BEING a woman of a certain age (51), I don’t often get over-excited in public, but I was shrieking like a pubescent and waving my arms like a windmill at Skeleton Point, halfway down the Grand Canyon, when the world’s most beautiful raptor, more than two metres across, coasted by on a thermal just above my head.

Suddenly, a young hunk stripped to the waist popped out from behind a rock (it turned out that he was with a work gang mending the path). “Yep, Ma’am,” he drawled, “that there’s a condor. We only reintroduced them about six years ago and now we’ve got 40. He usually goes overhead around this time of day.”

Wow! I didn’t even know they had condors in North America.

It was an awesome moment in a thrilling day as six of us hiked three miles down the canyon’s mule route and back, which is tougher than it sounds. Still, every step in the 32C (90F) heat was worth the effort just to witness the world’s most incredible natural phenomenon unrolled at your feet like a giant Turkish carpet. Distances are so vast that the landscape looks two dimensional, as if walking in a student bedsit poster.

Stopping regularly to gasp at the views, it took us two and a half hours to reach Skeleton Point and our first glimpse below of the snaking emerald Colorado River. We were standing on a plateau dotted with giant yuccas, shocking-pink flowering cacti and yellow wallflowers, a small graspable Eden in a too-vast-to-manage one.

Labouring back up to the rim, I had my first experience of being shamed by an octogenarian. Peter, a retired quantity surveyor from the West Country, was leading the way, haring ahead, leaving me panting for regular rests and water.

My husband David and I, and Peter and his wife Sheila, were part of a group of a dozen over-35s on a seven-day Canyons & Indian Lands tour with TrekAmerica. Better known for organised camping tours geared to gap year adventurers, there is also a “Footloose” programme of lodging tours aimed at older travellers. Most involve daily hiking options.

Being keen walkers, our idea was to let someone else take the strain out of driving the tedious distances between stops. We could relax on the bus, enjoy the scenery and arrive refreshed. Our fellow passengers were a mixed bunch, including an Indian psychiatrist from Manchester, two Canadian bankers and an Italian particle physicist from Oxford travelling with his father.

Jen, our feisty tour leader, was the youngest. She was in her early thirties but unfazed by our mature years. The only group activity she insisted on was helping her to load up the minibus roof with our luggage. She never forced it, but it was understood that we would make picnic lunches together. She encouraged us to bond by always managing to find the best restaurant in town and had an uncanny knack of knowing just when we needed a coffee stop, or a cold beer.

We set off early one morning from Las Vegas to our first stop at Zion National Park over the Nevada state line into Utah. In two hours we had left one of the planet’s most boggling man-made attractions for one created by nature.

Here, we hiked to the emerald pools, thick with canyon tree frogs, known for their crazy croak described by one park ranger as “like gargling sheep”.

Walking back to the bus along the banks of the Virgin River we were silenced by the beauty of many other colours — red mountains, blue sky, yellow columbines, DayGlo orange daisies and the flash of a masked crimson tanager.

Next day was the only time I felt mildly cross about our whistle-stop itinerary. I wanted longer at Bryce Canyon than the allotted three and a half hours. That said, once Jen realised we were all head-over-heels with what is aptly called “the fairytale canyon”, she brought us back later for a moonrise drinks party. It was so romantic that I think I promised to visit Alaska with half the group next year.

Bryce is also where we discovered what has to rank as the world’s best short walk. Called the Navajo Loop, it’s just under two miles of pure tangerine dream as you descend into the canyon to the bottom of Wall Street, a chink in the sheer orange rock face which towers 520ft above. The walk is also one of the best ways to get up close to Bryce’s famed hoodoos, weirdly shaped rock pinnacles like stalagmites sculpted by wind and water erosion.

At the end we all agreed that there had been many special moments. For some it was a sunrise over the Grand Canyon. For others it was the day we were accompanied by Tonno, a Navajo guide, into Monument Valley, where the giant rocks have starred in many a western, car commercial and rock music video. He signalled his disapproval in a soft lilting voice by telling us: “We don’t think the Earth belongs to us; we believe it belongs to animals, insects and birds.”

Then he took us to a huge sandstone cave with a hole in the roof, called the Ear of the Wind. We lay on the cool earth and listened to him play a haunting Navajo song on flute and drum with acoustics as good as any concert hall.

Me? I enjoyed it all, but the best bit had to be that perfect condor moment.

Need to know

Jill Hartley travelled with TrekAmerica (0870 4448735, www.trekamerica.co.uk) as part of its Footloose (www.footloose.com) programme. The seven-day Canyons & Indian Lands with B&B accommodation costs from £618, excluding flights, which can be arranged.

Page 2: Cliffhanger ()

Cliffhanger

Coming soon — a new perspective on the world’s deepest gorge.

A gravity-defying walkway which will stretch out 70ft from the west rim of the Grand Canyon is under construction.

From January, visitors will be able to walk around the horseshoe-shaped, glass-bottomed platform and gaze down between their feet past billions of years of rock strata to the canyon floor, 4,000ft (1,220m) below.

At about £14 a ticket, this sensational, Las Vegas attraction-style perspective on the canyon will offer a breathtaking alternative to helicopter rides and boat tours. Strong enough to withstand 110mph winds, earthquakes, the platform is expected to take 3 million visitors over the edge in its first year.

The £22.7 million Grand Canyon West project, which is on Hualapai tribal land (and outside the control of the Grand Canyon National Park), will include an Indian village, a western-themed town and a café with canyon views for those who prefer to stay back from the edge.

Sarah Elliott

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