US:Visitors who have marvelled at the Grand Canyon's vistas will now have a dizzying new option: a glass-bottomed observation deck allowing them to gaze into the chasm beneath their feet.
The Skywalk, officially unveiled yesterday, is being touted as an engineering marvel. The glass-and-steel horseshoe extends 21m (70ft) beyond the canyon's edge with no visible supports above or below.
For $25 (€19) plus other fees, up to 120 people at a time will be able to look down to the canyon floor 1,219m (4,000ft) below, a vantage point more than twice as high as the world's tallest buildings.
Hualapai Indians, whose reservation is about 145km (90 miles) west of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, allowed a Las Vegas developer to build the $30 million (€23 million) Skywalk in the hope of creating a unique attraction on their side of the canyon. Hualapai leaders were the first to set foot on the Skywalk, with former astronauts Buzz Aldrin and John Herrington joining them for a brief ceremony to christen the deck.
The Skywalk is scheduled to open to the public on March 28th.
Tribal leaders are betting that visitors will flock here - despite a twisty drive on unpaved roads through rugged terrain - to walk its transparent surface. They hope it will become the centre-piece of a budding tourism industry that includes helicopter tours, river rafting, a cowboy town and a museum of Indian replica homes.
Architect Mark Johnson said the Skywalk could support the weight of a few hundred people and would withstand winds of up to 100mph (161km/h). The observation deck has been equipped with shock absorbers to keep it from bouncing like a diving board as people walk on it.
The Skywalk has sparked debate on and off the reservation. Many Hualapai worry about disturbing nearby burial sites and environmentalists have blamed the tribe for transforming the majestic canyon into a tourist trap. Hualapai leaders say they weighed those concerns for years before agreeing to build the Skywalk. With a third of the tribe's 2,200 members living in poverty, the tribal government decided it needed the tourism dollars.