Grand Circle Chronicles
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
by Quamrul Haider
Most of the American national parks displaying spectacular rugged beauty of nature _ towering mountains, deep canyons, stunning rock formations, lush green forests, pristine lakes and a diverse array of wildlife _ are situated within the perimeters of the so-called Grand Circle. Located in the southwestern United States, the Circle encompasses portions of five states: southern Utah, northern Arizona, the southwest corner of Colorado, the northwest corner of New Mexico and the southern tip of Nevada.
We have already visited most of the parks within the Circle, including the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest and Painted Desert in Arizona, Zion and Bryce in Utah, Mesa Verde and the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, and Monument Valley in New Mexico/Utah. These parks are a photographers delight, a hikers paradise, a historians archive and a geologists dreamland. As for us, they are open-air classrooms where we can discover the amazing geographic, geologic and cultural diversity of America.
Recently, my wife and I, along with our son and daughter, decided to complete the Circle by visiting the remaining three national parks in Utah _ Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, and one in Colorado _ Black Canyon of the Gunnison, while adding three more _ Grand Teton and Yellowstone in Wyoming, and Badlands in South Dakota _ to our list of visited parks.
We agreed that two weeks of leisurely driving through Colorados serpentine mountain passes, Utahs sun-baked canyons, past Idahos Snake River into Targhee Forest of the Teton Mountains in northeastern Idaho and western Wyoming, and the prairies of Montana and South Dakota, would take us through the seven national parks as well as give us a taste of extremes of Americas landscape and natural beauty.
Our ambitious journey started with a flight from Newark to Denver on August 7. The next day, we packed up the rental car and hit the road towards the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, situated 265 miles southwest of Denver.
We reached our destination after a 5-hour drive through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It was a roller-coaster ride through a maze of lofty peaks, perilious mountain passes, canyons, subalpine forests at more than 11,000 feet in elevation, high country meadows dotted with wildflowers, steep grades, hairpin turns and the swift-flowing Gunnison River. Some of the hairpins were just wide enough for one car to make a very slow and careful turn. The highest elevation on our route was 11,312 feet at Monarch Pass located on the Continental Divide.
The canyon is called black because the walls are often shrouded in shadows making them appear dark. It has some of the worlds oldest rocks _ precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks that are nearly two billion years old. Deeper than it is wide in some places, this great slit in the Earth is so narrow that sunlight penetrates to the bottom only at midday. The canyon walls are separated by a mere 40 feet at their narrowest point.
The spectacular monolithic rock walls of the canyon were sculpted over a period of two million years by the Gunnison River along with the forces of weathering. The river is still cutting through the hard rocks of the canyon, but more slowly because dams upstream lessened seasonal flooding.
The park has a seven-mile long scenic drive along the south rim. The north rim is not as well developed, nor as easy to get to as the south rim. Along the scenic drive there are various overlooks that offer magnificent views of the canyon.
From most of the overlooks, we got a good view of the Gunnison River flowing through the bottom of the canyon. The river is far more turbulent than its benign appearance from the top of the canyon. It drops an average of 34 feet per mile through the entire canyon.
Immediately past the entrance station, theres a road that goes all the way down to the river. We shied away from going to the bottom because the road is extremely steep (16% grades) with many hairpin curves.
The main attraction of the park is the Painted Wall, Colorados tallest vertical cliff at nearly 2,300 feet. It is so named for the many light-colored pegmatite dikes that appear as an artists brush stroke crosscutting on a canvas of dark rocks.
As we drove westward, the drop-offs of the canyon walls into the river 2,700 feet below became more and more precipitous. For an acrophobic like me, looking down from the edge of the canyon was an unsettling, almost a frightening experience.
No other canyon we have seen so far, save the Grand Canyon, combines the narrow opening, sheer walls and startling depths offered by the Black Canyon. It may be called a mini version of the Grand Canyon, and rightfully so.
The writer is Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York.
