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canyonwalkerColorado Travelog #28
Montrose, CO - Thursday, 7 Jul 2022, 12:15pm
Today we're visiting Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It's a small park in remote western Colorado. We were here one time before, several years ago, but it was gloomy and drizzly that day. Today there's plenty of clear weather on tap here, so it's worth a return trip.
First we stopped at the visitors center around 9:30 and walked out to Gunnison Point. Here you get a sense of what Black Canyon of the Gunnison is about. It is a narrow, deep gorge; the steepest, deepest, narrowest gorge in North America. It's up to 2,250' (685 m) deep and, at some points, only tens of meters wide. The Grand Canyon is deeper, more than twice as deep at points, but it's also thousands of meters wide.
One thing you see in the above picture, BTW, is that the left (north) side of the canyon is much steeper than the right (south). This is a consequence of being in the northern hemisphere. In the winter, when the area receives most of its precipitation, the southern rim (facing north) is shaded by the low angle of the sun, while the northern rim (facing south) is exposed. The southern rim thus experiences a lot more ice formation, and the ice thawing and re-freezing breaks up the rocks. The sunnier, exposed northern rim gets very little ice thus much less erosion.
Our method this morning at the park has been mostly car touring. There are numerous short trails atop the cliffs. Every half mile or so there's another small pull-out on the side of the road with a trail of a few hundred meters. The only hiking alternative to skirting the top of the cliffs is to venture down into the gorge.... There are several marked trails for that, but they are incredibly steep and strenuous, entailing a near-vertical descent of 2,000' elevation and then a return of the same. That's way more than we're in shape for, so we're hopping out for multiple cliff-top trails.
I'm not sharing pictures of all the places we hopped out for short hikes. There are too many of them, and the pictures start to blur together after a while. I chose the second picture above because it's unique. This is Painted Wall. This is the deepest part of the canyon; that one rock face, with the light striations on it, is 2,250' tall. The main part of the wall is gneiss, a metamorphic rock formed upwards of 2 billion years ago. The striations are a much younger volcanic intrusion. They are mostly quartz (the 2nd most common mineral in the earth's crust) with some feldspar (the most common mineral in the earth's crust) and mica.
Again, in this picture you can see the steepness of the canyon. The scale may be hard to tell... that greenery that looks like bushes are full grown trees. In person standing atop cliffs like this and looking down is dizzying. The mind struggles to comprehend the sheer scale of what's below the feet.
The third and final picture I'm sharing here is Tomichi Point. Here again you can see the depth and steepness of the canyon, but also the presence of some of the side canyons. This is the most popular spot for descending to the river at the bottom of the canyon. By going down the side canyon it's only a 60° slope!
Montrose, CO - Thursday, 7 Jul 2022, 12:15pm
Today we're visiting Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It's a small park in remote western Colorado. We were here one time before, several years ago, but it was gloomy and drizzly that day. Today there's plenty of clear weather on tap here, so it's worth a return trip.
First we stopped at the visitors center around 9:30 and walked out to Gunnison Point. Here you get a sense of what Black Canyon of the Gunnison is about. It is a narrow, deep gorge; the steepest, deepest, narrowest gorge in North America. It's up to 2,250' (685 m) deep and, at some points, only tens of meters wide. The Grand Canyon is deeper, more than twice as deep at points, but it's also thousands of meters wide.
One thing you see in the above picture, BTW, is that the left (north) side of the canyon is much steeper than the right (south). This is a consequence of being in the northern hemisphere. In the winter, when the area receives most of its precipitation, the southern rim (facing north) is shaded by the low angle of the sun, while the northern rim (facing south) is exposed. The southern rim thus experiences a lot more ice formation, and the ice thawing and re-freezing breaks up the rocks. The sunnier, exposed northern rim gets very little ice thus much less erosion.
Our method this morning at the park has been mostly car touring. There are numerous short trails atop the cliffs. Every half mile or so there's another small pull-out on the side of the road with a trail of a few hundred meters. The only hiking alternative to skirting the top of the cliffs is to venture down into the gorge.... There are several marked trails for that, but they are incredibly steep and strenuous, entailing a near-vertical descent of 2,000' elevation and then a return of the same. That's way more than we're in shape for, so we're hopping out for multiple cliff-top trails.
I'm not sharing pictures of all the places we hopped out for short hikes. There are too many of them, and the pictures start to blur together after a while. I chose the second picture above because it's unique. This is Painted Wall. This is the deepest part of the canyon; that one rock face, with the light striations on it, is 2,250' tall. The main part of the wall is gneiss, a metamorphic rock formed upwards of 2 billion years ago. The striations are a much younger volcanic intrusion. They are mostly quartz (the 2nd most common mineral in the earth's crust) with some feldspar (the most common mineral in the earth's crust) and mica.
Again, in this picture you can see the steepness of the canyon. The scale may be hard to tell... that greenery that looks like bushes are full grown trees. In person standing atop cliffs like this and looking down is dizzying. The mind struggles to comprehend the sheer scale of what's below the feet.
The third and final picture I'm sharing here is Tomichi Point. Here again you can see the depth and steepness of the canyon, but also the presence of some of the side canyons. This is the most popular spot for descending to the river at the bottom of the canyon. By going down the side canyon it's only a 60° slope!
