Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park, Colorado, United States
When it comes to mountains and canyons and islands and other
natural features, there are many fames that various places claim . With canyons
it usually has to do with depth, but depth can be deceptive as a measure when a
canyon is also very wide. The Grand Canyon is very deep but is many miles across.
Snake River Canyon claims to be deeper, but that’s only true if measured
between mountain peaks on both sides of the canyon. Places in Peru and Nepal do
the same by measuring canyon depth from the top of mountain peaks on both sides
well away from the canyon walls.
When it comes to combining a variety of those measures like
the depth of the canyon with the narrowness of the canyon and the strict
verticality of its walls, though, there are few in the world that can compare
with Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that is at one point
only 40 feet wide at river level as the Gunnison River crashes down through it.
The name Black Canyon is less a matter of the dark color of the rock in the
canyon than is that no direct sunlight makes it to its depths because of its
narrowness.
So a visit to the Black Canyon mostly involves driving along
one of the roads on its rims to overlooks or hiking on trails along either rim.
That is, of course, unless you’re a he-man or he-woman rock climber who can
descend its walls. At a less vertical part of the upper canyon there is even a
road that goes down to river level.
I stopped once before on the South Rim on a trip in 1992 but
have yet to make it to the more remote north rim of the canyon. Black Canyon is
one of those absolutely spectacular natural sites that well deserves its 1999
upgrade to full national park status.
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