Little Colorado Fly-through Tour (early Google Earth experiment)

UPDATE: Corrections, clarifications and attributions

Photo by Philippe Pellen

Little Colorado fly-through tour (Google Earth Community post)

Note: a FFriend told me the color of the water comes from Rock flour

A fly-through tour of the Little Colorado River, from Blue Spring to where it joins with the main Colorado River. The water really is bright blue unless runoff makes it muddy. It seems the elevation (GIS) and satellite image data don’t always match, because at points the river goes up the side of the canyon. The Grand Canyon is unique and strange in many ways, but water still flows downhill.

There is a “play folder” control in Google Earth; or the tour can be opened up and stepped through. You will notice the program doesn’t like it when one hits the wall, which I do several times. Toward the end of the tour in the bright sunlight you see the color of the water vividly.

If I were to do it again, I would zoom out quite a bit and use fewer “placemarks.” The extreme close-ups aren’t always attractive, especially when the water isn’t in direct sunlight. Since the satellite image data gets updated, the shadows will move depending on the time of day the satellite passes over (assuming sunny weather.) I would stay well above the canyon until late in the tour, and drop down close to the ground as you approach the confluence, where there are some spectacular user-contributed photos such as the one above. I have not re-constructed the tour in Google Maps; instead, I started a companion map for this tour.

I wonder if a “river/donkey/boat/hiker view” is planned for images captured a la “street view”? It seems a good idea to risk a camera setup mounted on a boat. I recommend the Portuguese fishing boat (Dory) expertly manned by the Grand Canyon Expeditions company in small tours, providing one rower and four passengers maximum per boat. This could be a fantastic way to bridge Earth, Maps, and Street view, in a place not easily accessible and undeniably fascinating.

The Whistler by snowmobile project is nice but implies much more is possible. A river expedition is more difficult to arrange and requires more personal risk… and would be much more interesting. Imagine the view from a cresting wave on the Diamond Creek rapids. A consolation: the food provided by the guides is really good.

Download Google Earth here. Screen capture below linked to View in Google Earth (.kmz download)

View Little Colorado (Grand Canyon) Tour in a larger map