The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Wow.

I have seen the vastness ot the Grand Canyon, the depth of Hells Canyon, the narrowness of Antelope Canyon, the vertical walls of Canyon de Chelle, but nothing has compared with this.  At 2300 feet deep, the Black Canyon is not as deep as the Grand Canyon or Hells Canyon but with them, the bottom is waaaay over there.  At the Black Canyon, it is straight down below you.  Canyon de Chelle has vertical walls, but they enfold a flat plain that has been farmed for centuries before Europeans found it.

The Black Canyon took my breath away.  The far side is perhaps a thousand feet from you as you lean over and look down nearly half a mile to the river squeezing its way between boulders that choke its path.

A few miles to the north and south the land is underlain by soft shale.  Millenia ago, the Gunnison River began its cutting in this path.  As it encountered a metamorphic rock strata, some of the hardest rock known, it was locked into its bed.  As the land rose, the only direction it had was down, and so it began to cut its way, deeper and deeper into an incredibly hard surface.

No Native Americans called this rugged Canyon home.  There is no sign that they even had trails through it. 

The overlooks place you right at the edge, with nothing but air between you and the river far below.

Seams allowed intrusions of even harder rock (pegmatite, if I remember right).  The lighter colored material forms stripes in the wall.  The far wall in this photo is named the Painted Wall, and rises 2300 uninterrupted feet from the Gunnison River.

Its name comes from its depth and verticality.  Sunlight almost never reaches the bottom in many places and except at the few times when the sun falls upon the walls, the Canyon has a dark, almost brooding feel.

Wow