Sharing Childhood Traits
Photography by Deidra Peaches
Women owned business gives tourists a personal experience
In LeChee, Arizona about 10 miles south of Page, the smooth sandstone walls of canyons offer unique business opportunities for Diné entrepreneurs.
At Antelope Valley Canyon Tours by Ligai Si’ Anii, Marie Justice, her two sisters and her niece have turned their family grazing land into a hiking business.
“This area is where we grew up, myself and my siblings,” Justice said, “This was just our playground where we used to run when we were kids so we thought, we’ll share.”
The canyon tours are open year round with about 200 to 300 visitors a month. Their busiest times are in the winter during November, December and again in the spring.
It’s the family stories that make these tours standout.
During the tours, guides will share stories about the family and how the kids would herd sheep in the canyons and occasionally get in trouble for losing track of the sheep.
“Our mother used to make our lunch to carry and our water, and that was it, off we went. Sometimes we’d take a horse,” Justice said, recalling how her mother instilled in them to be go-getters and self-sufficient.
In Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon, Justice’s uncle and cousin are also running canyon tours. With tours popping up all around them, Justice, her sisters and her niece knew it would be a viable business opportunity and in 2017 they got the permits for their canyon.
There are five different canyons for tourists to choose from with different levels of difficulty. their easiest tour is about an hour and a half hike which is open to all ages.
Photography by Deidra Peaches
“We’ve had an infant as young as a month old go on a hike and the oldest hiker, being 98 years old,” she said, adding the 98-year old man from Italy. “When he was coming back up they were all standing there cheering him on, coming up, it was pretty neat.”
Other tours include stairs down to the canyon floor, narrow pathways, deep canyons, night tours and as the difficulty increases so does the hiking time, the longest hike is six hours. Every year the business goes through a permitting process and every group has a guide.
Photography by Deidra Peaches
The biggest challenge for the business has been marketing. Justice said her son and niece have been making a big social media push and they try to get the word out through hikers who have come through and they hope their personal stories and small hiking groups sizes continue to help them stand out.
Justice’s advice for new business owners would be to understanding the structure of the business. They went through a lot of trial and error but are finally starting to understand what they want their business to be.
While running the business has been a big undertaking with the everyday operations, Justice said she’s happy to be involved in a family business that brings job opportunities to those in her community and she’s also happy to be able to share her community with others.
“A lot of them that come here, they understand the beauty of the place. How remote it is and how they feel when they’re out there,” Justice said of hikers. “All they can hear is the wind and the birds, and nobody else.”
Justice said they had a hiker from Singapore and she was in awe of the quiet and said that it’s hard to find that kind of peace in the city.
“Some people, they really consider it sacred, especially one of our long hikes called Mary’s Gorge, we named the Canyon after our mother, and it’s very, very deep,” she said, adding people feel a different kind of calm in the canyon, “People have different experience as they come through.”
Antelope Valley Canyon Tours by Ligai Si’ Anii can be found online at: https://hikingslotcanyons.com/activities/ligai-si-anii-canyon-hiking-tour/
And on Instagram: @antelopevalleytours and on Facebook at Antelope Valley Canyon Tours by Ligai Si’ Anii
