Over the last 5 million years, the Ancestral Colorado River and other rivers etched Grand Canyon out of a network of interlocking plateaus—all of them part of the larger Colorado Plateau. Near the present-day locations of the park's developed areas, the river cut through an especially high plateau, which sloped gently downhill from north to south.
The river split this plateau in two: the Kaibab on the North Rim and the Coconino on the South Rim. Because the original plateau sloped from north to south, the Kaibab Plateau is roughly 1,000 feet higher than the Coconino Plateau. At over 8,000 feet, it's high enough to boast alpine meadows and spruce-fir forest similar to parts of Alaska and to receive 200 or more inches of snow in a winter—enough to convince the National Park Service to close this area from mid-October through mid-May.
Even when open, the North Rim remains fairly quiet, receiving roughly one-fourth the visitors the South Rim does. These visitors find the unadorned yet lovely Grand Canyon Lodge, a sprinkling of cabins, a small visitor center, a gift shop, a ponderosa pine-shaded campground, and a general store, among other buildings. They take scenic drives on the Cape Royal Road, which travels to the tip of a peninsula in Grand Canyon. During the 23-mile trip from Grand Canyon Lodge to Cape Royal, they stop for short rim hikes, Anasazi archaeological sites, and canyon overlooks. Numerous rim trails pass through cool forest.
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