EXTENDED CUT: What I Found in the Grand Canyon is Baffling

Hey everyone, as the title says, this is an extended version of my recent Grand Canyon trip. There's additional insights and footage in this one. Just FYI. Thank you for continuing to support the channel, I've got a video coming out next week I'm very excited about. Stay tuned

This is what Youtube was made for. If Andrew had to go to some major network and pitch this, he would most probably be be dismissed as some crank with a niche idea. Yet here we are. Professional level cinematography, editing, narration, just a feast of landscape, experience and ideas. And HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people in one day taking almost an hour of their daily schedule to go hiking with Desert Drifter and friends. How many major network shows get hundreds of thousands of viewers?! The future is here and it doesn't need to be edgy and trendy, it just needs to be good. Thank you so much for all that you have showed me, Andrew. Stay on your path, distant friend!

In the winter of 2005, my wife and I, both active duty military personnel, went on vacation to the Grand Canyon. While at the visitor center near Williams, AZ, we thought we were fit enough to hike down to the bottom and back in just a few hours. However, the hike took longer and was more challenging than we anticipated. We also made the mistake of not carrying enough water and had to push ourselves to reach water to refill our supply. Although we made the trip successfully, we witnessed many people who thought they could make the trip ending up paying a large sum of money to get rescued. I strongly advise anyone planning a Grand Canyon vacation to carefully consider their abilities and the impact of elevation changes before attempting the hike. While pictures can't fully capture the grandeur of the site, the Grand Canyon is a must-see destination.

I am 74 and can’t get out like I one time did but I enjoy the trips with you please keep it going

In January 1999 I backpacked 256 miles from the west to the north and the east of the Grand Canyon. I started at the S. Bass Trail on the west south rim, hiked to the Bright Angel Trail down to the Colorado River then up to the north rim on the North Kaibab Trail, then back down and up and over to Clear Creek, then back to the Colorado River then up the South Kaibab Trail to the Tonto Trail then east to Tanner Rapids, and up the Beamer Trail to the Lil Colorado River and up it to the sacred Hopi site of the Sipapu, a mineral warm springs mound, then back to Tanner Rapids and up and out the Tanner Trail to Lipon Point. Prior to the hike I cached 3 five gallon pails of food and water at points a weeks hike apart. I started with one weeks food, sleeping bag, pad and ground tarp, 2 water bottles and camera. I was in the canyon 4 weeks.

Do you know what a blessing you are to a 62 year old Grammy from Maine?? As a hiker and climber for decades I’m just grateful to you!! I can no longer do these adventures!! This is phenomenal!! 😮😊❤

Night starry sky , the sound of the air , the silence of the Earth just breathing ... What peacefulness abounds there . I could envision my self living in a place like that ... deeply peaceful.

Thanks for sharing your explorations! I always enjoy your wanderings and discoveries. Regarding your Nankoweap visit, as an aging and long time river guide in Grand Canyon, I’ve encountered many of the granary structures tucked into and sheltered by ledges and alcoves along the length of the Canyon and the side canyons. I was told back in 1970 on my first trip, that they were built as defensive measures to protect and hide their food and other survival supplies from potential enemies. I’ve often thought there may be a more prosaic and much more practical explanation. If I were living and farming there, and had at the end of the growing season, several hundred pounds of corn and piñon nuts etc to store, I’m faced with the question of where to build my storage facility. Creating a weather and varmint proof storage structure out of rock would I think, be quite challenging to do out under the open sky. Those protected ledges/alcoves offer a much simpler build (the roof and half of the walls are already built) and offer an extremely protected location, safe from the ravages of the climate extremes that exist there. The extreme heat affecting a food storage area out in the open there, would alone be damaging to stored crops. There seems to be little way of knowing about the level of inter-tribal hostilities in those days and that may well have been a factor, but I still think from a purely practical point of view, that’s where I would have built my food storage structures. As always, I look forward to your next beautifully produced video.

The most difficult thing about these videos, is that they end. I think I go into a bit of a grieving period. I watch the program a second time, but still find it so sad when it ends. Third time? Same. Honestly everything about his programs is just so damn perfect. The videography, the lighting, his voice with such a pure tone of reverence. The breaks for history and grounding. Holy cow... what a fine thing this is.

Navajo elders can answer your questions. The people who lived temporarily in the Grand Canyon were Cliff Dweller people who fled into remote areas to escape the Anasazi people. The Anasazi were not good people. They came from the south (Mexico), remained in Chaco Canyon for 280 years, then returned to the south. While in Chaco they captured, and traded, slaves. They also ate human flesh. When the Anasazi left Chaco, the cliff dweller people returned to their traditional farm lands. During this period (Anasazi occupation), many cliff dweller clans, as well as Fremont people, and ancestral Puebloans people, joined with the Dene' people, (safety in numbers) where they remain to this day. Because the Anasazi people in Chaco relied upon slave labor, their building techniques, and pottery styles, confused early archeologists. What the Anasazi left behind is pretty much a mishmash of various other enslaved peoples arts, crafts, and technology. The Anasazi have no decedents currently living in the USA. They returned to Mexico long ago, and were most probably a clan of the Aztec people.

As a person with a tremendous fear of falling I was having a difficult time watching this, but you did the public a great service in telling us a story we would otherwise never know. I can't go there myself, but you have brought me as far as I will go. In my youth I did hike the Adirondacks, which are not as difficult. But now time has taken its toll on me much like those weathered graineries. Thanks for bringing us a good report.

Thinking of the difficulty for you to get up to these storage units, and then think of that those who used them carried up everything they would put there is mind blowing.

Grand Canyon is one place that everyone should see in person at least once in their lives. Pictures never do it justice.

The quality of this video would be hard to overstate, VERY interesting and educational.

Thank you for letting me live and see things vicariously through you.

I am 1,337 years old. I remember the old days when these structures were new. My family and I visited often. Thank you for making these videos, they bring back old memories. Alas, I am now just a brain in a jar unable to visit again. God speed young man.

A Backcountry cookbook would be very useful, I hope you do.

Had to pause the video to say: Yes!!!! A "backcountry cookbook" would be fire. I am always amazed by the things you pull out of seemingly thin air. The ingredients just make sense for backpacking. Having fresh meals while out in the wild is such a luxury when you're not living off the land with the cultivated resources natives might have had. We gotta work with what we got... And you bring practicality to the table!

That country is remarkably beautiful. Away from the city the night sky blows me away.

Being former military and a historian of ancient culture my guess is security as it would be near impossible for an opposing force to wage war against a people in those cliffs. Also, I do not agree about the difficulty to have a flourishing agriculture because of the readily available water supply. You might take a look at what some people are doing in the middle of the deserts turning waste land into flourishing food gardens. I think these ancient people did the same. Also, by having hidden food caches dispersed up and down the canyons this would allow them to survive while traveling the area but because they are hidden would not allow an opposing force to access them.