Black Canyon (from the south rim)

An unscheduled visit today to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park near Montrose, CO.  Quite different from what we've been seeing.  At it's deepest the Canyon is 2,772 feet.  The river drops an average of 96 feet per mile in the national park and drops 480 feet in one two-mile stretch.  Fast, debris-laden water carving hard rock made the Canyon walls so steep.  Of course this took millions of years.  Until it was dammed, the river rushed through this gorge, in flood stage, at the rate of 12,000 cubic feet per second with 2.75 million horsepower force  dramatically scouring and eroding the canyon walls.

The Canyon was named "Black" because it is so deep, so sheer and so narrow that very little sunlight can penetrate it.  Early travelers found it forebidding.  In 1900 the nearby Uncompahgre Valley wanted river water for irrigation (most of the area from Utah to Montrose, and probably further east, is green only because of irrigation) so five residents hazarded an exploratory float down the Gunnison River but gave up after a month.  In 1901 Abraham Lincoln Fellows and William Torrence floated the Gunnison on a rubber mattress (33 miles in 9 days) and determined that an irrigation tunnel was feasible.  Work on the tunnel began in 1905; it was dedicated in 1909.  The tunnel was blasted through 6 miles of rock and still delivers river water to the Valley for irrigation today.

The Gunnison River is the blue line at the bottom of the canyon

 Incidentally, Painted Rock was 'painted' by Mother Nature.

Painted Rock with the Gunnison flowing by

 

We are staying in Montrose tonight and will head for Manitou Springs and Cave of the Winds tomorrow.