But engineers did it a few kilometres away in a highway section called the Moki Dugway. The blacktop stops at the rim. Beyond, a gravel roadbed zigzags downward in a Zorro-like succession of hairpin switchbacks. The ploy works. I creep down in low gear.
Velocity resumes when pavement reappears at the bottom, but soon another side road beckons.
Once a lazy, meandering river, the San Juan now runs entrenched in a tortuous chasm of its own making. Seen from plateau's edge, the current flows through three giant bows, each practically doubling back on itself. The scale is immense. The twisty section of the San Juan begins near the town of Mexican Hat. Its name comes from a nearby rock formation shaped like a sombrero.