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Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado
July 16, 2007 | 30 Comments
In Early June, we went on a roadtrip to the four national parks in Colorado. We covered 2000 miles in 9 days, and encountered some of the most spectacular sights this geologically diverse region has to offer.
Colorado Relief Map
The orange line shows the areas we drove through, beginning and ending at Denver. The dots show the four national parks we visited. The red arrow points to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
Anti-Clockwise:
Rocky Mountain National Park (Pics HERE)
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Mesa Verde National Park (Pics HERE)
Great Sand Dunes National Park (Pics HERE)
We also drove through the San Juan Parkway (Pics HERE)
Pictures from our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park HERE.
What makes the Black Canyon of the Gunnison special?
Most rivers of the Southwest cut through relatively soft sedimentary rock, forming canyons that tend to be quite wide, colorful and stepped – descending in a series of cliffs and ledges through layers of differing hardness. When rivers flow across harder igneous rock they produce steeper gorges, spectacular in different ways, such as Hell’s Canyon in Idaho, the deepest in the US, or the multicolored Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in Wyoming.
One of the steepest, darkest and most rugged of such canyons is formed by the Gunnison River as it flows through hard ancient rocks at the western edge of the Rocky Mountains, on its way to joining the Colorado river at Grand Junction. The canyon walls are composed of volcanic schist, predominantly black in color, and as the gorge reaches depths of over 2,000 feet while often being only 1,500 feet across, sunlight illuminates the walls only briefly, hence the name ‘Black Canyon’. It is unsettling, almost frightening to stand at the very edge of one of the canyon overlooks, such is the menace and sheerness of the jagged rocks below.
We’ve visited a lot of canyons – the Grand Canyon, Hell’s Canyon, Idaho, Yellowstone Canyon, Wyoming. This is one of the most impressive, and also the most difficult to photograph.
The first day of our visit was a cloudy one. The mists roll in over the canyon rim.
One can view the canyon from the North and South rims. At the North rim, one has to go six miles on an unpaved road, from where one can see the canyon from the very edge. It’s a sheer drop of close to 2400 feet. This shot was taken around noon.
This one was taken in the evening. The play of light on the canyon walls is captivating, especially early in the morning, and late in the evening.
While the rim predominantly has a dryland forest of sagebrush, pinon and juniper, the canyon walls and floor have tall trees and a variety of birds and wildlife.
The National Park Service has built a road at the South Rim that takes you to the bottom of the canyon. It’s a scary 15-minute drive with rocks falling everywhere. It’s amazing to see how the canyon is as little as 40 feet wide at the bottom. It took the Gunnison river two billion years to cut through the Precambrian gneiss (a coarse-grained, granite-like metamorphic rock that’s extremely strong and resistant to erosion) formed along a 53-mile-long stretch.
We saw a few bald eagles along the way.
At the narrowest point, the canyon is just 1150 feet wide. There are over a dozen overlooks at the South rim, with amazing precipices, rocks and pinnacles. This one is called ‘Painted Wall’, because thin veins of white gneiss criss-cross the predominantly black cliffs.
‘Painted Wall’ at sunset.
The place has a mysterious aura in the fading light.
‘Sunset Point’ at 7.30 p.m.
‘Sunset Point’ at 8.15 p.m. The Gunnison river is transformed into a tiny sliver of light.
The canyon was originally over 50 miles long, but three dams have been built along the eastern (upstream) section flooding two thirds of the gorge – this is now part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area based around the artificial lakes.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is an awe-inspiring, mysterious place. It gets relatively few visitors, and is close to the San Juan Parkway – one of the most spectacular drives anywhere. This canyon is surely worth a visit.
Some great pictures HERE.
A request from Krishnammal - a Gandhian who has toiled all her life to empower rural women in Tamil Nadu.
The monsoon has arrived, but there are many farmers who don’t have the means to buy seeds to sow their land. A small donation – just 500 Rupees, will benefit a whole family. 5000 Rupees will benefit 10 families. Thirteen dollars, to change the lives in a family forever.
Ammani at Filthy, Funny, Flawed Gorgeous (she also owns the food blog Chai Pani) explains Krishnammals’ life and mission here. These women farmers in Tamil Nadu need help, and they need it NOW to become self-sufficient for the rest of their lives.
ALL THE DETAILS HERE.
If you wish to donate, and have a rupee account, do try and send your donation in rupees, so that they don’t lose any money in the foreign exchange conversion process.
On our part, we will post something we never planned to post before. We will post five pictures of recipes we never ended up putting on the site for various reasons. It’s the Jugalbandi Hall of Shame of pictures and posts that never made it. Now we’ll post them and tell you why.
Jugalbandi Hall of Shame #4
This is Karuveppilai Kuzhambu (Curry Leaves Curry) from Dakshin. Tastes acrid, like someone shoved gunpowder up your nose.
B thinks this picture is cool, evoking a sailboat on the Mississippi. J thinks it looks like a dirty diaper with garnishes.
Please think about how you can change a whole family’s life somewhere with a simple deed.
Filed Under: black-canyon-of-the-gunnison-national-park, colorado, gunnison-river, lifestyle, national park, national-parks, Photo Essays, TRAVEL
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30 Comments
Jai, that was a really BAD analogy!
someone get me agarbattis please
Lovely pics these are.
I have to agree that last pic is not your best1
And Dakshin, despite the drooly pics, is a bit disappointing…if you notice all the dishes have been cooked on the same day (or stored for later pics???)…because the reappear in different combinations with the different ‘menu suggestions’ at the end! And the finished dish rarely looks like the picture…I can only hope that the recipes are mostly authentic.
check out the enna katthirikkai picture in dakshin. it’s a con job. the eggplants used are long, and the supposedly ‘ground’ masala does not look ground at all in the picture. – b.
Thank God Bee’s analogy came first…the sailboat is stuck on my mind and I can hardly figure out the dirty diaper…or did I just see it….yeeks !!
The photos of the canyon are superb and your captions very precise & informative. Would definitely plan and visit this place.
the pic you have taken are so majestic. simply amazing.
)
I am loving the hall of shame part a lot
Dirty diaper….eeee…ee. Yes I agree after seeing all your pictures till now this is not good , but those cute roses don’t deserve to be in Hall of shame
Liked the pictures of the canyon.
it’s not the roses ….but the unseen gulkand that’s in the hall of shame
Are the shots of the canyon aerial?? These pictures and the topography are amazing. Hall of shame is a good idea one gets to learn what not to do yet not all that bad.
not aerial. we were at the top of the canyon…tantalizingly close to the edge at times ! – j
LOL it looks more like a boat to me too!
Lovely pics of the canyon B and J!!
A great post as usual with lovely photos Bee. The curry leaves served with a papad is inviting. Viji
Those GC pix are amazing….!!! Thought those were aerial shots till i read one of the coments!!!
you know what, you Jugalbandi B & J ( am supposed to be growling now grrrrr )…your hall of shame has actually made me think twice about keeping my blog going…if these are your standards for hall of shame ( i know its the recipe, and not the pic..but whatever ), i seriously think i shouldnt be holding a camera ever in my hand again, not to tell you about cooking !!!
Ooops..
Black Canyon!!!
i like the evening shot (the fourth one). And the gravy wasn’t one of your best shots but I liked the jaunty curry leaf perched there. Jai, your imagination’s working overtime, don’t be so hard on yourself!
Black Canyon seems intriguing and scary at the same time!
A nice post with beautiful pics….
Ur imagination of diaper gave me a good laugh
Bee I too have tried Karuveppilai kuzhambu. But it never tastes as it smells. The Black Canyon pics are lovely!
hey lovely pics of the black canyon, it looks eiree and majestic at the same time… hope i can visit it sometime in my life
in my opinion the ‘dirty diaper’ pic is the first to qualify in the hall of shame, besides what it looks like to jay, i cant clearly see anything except the curry leaf
lovely pics, and true to the quote, the first pic does look too jagged !! my trip to the grand canyon was mesmerizing to say the least
on another note, not sure if u grow zucchini, but any idea why the flowers wud drop? mine are
OH!! That Canyon is gorgeous.It’s amazing to see how life evolves over many years!( Did “God” take just 7 days?!;D)
I have been to Grand Canyon,Wyoming and Utah ‘Needles’ but not this Canyon.
I bought Curry leaves pudi too, and I agree! Looks like Puke and tastes very tangy.May be homemade one I have seen in some blogs tastes lot better,never tried it at home.Curry leaves are gold here!:)
Nature at its spectacular best.
It is a testament to your excellent photography that I actually felt a queasy feeling in my stomach looking down into that canyon (I am little afraid of heights)
Really lovely, thanks for sharing these.
Thanks for sharing those lovely pics of the Canyon…
Btw, thought first the hall of shame pic looked like a sailing boat to me , the moment I read your footnote, I felt J is right !!!!!
Shn
Bee & Jai, thanks for those awesome photos of the Black Canyon. I’m going to show them to my husband. We went to Yellowstone Park last year and he totally flipped for the canyon and wants to go there again THIS year. I keep telling him there are plenty of equally if not more fantastic places to visit in the US… this should convince him!
Thanks again!
PS. I agree with J re the pic :p
my goodness… all my acrophobia is back just looking at that 2400 feet drop. awesome picturs…
LOL @irty diaper with garnishes… ha ha ha…. well it does look like that….ha ha ha ha…
oye…thats not anonymous…its me… donno why it shows as anon
Oh wow–we visited it last year! We did Rocky Mountain and then went over the tundra (Trail Ridge Road) to the Black Canyon. We stayed on the North rim in a town called Crawford (best guest house ever–photo here). Back in those days, I wasn’t posing many non-food photos to my blog, so I don’t have any shots of the canyon up, but it was one of the most impressive sights I’ve seen. I still have dreams of buying that guest house and traveling all over Colorado. We’re planning future trips to take in Mesa Verde and the rest of the state.
I kinda hate that you’re advertising it, though. I wanted to keep it as my families little secret.
What fantastic pics. I need to be back to blogging fast…am missing so much
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