MelissaA
Brenton
Shilpa Karhik
Grand Canyon Skywalk Closed Upon Opening!
April 1st 2007 00:01
Opening day for the skywalk
Designed as a major tourist attraction, the Grand Canyon Skywalk sits along the edge of the Grand Canyon overlooking the Colorado River. The horseshoe-shaped glass walkway is suspended 1,200 metres above the canyon, eclipsing the height of skyscrapers worldwide.
Skywalk protrudes 20 metres (65 feet) beyond the edge of the canyon. The glass walls and floor are built from glass 10.2 cm (4 inches) thick. The Skywalk is capable of holding 70 tons of weight (the equivalent of 800 people weighing 80 kg ( 175 lbs.) each), however the permitted capacity is limited to 120 persons. Visitors are provided with shoe covers to protect them from slipping and to prevent the glass floor from being scratched.
In March 2004, construction began. The structure was designed to withstand up to 100 mph winds and a magnitude 8 earthquake.
Initial skywalk design proposal
The cost was expected to exceed $40 million and there were future plans for a Grand Canyon Skywalk complex include a museum, movie theatre, VIP lounge, gift shop, and several restaurants including a high-end restaurant called The Skywalk Café where visitors will be able to dine outdoors at the canyon's rim.
The Skywalk is the cornerstone of a larger plan by the Hualapai Indian tribe, which it hopes will be the catalyst for a 9,000-acre development to be called Grand Canyon West and would include hotels, restaurants, a golf course and a cable car to ferry visitors from the canyon rim to the Colorado River.
The fee to enter the Skywalk is $US25 per person in addition to Grand Canyon West entry fees.
The structure was unveiled on March 20, 2007, and opened to the general public on March 28, 2007. Millions of people are expected to visit the structure and pay for the privilege of crossing it.
However, within a few short days the use of the structure has become very short lived.
Initially a very basic factor was overlooked, that when the glass becomes extremely dirty from the local environment, the view becomes greatly obscured and visitors cannot actually see what they are paying for. One Swedish tourist, Lirpa Sloof who had visited the skywalk in it’s initial opening days commented that the dust on the glass was so thick it was virtually impossible to see anything. As a result, the skywalk has had to be closed temporarily during tourist hours for cleaning.
But on a much larger scale, there have been some concerns about the stability of the structure discovered only while the general public have been testing the structure out in droves, and so the structure will now remain permanently closed until a solution can be found to the problems.
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