across the Colorado River.  All in all it took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to get here from the truck.