Out in America's Never Never: What Water Does to Rock...

The Navajo flute player at work

The geology of Antelope Canyon is simple. Water (lots of it in a short time) and rock (specifically, the easily eroded but cliff-forming Navajo Sandstone). That's all it takes. There are other ingredients that make Antelope Canyon a memorable awe-inspiring experience: Sunlight and shadow for instance. The rock seems to glow with an internal golden light.

In the last post, I described the lengths we went to in order to arrive in Page, Arizona in time for our tour. These pictures should make clear why we tried so hard to add Antelope Canyon to our itinerary through America's Never Never, despite 140 mile detours. It is an extraordinary example of a sandstone slot canyon.

One thing that must be considered when visiting Antelope Canyon is whether you will visit the Upper Canyon or the Lower Canyon. The entrance fees are essentially the same, and you must be accompanied by a guide in each one.

The upper canyon is the most popular, probably for two reasons: it is a level walk on sand, and at the right time of day narrow beams of sunlight pierce the darkness of the canyon, which in places almost requires a flashlight (the entrance fee almost doubles for tours during those hours). It also requires being shuttled up a three mile long sandy wash that must be driven on to be believed. The lower canyon must be accessed by a series of stairways and ladders, and doesn't have the beams of light. But you park right next to the entrance and won't need to be shuttled. But it is my favorite for a different reason: the serenity. We've been herded like cattle in the upper canyon, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other people. On our tour of Lower Antelope, we felt like we were the only people in the canyon (and we may very well have been).

By definition there isn't a lot of water in Antelope Canyon most of the time. It's a desert after all. The water comes during cloudbursts in the watershed upstream. The flash floods will send fast-moving slurry mixes of sand, mud, and boulders through the bottom of the canyon. Tours aren't held if there is a chance of thunderstorms in the canyons above. Tourists have been killed and injured in the past, and safety is a priority these days.

Simple geology, but a work of natural art. Enjoy the photos that follow, and look to the end of today's post for a special treat...

The flute player in the first picture? He played a beautiful composition that echoed off the glowing cliffs. I'm hoping he has some appreciation for the beauty he brought to our day. Here's a portion for your enjoyment!

There were other parts to this beautiful day. I'd show pictures of Horseshoe Bend, but I'm afraid I was grocery shopping while the crew hiked to see it (that's something that happens when you are the leader of a trip). Here is a post from last year's visit to the incredible entrenched meander...

I recalled the Navajo Beauty Way prayer...

With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty around me, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

What to do? Playing the Slots (Canyons, that is)

One of the most beautiful sights you will ever see is a slot canyon on the Colorado Plateau. Formations like the Navajo Sandstone are good cliff-forming rock layers, and yet they are easily eroded under the right circumstances. Flash floods carry a lot of abrasive sediment, and they work quickly to turn the slightest crevice into an intricately winding maze that can be dozens, even hundreds of feet deep and only a few feet wide.

Add to the maze-like labyrinth the glow of the fierce desert sun, and the rock seems to glow. Exploring a slot canyon can be an exercise in spiritual awareness.

Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona on the lands of the Navajo Nation is regarded by many to be one of the finest slot canyons in existence. The gulch that formed it drains a region of many square miles, and flash floods can deliver tons of sand in a matter of minutes in water/mud twenty feet deep.

 We traveled through it yesterday, and I wanted to share some of the photographic results....

Antelope Canyon embodies a sort of perfection of form and light...the crossbedding structure of the ancient sand dunes adds wonderfully to the texture.

 And the darkness contrasting with the light presents a wonderful challenge to the photographer.

As our visit continued, the sun rose higher, casting more beams of light in the greatest depths of the gorge.

It was just as perfect a moment of spiritual peace and recognition of the paradox of chaos and order in the Universe that one can imagine. Except for one thing. One really important thing...we had to pay a pretty penny for the privilege, and we were conducted through the canyon like cows being herded onto a cattle train...and thus comes the paradoxical question: What to do about it? How to find some way of centering the spirit and finding the peace and solitude so many of us covet?

Well, I suppose you seek out the ragged little sibling canyon that isn't so perfect. Maybe a part of the Navajo Sandstone that has been broken and jointed by the compression of the Earth's crust. Maybe a canyon carved not by mushes of sand and mud, but battered by boulders of solid chunks of rock. A canyon with unstable walls that can collapse and fall without warning.

Maybe you seek out a canyon like Cottonwood Wash in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument...no admission fee, no guides, no people, just quiet.

 And a different kind of beauty: a hard edged beauty. Not as colorful, but full of character.

So, really: how do you choose? Perfection, but with crowds and cattle prods? Or a roughhewn rugged beauty with intense solitude and serenity?

 For me it is no contest...solitude wins out every time. But there is the other solution to the quandary...

 You do both! And that is why yesterday was a great day....

I know of lots of other slot canyons out there. What are your favorites?

The Abandoned Lands...A Journey Through the Colorado Plateau: I've looked at erosion from both sides now

I guess I will never be a songwriter for Joni Mitchell. But I like looking at the effects of erosion. Sometimes you see it from above, for instance by standing on the rim and looking into the depths of the Grand Canyon. Sometimes you see it from below, by walking through a place like the Narrows of the Virgin River in Zion National Park and looking up at 2,000 feet of sandstone walls. But sometimes there are places where you get to look at erosion from both sides.

That's where we are today, a wonderful trail that takes us first through a narrow slot canyon, and then climbs to the mesa top above for a look down into the depths. This is the next stop on our journey through the Abandoned Lands, the desert environment of the Colorado Plateau. It's probably not all that fair of a quiz, but who can tell us where we are today? It's a place that receives relatively few visitors despite the incredible scenery. There was only one other car at the trailhead before our six vans showed up. A few clues about where we are...

Notice the rocks in the walls of the canyon. It isn't the nicely sorted sandstone that we often expect when water has carved such narrow slot canyons. This is more of a conglomerate with larger chunks of rock embedded in a matrix of smaller clasts. Some of the rocks are huge, as can be seen where large boulders have fallen into canyon. The rocks contain lots of volcanic material, including obsidian fragments that are sometimes called Apache tears ("Apache" is not a clue, though).

I guess I should also admit that a nitpicker would argue that we aren't actually on the Colorado Plateau, being on the edge of the plateau on the margins of a rift valley. The lower valley provides enough of a difference in base level that erosion is very, very fast, so fast that canyon walls can't collapse fast enough to make gentler slopes.

How bad can flashfloods get here? We certainly didn't want to find out. In the picture below, the students are looking at some silt deposits in a hollow about 12 feet above the floor of the gully. That was the water level during a recent gully-washer. If you are caught in such a flood, there wouldn't be much you could do to save yourself. By the way, notice that a fault line cuts across the cliff face in front of the people.

How fast is the erosion in a canyon like this? The trees give us a clue. How old do you think the ponderosa pine might be in the picture below? It's rather tall, and has probably been growing for a century or more...

 Look what has happened around the roots....

So...where are we at? (OK, Nina??)

In the next post we will look at this place from above, and provide the answer if some of you don't figure it out first.

Antelope Canyon - A Magical Place

Just a mini-blog today, a sort of picture sequence from the road. I'm sitting in a Subway in Kanab on the way to Kodachrome Basin for our next camp. I'm investigating a trip we are conducting through the educational division of AAPG. If you want to see what we will explore, check these pictures out...Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Nation outside Page, Arizona.

The pictures almost have an almost spiritual feeling. I have to admit, however, that I did not photograph the many dozens of fellow photographers with whom we were standing shoulder to shoulder. The canyon was stunning, but crowded. Still, I love this place.



Until next time...connections are tricky to find out here!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo!

If the question arises as to what formation is responsible for the most dramatic scenery in all the Colorado Plateau, the Navajo Sandstone would have to be near the top of everyone's list (anyone out there have opposing arguments?). It is hard to imagine a rock unit that can erode into more beautiful colors, forms and structures (and I am being totally scientifically objective here....).



200 million years ago, a vast desert had spread across what is now Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Nevada and north into Wyoming. The idea that sand dunes represent a typical desert is a widespread misconception (typical American deserts are no more than 5% sand dunes), but in this case it was true: huge dunes crept across the landscape, in places burying the underlying rocks to a depth of 2,000 feet or more. The source of the sand? Early assumptions said the last remnants of the Ancestral Rockies, but some recent work suggests that the sand was derived from vast river systems with headwaters in the Appalachian-Caledonian mountain system.

Map from Ron Blakey

The uniqueness of the Navajo lies in the structure of the rock itself, the crossbedding, and the somewhat unique range of color: in different parks the rock is white, orange, red, yellow and vermilion. The variations are apparently due to a bleaching effect of once-present hydrocarbons that dissolved, and then reprecipitated, iron oxides in structures like domes and thrust faults. The iron oxide minerals hematite, goethite and limonite provide the intense color, and in places have formed the unique "moqui marbles", spherical concretions of hematite that are popular with rockhounds.

I want to explore a couple of the Navajo Sandstone parks, and I start today with a lesser-known park, by name and visitation, but very familiar because pictures of this canyon are a staple in art galleries. I am referring to Antelope Canyon, outside of Page, Arizona. Antelope Canyon is on the Navajo Reservation, and has been established as a Tribal Park (like Monument Valley). The canyon is a small tributary to the Colorado River, and from above, you would barely know it is there: you can literally jump across the opening. Underneath is a slot canyon, more than 100 feet deep...

Over hundreds of thousands of years rushing waters have ripped away at the sandstone, but because the well-cemented nature of the rock, mass wasting is ineffective at widening the gorge. Beneath the surface is a fascinating labrinth of twisting passages and curving walls. The canyon is both a challenge and a Mecca for photographers. The play of reflected light ranges across the brightness spectrum, and at the right times the rock seems to glow internally.

Slot canyons carry their own dangers, and flash floods are a real concern here. In 1997, eleven tourists were killed when a distant storm sent waters slashing through the canyon. The Navajo Nation now carefully monitors visitation when flooding is a possibility. Still, despite entry fees and charges, the canyon is a delight to visit: there are two sections, an upper canyon with a level floor, and a lower canyon that requires some climbing and squeezing, although ladders and steps are now in place to allow fast evacuation if floods come. It is a truly beautiful place. I visited in 2007 during a day I had to drive 750 miles, but I spent a long time in the canyon, snapping more than a hundred pictures. It was magical....