April 22 - Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

 We were up with the sun Tuesday morning and got an early start towards Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, about 90 minutes east. We had a quick stop for coffee and were on our way. We got the skinny from the park ranger and headed out to the lookout points. We did 6-8 short hikes but no long ones here. Every view was breathtaking as the river was around 2,000 feet below the nearly vertical cliffs. This is a "black" canyon because the rock is igneous, rather than sedimentary. The rocks in the formations we saw yesterday in Colorado National Monument were about 150 million years old. The rocks in the Black Canyon are an order of magnitude older! That's 1.5 billion years old! The rock is much, much harder so the erosion takes much longer. Therefore, the canyon is much narrower despite the effects of the Gunnison River running at the bottom, or the snow/ice/rain as it falls and freezes and refreezes. These picture just do not do it justice. If you ever get a chance to see this beautiful canyon, take it!

Our first view of the Black Canyon

This is a representation of a cross-section of the Black Canyon - very deep and very narrow.

That's the shining Gunnison River below - we could hear the rapids all the way up 2,000 feet above them! It is an unrunnable river due to its ferocious rapids caused by the rate of descent and the flow through a narrow riverbed.

Another view of the river from on high. You can see my boot in the picture to give you an idea of how steep the lookout is. Generally, the end of each overlook was fenced, but there was no fencing on the way there.

This was one of the narrowest approaches to the overlook. I had to not think about how narrow and steep it was on each side to get over to the view.

This is called the Painted Wall. It towers over almost every skyscraper humans have built. The streaks are from magma that was injected into the crevices when this rock was still deep beneath the earth's surface.

Another look over the edge of an overlook into the canyon.

In front of the Painted Wall

We didn't expect to see much wildlife as that isn't a forte of this park. However, near the end of our last short hike we came upon two adult bighorn sheep grazing near us. They were chill (as were we) so we snapped a bunch of pics as they ate the bushes. 

Bighorn sheep horns grow throughout their lives, so we could tell that these sheep were mature (the ones we saw running down the road like crazy teenagers were just that - we could tell because their horns were much shorter than these).

From there we headed into Montrose for a late lunch. The Stone House was great as we split a salad, potato skins, and a French dip. We got ice and a quick charge then headed to our campground for a slow late afternoon and evening where we could shower, charge, and catch up our blog.