North Bass Trail

In Bass’s time tourists who used this remote trail would have traveled from the South Rim down the South Bass Trail, crossed the river, and ascended the North Bass Trail to Swamp Point, continuing on to the Kaibab Plateau and Point Sublime about nine miles away. Today, however, most trail users begin on the North Rim at Swamp Point and end at the site of the historic cable tramway river crossing on the north side of the Colorado River. Modern hikers descend nearly a vertical mile from rim to river on the 14-mile North Bass trail.

The modern trail begins in a forest of Ponderosa pine trees that are home to tassel-eared squirrels, which have evolved differently on each rim despite once being part of the same population. On the North Rim they have a black belly and white tail and are known as Kaibab squirrels, while on the South Rim they have a light-colored belly and dark tail, and are known as Abert squirrels. In summer 1989 a fire swept through the upper section of the North Bass Trail, causing many to fear that the forest had been destroyed forever. Several months later, scrub oak, pinyon pine, and manzanita along the upper trail were already putting out new shoots and beginning to regenerate the area.

From Swamp Point, the trail passes by the Powell Plateau, which is slightly higher than the rim, to the deep Muav Saddle below. Early Euro-American explorer John Wesley Powell believed that this area provided the best view of the Grand Canyon, and in 1882 Clarence Dutton named Powell Plateau after him. Archeological evidence shows that Powell Plateau was home to several hundred prehistoric Native Americans despite the fact that there are no permanent springs or streams, a puzzle that archeologists are still trying to solve. Muav Saddle was formed because the underlying Muav Fault weakened the rock, causing accelerated erosion. Here the National Park Service built a structure known as the Muav Saddle Snowshoe Cabin in 1925 when it improved a portion of the trail from Swamp Point to the Powell Plateau. It is the only intact building along the trail.

Next to Shinumo Creek, Bass built Shinumo Camp as the basis of his operations on the north side of the Colorado River. Bass and several helpers put up tents and a fireplace made of stone. For a table they used a slab of red sandstone on two rock supports. The Bass family planted a garden with melons, cantaloupes, grapes, onion, corn, squash, and beans as well as an orchard. This garden sat on the site of ancient Native American irrigation ditches near the ruins of several cliff dwellings and granaries. The modern trail ends at a site on the broad sandy beach where Bass used to land his ferry. The north cable terminus for Bass’s tramway was located atop schist nearly 60 vertical feet above the river. Today the cable site consists of a flat landing area of stacked stones, cable strands cemented into the schist, and other ruins.

Bass did little work on the North Bass Trail after its original construction except to clear it as needed whenever he passed through. Some tourists continued to use it as part of a trans-canyon trail, and Bass used it to get to locations in side canyons where he prospected on the north side of the Colorado River, but it was never as heavily used as the South Trail. Once other trans-canyon trails were completed in the early 20th Century its usage decreased rapidly and rockslides, floods, and brush reclaimed much of it. The nearly obliterated trail was only kept alive by the efforts of modern wilderness hikers, who left cairns and other markers along its route. The NPS in 2005 located and reconstructed significant portions of the trail to keep it open to backcountry enthusiasts.