To the Edge and Back: Grand
Canyon Engineering
The Grand Canyons much-hyped Skywalk is touted as a million-pound
engineering marvel. Last week, the U-shaped and glass-bottomed
walkway that rests more than 4,000 feet above the canyon floor was
inaugurated. Tomorrow it opens to the general public.
For $25 plus other fees, you can step off the edge of the Grand
Canyon and look down to the canyon floor 4,000 feet below, a
vantage point more than twice as high as some of the world's
tallest buildings.
The Skywalk is the first-ever cantilever-shaped glass walkway to
suspend more than 1,220 meters (4,000 feet) above the canyons
floor and extend 21 meters (70 feet) from the canyons rim.
Steel-nerved visitors can look down through the horseshoe-shaped
glass walkways clear glass to view the spectacular scenery below:
the Colorado River Valley. This is Grand Canyon West, 90 miles
downstream from Grand Canyon National Park, on land owned by the
Hualapai Indian tribe.
Construction crews spent two years building the walkway. Mark
Johnson, of Las Vegas-based MRJ Architects, has been working on the
Skywalk for about three years, beginning with a lengthy design
phase. He and a team of tribal consultants, engineers and
geologists moved through several design concepts before settling on
a U-shaped walkway. The walkway was structurally engineered by
Lochsa Engineering, LLC.
At 1.07 million pounds, the anecdote offered by many is that the
Skywalk is "about as heavy as four Boeing 757 jets stacked atop one
another." According to Grand Canyon West, the skywalk is able to
hold the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes and
contains more than one million pounds of steel.
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