On The Road – cope – Grand Junction and Beyond, Part V

The rock in this area is Precambrian basement granite. Unlike the younger red and tan sandstones, shales and limestones which typically weather into sharp, angular blocks, the hard, dense granite here is worn smooth, rounded and polished by ages of flowing water. Down in the gully below here are the namesake Potholes. Water flows pretty much year round and this is the place to jump off the granite cliffs into the cold water in the potholes. 

This spot upstream of the potholes proved to be a good place to find and skip rocks across the water. The cold water felt good on the tootsies as well.

In thirty three years of living in Florida, I learned to appreciate what nature offers here. Enormous fresh water springs, unique wildlife, multitudes of birds, barrier islands and clean empty beaches. However, being with a half hour drive of places like this is going to be an even stronger tonic for my soul.

This is an unspectacular view of Miracle Rock, the boulder on the left skyline. Up close, it reveals itself to be a twelve thousand ton boulder perched on a pedestal that narrows to as little as four inches though that drama isn’t apparent from this view. The plan to hike the half mile trail to it was nixed when a summer thunderstorm popped up right over us as soon as we parked at the trail head so we decided to head down.

By the time we got down to the foot of The Monument, water was flowing and falling down the slickrock cliffs and ledges. One small waterfall is at the lowest point on the horizon, another in the cleft to its right. Weathering and erosion in this environment happens in punctuated events, long periods of nothing followed by short periods of dramatic change.

My sisters both live high on a bluff looking out on Grand Valley but the road we travelled back passed across the bottom of a major drainage coming off The Monument. We were able to get across the flooded road but twenty minutes later, we wouldn’t have been. Here, a whirlpool has formed at the upstream end of a culvert under the road. The private road on the right up to the million dollar house at the top was already unusable at this point.

A couple of deer were flushed out of their cover down by the river and took refuge along the driveway to my sister’s house. Some of my brother-in-law’s stone-stacking art nestles in the crotch of the foreground tree.

This is the view from the front yard of my sister’s house as the flood waters kept rising. In the forty or so years my sister has lived here, these flooding events have happened about every seven or eight years.

Looking the other direction, the storm that ran us off Glade Park and flooded out the neighbors can be seen moving down Grand Valley and off toward the Bookcliffs and the Utah border. We watched the water rise and rise and rise on this property below.

The water in the area below hung around for a couple of days before finally receding. The evening of the storm, it made for a scenic if unsettling sunset. My brother-in-law, retired from doing GIS for the city of Grand Junction, spent the afternoon and evening helping out his neighbors below and passing on updates to his friends still working for the city. Flash floods like this are often very localized affairs and often don’t get much attention. This one didn’t even get coverage on the local TV evening news.

Part VI will cap our visit out west with a float trip on the Colorado River.