National Geographic: Expedition in the Grand Canyon

A Wilderness of Stone

The Colorado River flows 1,400 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico through the Grand Canyon. Over millions of years, the river has formed one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world. The gorge is an open book of the earth's history. Anyone who hikes the more than a thousand meters from the edge to the water travels back 1.7 billion years to a time when there was a huge sedimentary basin between the supercontinents. In this documentary, adventurer Casey Anderson takes us on a tour of the Grand Canyon. As he hikes and paddles through the gorge, he explains the layers of rock, discovers animals that survive in this harsh landscape, and shows the petroglyphs of the Native Americans, for whom this fantastic world of red stone has always held spiritual significance.