Grand Canyon

It is one of Earths few landforms visible from space, a World Heritage site, and one of Americas most popular National Park with over nearly five million visitors a year. But at the edge of a chasm, visitors see only a tiny fraction of the Grand Canyons true beauty hidden amidst its stone, its water and its wildlife. Even for scientists it is a place of baffling mysteries. How and when was it actually formed? Why does one of the planets deadliest diseases still endure in the Canyons premier carnivore the majestic mountain lion? What drove one of the largest birds on earth, the California Condor, to the brink of extinction? Why do microscopic colonies of vegetation that bind the desert sand where no other plant can survive take years to regenerate from the pressure of a single human footfall. And finally what of the Canyons earliest human inhabitants? Where did they live? How did they survive? National Geographic Television joins a rare scientific odyssey down the Grand Canyons entire 277-mile length through some of the most treacherous rapids on the planet to try to unlock the mysteries of this great unknown. A select group of scientists and experts will show us a Grand Canyon few outsiders ever see. From the river still cutting through two-billion-year-old stone to the creatures roaming its incomparable back-country, the Grand Canyon still has secrets to tell.