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You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – frosty – Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

On The Road – frosty – Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

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frosty

Black Canyon:  Western slope of Colorado, southeast of Grand Junction.  We got a campsite in the park.

I thought that after Zion, the North Rim, Bryce, and Canyonlands I would have been done with canyons. Nope. Black Canyon was different than all the others, because it’s not in the Colorado Plateau red rock country, for one reason. For another, the park brochure had this quote, which describes it better than I can.

“Some are longer, some are deeper, some are narrower, and a few have walls as steep,” writes geologist Wallace Hansen. “But no other canyon in North America combines the depth, narrowness, sheerness and somber countenance of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.” The Gunnison River eroded through hard metamorphic rock in 2 to 3 million years, a third of the time that the Colorado took to carve the Grand Canyon through sedimentary layers.

We had a campsite in the park which made sightseeing easy. We pulled out the eBikes to travel the 7-mile South Rim Road and stop at a few of the overlooks. The next day we drove out to the end and hiked the Warner Point Nature Trail and I hiked out and back the Rim Rock Trail.

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June 12, 2021

Black Canyon, upstream from Warner’s Point. One thing that makes this canyon different than Grand Canyon is that it’s easier to see how it cut through the plateau.

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June 11, 2021

Gunnison Point Overlook at the Visitor Center.

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June 11, 2021

View from the Cross Fissure overlook.

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June 11, 2021

Gunnison River below Chasm View overlook.

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June 12, 2021

View across the Uncompaghre River valley from the Warner’s Point trail. The bare area in the foreground is not sand dunes, it’s Mancos Shale, which is rock composed of clays and silt where vegetation won’t grow.

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June 12, 2021

Painted Wall overlook. The Painted Wall is the highest cliff in Colorado, at 2,300 feet. The sinuous intrusions of molten light colored rock occurred more than a billion years ago.

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June 12, 2021

Rim Rock Trail

On The Road - frosty - Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
June 12, 2021

Rim Rock Trail – juniper tree next to the rim.

Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike E

    I watched the pbs series Heart of the World: Colorado’s National Parks, exploring the landscapes of Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado National Monument, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and Mesa Verde National Park. Definitely on my travel list!

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Just spectacular, frosty! I also love the Painted Wall photo, but the one that really grabbed me was the Cross Fissure view. Thank you.

  5. 5.

    jonas

    Wow — I had never even heard of this place, and I’ve been to Grand Junction a couple of times over the years. Will have to check it out if I’m ever there again. Thanks!

  6. 6.

    JoyceCB

    Once in a while I exclaim out loud at an On The Road photo – and that Cross Fissure view was one of them!  I am really enjoying all your canyon photos.

  7. 7.

    DFH

    I was there about 30 years ago, first camping near a stream in a pine grove, and for some reason we moved to a BLM campsite near a lake, pretty much in the open. Every afternoon about 2, high winds came over ridge. First time I had to lay in tent to keep it from going airborne. Thing was flat while the winds lasted. We called the site Monsoon Gulch and we regretted moving from the pines.

    Good trip, though. Did a bit of trail exploring in the old Isuzu Trooper 4×4 and came across a Corvair pulling a small camper – on the damn 4×4 trail.

    Thanks for the photos!

  8. 8.

    J R in WV

    Pretty amazing locale, fur sure. Have heard it is amazing, this proves it out.

    Thanks Frosty!! Great touring and photos!

  9. 9.

    TheOtherHank

    Mancos shale is basically just piles old mud that used to be the bottom of the ocean. If you go wandering around in the shale you can find fossil oyster and clam shells

  10. 10.

    stinger

    I prefer these smaller, more manageable canyons.

    Seriously, this is an amazing set of photos. Is it fair to assume that the Gunnison was a little more mighty at some time in the distant past?

  12. 12.

    Mike Mundy

    Per Wikipedia:

    “Author Ursula Le Guin based the site of the eponymous city in her novel City of Illusions on the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park.”

  14. 14.

    Dan B

    Great to see some unusual details.  The photos I’ve previously seen were not highly evocative.  These are!

    Question: At the Painted Wall what is the vegetation at the top, on the plateau?  It looks like shrubs but the scale is likely deceptive.

  15. 15.

    StringOnAStick

    @Dan B:  I think that’s Pinyon-Juniper scrub forest, probably more the latter since it’s fairly dry there. I regret not rock climbing in that canyon when I was young enough to do big walls.

  16. 16.

    Tehanu

    @Mike Mundy: ​
      City of Illusions is my favorite LeGuin book, although I wouldn’t argue that it’s her best; it’s just the one that speaks to me most deeply. Somewhere I’ve got a screen cap of a photo of the Forest Service building there and it looks exactly like I’ve always imagined Es Toch would look.

  17. 17.

    frosty

    Thanks for all the comments. This was a difficult place to take pictures. I didn’t get one looking down to the Gunnison that truly showed what it was like.

    As National Parks go, this is “second tier” in Colorado after Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain (my fave of all 62 (63?). But the second tiers are just as stunning as the first.

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