The astronaut's few steps marked the official inauguration of the project, which backers hope will draw up to half-a-million paying visitors this year to the site some 200 kilometres east of Las Vegas.
The horseshoe-shaped steel pathway, which is paved with 90 metric tonnes of toughened glass, is cantilevered 21.3m out over the lip to give steel-nerved visitors a view of the Colorado River Valley below.
It is due to open on March 28 to tourists who will pay US$25 each to tread their way around the glass arc, which is bolted to the lip of the plunging canyon.
Development or desecration?
Sightseers gathered on the rim of the gorge to watch the retired moonwalker step out onto the pathway.
"It's going to go down in the history books but I'm not sure I will walk out on it," said Joan Stewart, a bookmaker from Las Vegas, who came to see the inauguration.
"It's a long way down and there's water at the bottom," she said as she peered over the canyon's rim.
Supporters say the peach-coloured walkway will create hundreds of jobs for tribal members on the sprawling pine-covered reservation, where poverty is rife and unemployment stands at around 50 per cent.
But traditionalists say the construction violates the hallowed natural landscape of the canyon, which is central to the tribe's creation stories.
According to tradition, the Hualapai's ancestors emerged from the plunging gorge. Some elders believe their blood stained parts of it a deep red.
Although the Hualapai Reservation runs for more than 160km along the Grand Canyon, the tribe so far only manages to woo some 300,000 visitors a year, just a fraction of the four million paying visitors who trek to the canyon each year.
Tribal traditionalist Wilfred Whatoname was opposed to the project initially but said he has come around.
"It's here now so I am hoping for the best. Maybe one day I'll come to embrace it," Whatoname told Reuters as he stood by the canyon with the wind blowing feathers braided in his hair.
- REUTERS
