CRUNCH TIME AT THE CANYON

PHYLLIS CHRISTY CAME ALL THE way from Ipswich, South Dakota, to experience the Grand Canyon firsthand. She couldn't wait to peer into its dizzying, mile-deep abyss to take in the multihued walls and, far below, the roaring waters of the Colorado River. Aware of the jostling horde of tourists on the overcrowded South Rim of the canyon, she traveled to the less popular main overlook at the North Rim. But while she stood there, her ears were assaulted by the drone of two sightseeing Cessnas and a Twin Otter, plus the clatter of four helicopters--all of which flew by within a few minutes. "With such an incredible view," she complained, "you'd expect some solitude."

Grand Canyon National Park, the crown jewel of America's park system, is being overrun. And like many other underfunded and deteriorating national parks, it is ill prepared for the invasion. Summer has barely begun, and cars and campers are already queuing up in lines nearly a mile long at the entrance gates. The wait for dinner tables at park restaurants is two hours, and families without advance reservations are being turned away from campgrounds that have been booked for weeks.

Yet the 16,000 visitors who descend on the park each day are a mere trickle compared with the daily flood tide of 27,000 that park officials expect in July and August. By midsummer, they predict, hour-long waits for shuttle buses to the overlooks will be common. Fistfights will break out in parking lots as thousands of motorists compete for 2,000 slots. So many hikers will suffer from exhaustion and other heat-related problems that park rangers will be forced to practice triage, leaving the least seriously affected vacationers at the bottom of the canyon to fend for themselves. Says a harassed park official: "We are being loved nearly to death."

The statistics are as awesome as the canyon: the number of park visitors has more than doubled in a decade, from some 2 million in 1984 to 4.7 million last year. If the tide is not checked, the National Park Service estimates, there will be 7 million visitors by 2010. "We are under siege," says park superintendent Robert Arnberger.

At first glance the park seems spacious enough to accommodate all comers. It covers more than 1.2 million acres and the most dramatic 56-mile stretch of the 277-mile-long Grand Canyon. But the broad vistas are deceptive. The rugged terrain funnels visitors along narrow strips of trails and roads alongside both rims and into facilities that have been overcrowded for years.

Working with a $12 million annual budget, officials are hard pressed to maintain essential park services, let alone improve and expand them. Primitive water and sewer lines regularly rupture. Twisted, aging roads are dangerous and confusing. The visitors' center is cramped, overrun and hard to find. Its exhibits are outdated and the roof leaks. Employee housing is so critically short that some government workers are living in the medical clinic and an old laundry. Others are billeted in rickety trailers that were hauled to the site from nearby Glen Canyon Dam, where they housed the dam's construction crew 33 years ago.