July 30, 2014 Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

We headed west in the opposite direction today from Gunnison than yesterday.

Blue Mesa Reservoir in front of Dillon Point. The first of the dams on the Gunnison River and the the beginning of the Black Canyon.

A model of the Black Canyon in the visitors center. The view from the visitors center.  The canyon is 43 miles long and about half a mile deep. It is one of the narrowest canyons in the United States.

Here where the canyon is narrower you can’t see the bottom from the south side. It is around 1000 feet from rim to rim here and it narrows to 40 feet wide down at the river.

If you lean way, way over at this view point you can see the river  2, 500 feet below. John says the river is class IV-VI rapids in the canyon. There are places the water just disappears into  rock sieves- some where you do not want to go in a boat, so there is about a 2 mile portage around the unrunnable  stuff. You can barely see the river in the second photo, way, way down.

Twisted rocks. The view up canyon to the West Elk mountains. That is where we were yesterday viewing high altitude flowers.  There is a Utah juniper tree in the foreground.

The canyon  widens some here in front of the painted wall. This sign is pretty funny. Actually John is a fabulous driver, this is what would happen if I drove!

Between the national park and Blue Mesa reservoir there are three dams on the river. This is the second dam, Morrow point dam. Blue Mesa, behind the third dam is really blue in the afternoon light on the way back.

Some buttes right outside of Gunnison on the way back. At Gunnison this is the play park on the Gunnison river.

The mountain mahogany seeds in the park are really curly. When we got back I took John to the Gunnison Brewery for dinner.  Each wall of the place had a different theme. The food and the beer were good.